University of Colorado

The Internet if a vast repository of factual information available at our fingertips, which might include music dictionaries and encyclopedias, sites about music history, theory, or composer information. Web pages with numerous links to explore are quite prevalent. It would be quite possible to have children come to music class and complete worksheets with factual information about music, gleaned from the Internet.

Cognitive based research (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000) suggests that relevant learning connections are made when learning is embedded in authentic tasks – those that a student will find in real life within the community. For music, the fundamental ways that people engage in music are to create, perform, and listen to music, as defined by the National Music Standards (Consortium, 1994). This document also outlines nine standards for musical learning. Since the Music Standards were implemented in 1994, teachers have been learning how to develop lessons that specifically address these areas. To tap into Internet resources in a music classroom, then, demands that we go beyond purely factual information so that students are learning of music, not about music, as suggested by Bennett Reimer (1989).

A further challenge comes from the cognitive research presented by Bransford et al. (2000), which suggests that classrooms need to be centered on the learner, knowledge, community, and assessment. The Music Standards provide direction in the knowledge base, but how does a teacher build tasks that develop the learner and community, using possible only one computer in a music classroom with the limited class time typically available to general music classrooms, and in a way that develops musicianly roles through Internet resources that are age appropriate?

Ruth Clark (2001) has defined four architectures for guiding instructional design, which are based on constructivism, and situated guided learning. The four architectures are shown in figure one.

Under constructivism, a student is provided opportunities to build an internal knowledge base of a subject’s content. For information to be retained, the student needs to be able to see the relevance of information by making many connections to prior knowledge and to the interconnected pathways within the discipline, as described by Bransford et al. (2000). The emphasis is on what the learner understands and retains, rather than what is presented by the teacher. Situated learning contexts embed a task within a realistic learning situation, provide high learner control, give multi – faceted feedback which models real – world activities, and is provided through collaborative situations.

The four architectures have varying levels of cognitive overload and various degrees of potential to help encode new information into the long – term memory. A great many websites are designed using purely a receptive mode; the large quantities of factual and textual information can lead to high cognitive overload and low memory retention. The learner needs to have strong metacognitive abilities, which are the self – awareness skills regarding one’s own learning and need for support.

Conversely, a purely exploratory mode can have the same effect and be overwhelming. The “lost in hyperspace” (Clark, 2001), p.7) syndrome can lead the learner to forget the original purpose of visiting the website.

Guided inquiry can be quite effective for encoding information into long – term memory and also promotes metacognitive abilities. A basic requirement for effective learning, however, is to provide the support tools that encourage multiple opportunities for feedback and revision.

Returning to the challenge, how does one build a learning task that will allow student musicians to be performing, creating, or listening to music through Internet resources? Secondly, how can the learning task be structured without causing cognitive overload, and in a manner that will promote solid content knowledge and lone – term retention.

Examples

Karaoke files present an intriguing means of assisting students to meet Music Standard One: Sing. an example of a karaoke file is found at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive: When I Was Just a Little Lad (Ferron & Feldman, 1993).

Online accompaniment files can help a student practice an instrument at home in a music – minus – one approach. One example is an online folk song accompaniment for children to practice the recorder, a common instrument of study at the elementary level. The child can choose the melody or harmony part with or without the accompaniment.

Bransford et al. (2000) discuss new technologies that provide learning opportunities that are interactive; allow leaning by doing; provide feedback in many forms and in realistic situations; allow students opportunities to revise in order to refine understanding; and help to build new knowledge. These uses of technology can be seen in Internet mentoring projects that develop and encourage composing skills (music standard four), as well as to encourage emphasis on the learner and community. Students upload compositions and receive advice from mentors who might be working composers, teachers – in – training, or other students. In the Composer in Electronic Residence (Beckstead, 1995) project at York University in Canada, students often receive responses with a MIDI example to hear a revised version of their composition. In a similar project, Reese and Hickey (1999) conducted a research study comparing two different mentoring formats between teachers – in – training and K – 12 students: one format was an open forum structure, which the second approach used a one – to – one mentoring format. Though there were some limiting features that need to be investigated further, responses were favorable to both formats, and there was a clear motivation for participation in collaborative projects. These are excellent examples of interactive use of technology, rather than simply dispensing information through technology.

To work towards the standard for improvising (music standard three), students can improvise a counter- melody or an accompaniment pattern to an online MIDI file. Upgrading Quicktime player to Quicktime Pro (Apple, 2002), is inexpensive, and provides the ability to route playback of a MIDI file through a synthesizer. A student can then choose different timbres (while online) to compare a new arrangement of the song to the original. This provides and excellent means for evaluating musical choices, standard seven.

Another example, Musical Gestalt (Nelson, 2001) was created for introducing teachers to the musical concept of melodic contour, using the gestalt theory. A primary tenet of gestalt theory is that the whole is greater than the sun of its parts (Lipscomb, 1996). Understanding a musical concept within its overall context is important. In studies about expert learners, “organizing disparate pieces of information into meaningful units” (Bransford, 2000, p. 96) has been shown to facilitate memory. Known as “chunking,” the strategy has been shown as an effective tool in studies about expert learning, as well as in studies of children’s learning (Bransford, 2000). Therefore, gestalt theory should provide the basis for facilitating the understanding of a musical concept by experiencing the whole context. A melody is more than a group of notes, but is determined by the movement and repetition of pitches within a melodic contour.

Musical Gestalt was designed to guide learning with open – ended questions throughout the activity, rather than telling and testing. Feedback and interactivity are provided along the way as a means of guiding how teachers construct their understanding of a new concept. Aural and visual examples are provided to assist with understanding.

Building understanding occurs through listening to examples. After hearing scrambled pitches, a familiar melody is presented to introduce the idea of melodic contour. The learner is sent to Creating Music (Subotnick, 1999) to actually experience creating musical contour online.

Learners are asked to review the original melody, then a similar melody. Visual hints are provided to help construct and understanding of musical contour. After experiencing several ways to hear, see, and create musical contour, the learner is asked to check understanding by trying some questions about musical contour to determine which question uses gestalt theory. Feedback is given to help the learner gauge personal understanding. To facilitate transfer of the concept, teachers are then asked to apply the gestalt concept by creating questions that would pertain to their own teaching area.

Finally, teachers are asked to submit examples to a community page in order to foster a community of thinkers. This comes from cognitive apprenticeship model (Bransford, 2000; Collins, 1991), which stresses, in part, the idea of visible thinking and shared understanding.

One vision of guided inquiry task is presented in a Webquest, which is designed to provide a more complete learning experience for the study or recorders. The recorder Webquest (Nelson, 2001) addresses all but two standards:

2- Performing on Instruments
3- Improvise
4- Compose
6- Listen, analyze, describe music
7- Evaluate music and music performances
9- Understanding music in relation to history and culture

The Webquest activity begins with a high quality example of recorder playing, which

provides a model for young students. Admittedly, recorder playing can be heard on existing media, such as CD. However, some music is available online that would otherwise not be accessible to most classrooms. A sound clip of a 90000 – year – old Chinese flute actually being played is an amazing opportunity to hear and ancient instrument that would not normally be available to students.

In the Webquest, students will research the history of the Recorder, not through reading about the recorder, but by listening to actual musical examples from different historical periods. Factual information and pictures are interspersed with the musical examples, in order to connect the history with the music through listening. This provides a more musical experience.

Learning about the history of the recorder is only one dimension, as students are then asked to construct their own understanding by incorporating the information into an open – ended, problem – solving project. The tasks are actual functions in which musicians engage, meeting the requirement of being an authentic task. Similarly, students assume roles that are found in the real world of musical practice as they complete the task.

Support tools such as dictionaries and encyclopedia sites are provided as a means of clarifying information, but not as the single focus of the learning task. A web rating form is designed to promote student thinking about the use of web sites for musical purposes. Metacognitive support, then, is provided through these tools and through questioning designed to guide thinking throughout the quest.

There are several benefits from having an online instructional lesson. This type of lesson provides access to resources that may not normally be available to a music classroom. The use of Internet resources may also provide on solution to limited time because of its accessibility outside of the music room, such as in the academic classroom, school library, or at home. Learning is expanded beyond the walls of the music room to become a global experience. Hopefully, this will encourage the awareness of belonging to a community of musicians. One quickly discovers how prevalent recorder playing is throughout the world.

As students work in a collaborative, problem – solving type of situation, the goal is to encourage and allow students to construct their own knowledge about the breadth and depth of recorder playing and its history. Working with this information in an interactive project goes beyond memorizing disconnected facts and, hopefully, will promote more relevant learning connections within the content knowledge, as well as to help facilitate lone – term understanding as these connections are encoded into long – term memory.

The types of interactive projects discussed in this paper move beyond a purely receptive mode of all factual information presented for students to absorb, to a vision of students actively engaged, and who are part of a global community of musicians. The Internet can be an exciting and rich resource for meeting the National Standards by creating, performing, and listening to music in ways not previously available to music classrooms. Online instruction can be a powerful mechanism for students to share their music internationally as part of a worldwide community of musicians!