Make Music has announced that Finale Notepad is no lnger going to be free to download. Instead, it will cost 9.95$. The fee will not be such a big problem for educational institutions, but I’ll assume that paying the fee will be – that is, it is not that simple to pay for software in educational institutions. There is the justifying every payment issue with the one’s in charge, and the technical billing issues etc. I predict, or fear, that this may restrict many educators to start using music notation in their classroom. Especially, it might make them think about alternative products, since they have to go through the payment process anyway. Notepad was a great introduction in to music notation. I have always recommended it.

However, good thing is that they are improving the cheap software by adding features, and also publishing a Finale Reader for free download. Reader will play and print, but will of course not allow editing. I hope it is Internet friendly, that is, allows embedding notation pieces “in a Youtube like way” to progressive web-services with social media functionalities!

I have recently read a few recent studies on the use of social networking software and “web 2.0″ in general among students and faculty. Very interesting stuff. I also surveyd our students and wrote about it last fall here. All of these studies indicate that even though students currently in universities do use technology, but are not so interested in using it productively or socially in their studies, and most do not use software belonging to the Web 2 category. The studies conclude that most current university students are NOT what Prensky (2001) calls Digital Natives. It seems that around 20-30% of students could fall in to that category.I have observed and actually also studied the technological skills, student attitudes towards the use of technology in learning as well as their readiness to use technology (e.g. owning devices, having access etc.)

I wrote an article for a University paper about the net generation finally arriving at the university back in 2004. I wrote that according to their technology ownership (adsl connections, computers etc.) it had arrived, but that is really just a part of the story..

Read the rest of this entry »

Dismarc is a European digitazing project supported by the EU. It is a growing digital library of folk, jazz and classical music, as well as soundscapes. It has a partnership with Womex, and this can be heard in the content. A lot of so called world music is available – music, that would be hard to access otherwise. Only a part of the content is freely available. Content providers include archives, broadcasters, museums, universities, research institutes, private collectors.

So this could be a valuable resource to use in teaching and learning. Students could use this in project work, to search different kind of music, music from various cultures etc. And, of course the soundscapes available broaden the educational use of these kinds of archives. Usability could be improven, however, if we expect teachers and younger students with less online experience to use Dismarc effectively.

I think I have written about other open projects, such as the Freesound project before. We should remember that the Internet offers not only a possibility to access these archives, but a chance to participate in building them with our students.

Yes, I am frustrated. Should not write a blog post. But, coming from a small music university, which can not put resources in to expensive journal databases, really makes my possibilities to conduct research so much more difficult. There is no way to access research conducted by my peers, often working for a government institution. Instead I would have to pay enormous sums of money to access that research. And the money goes to publishing houses. Research conducted with tax payers money should be accessible freely by the tax payers!!!

There is no way of customizing the journals universities order. Instead, I can easily get access to hundreds of articles on agriculture, medical sciences and astrophysics. But only to a few journals on educational technology or music education. Printed journals are much more expensive to maintain, they take a lot more time to “come out”. And, most people prefer to print only the articles they need from online data bases anyway. So, they are a waste of natural resources too in my mind.

I think publishing houses have a tight hold on universities, especially on the days of the Internet. It would probably be not more expensive to publish in open journals & pay someone to edit the articles & take care of the referee-process. Universities could form alliances to do that. Would be so easy today.

I would HIGHLY recommend tools like the Open Journal System. It offers tools for all involved in a process of publishing (exept the publishing houses). That includes tools for the author, editor & referees. There are currently over 1400 Journals available through that system.

But now I am left to only to that academic research, which I have access to. Frustrating.

Finally the all new version of the open source & free social networking & ePortfolio platform Elgg is out.

It comes with several built-in features as well as a number of optional plug-ins that you need to install separately. Of course, you need a server to run it, unlike Ning. But unlike Ning, Elgg is add-free and more customizable. Ning lacks a Wiki, which Elgg has. And the best thing with classic Elgg should be still here: the ability to decide for whom you want to publish your files, blogposts etc. That is, openly in WWW, for a group or just for your self. It is user centric system, unlike most LMS’s.

As you can see, I am quite enthusiastic about this, and will start testing it as soon as possible. I am hoping, that some Finnish service provider could host Elgg, so we could actually consider it to be widely used by Sibelius-Academy – if it fulfills our requirements. More to come..

We have recently formed a Music Education Technology Network. It was officially launhed at the 2008 ISME conference, where we hosted a symposium with Matti Ruippo, Jan Bolton, Sam Leong, Fred Rees and me. We had a good turnout and many people were keen to join the network.

One of the purposes of the network is to function as a starting point for an ISME commission. But we would like to keep it also informal for all people interested in the field of using or researching technology in music learning and musical activities.

The purposees of the network are open to discussion, but I have started to list them here:

http://musiceducationtechnology.ning.com/notes/The_purpose_of_this_network_and_this_site

The main point is to share your experiences and expertise, as well as to create connections to people around the world. The network is for people from any kinds of music institutions from pre-school to university and beyond. Feel free to join and contribute!

I came accross this speach by one of the greatest thinkers and speakers of our time, Sir Ken Robinson: http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/vision-videos/sir-ken-robinson

He talks about the paradigm shift that needs to take place in education. The talk is informative, humouristic, sarcastic and he uses wonderful metaphors to illustrate his point.

Here are some quotes from his recent talk:

“We have grown up in a system of public education which is dominated by two ideas: One of them is a conception of economic utility. And you can illustrate that directly. It is implicit in the structure of the school curriculum.. In every school system there is a hierarchy of subjects..” “The curriculum is simply recognizable: Math, science and English language at the top, then the humnities and arts in the bottom..” He describes dance as the least “profitable” economically, ans thus least valued in school. “Our school are based on the premise that there are two sorts of subjects: the useful ones and the useless ones. And the useless ones fall away eventually.. especially when money becomes tight..” Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Terry has written a pretty nice looking application for iPod Touch and the new 3G iPhone called Band. It takes advantage of the wonderful touch screen, and allows you to tap in drum beats, bass lines and piano melodies. I have tried some previous piano application in iPhone, and it was fairly hard to insert notes “accurately” in tempo. For our students, I would see real use for example in creating backing tracks and practicing with them and also recording own playing simultaneously. More than a year ago, I was in contact with developers in one mobile phone company, and asked whether they would develop something like this.. Seems like the people developing software for S60 are not really interested in music software.

I find the 3G iPhone cool, of course, but still a bit expensive with contracts.. And it still does not have a proper camera, no video camera nor possibilities for video chats. But it really is proof of world class marketing and has the best user interface around. I wonder, if a car manufacturer who built a car that would run on pure water could create such a hype? I doubt it. But the main thing is that the hype was not really created by Apple, instead by the users. (Me being a mac user since 1992).

Wikiaudio is a new Wiki that presents very useful information on audio, recording techniques and equipment, music software and so on. Lot of explanations on concepts. And, of course anyone is free to contribute, so please do! We need more of these kind of sites. Complete, or correct if you find mistakes or incorrect information. They offer a quick way to approach information on on-demand basis.

Artistdata is a web-based service that allows musicians to sync their data (blogs, info about tours etc.) to several different sites, such as MySpace, Last.fm, Purevolume etc. The point is that a band publishes data only in one site, and Artistdata pushes the data then to other chosen sites where the artist has presence. You still need to upload your music to the dedicated sites, though.