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 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..

Bennet et al.have just published an interesting review of research on current generation of university students. They criticize Prensky’s view, which claims that the generation born in 1980’s and early 90’s use ICT’s extensively and in a totally different way than previous generations, and that due to that we should completely reshape our educational system. So, educational system should change because of the way students use ICT’s? Well, my view is that we should encourage students to use ICT’s in creative ways in order to change the way people learn. Not vice versa.

Bennet et al. (2008) present a credible list of evidence that discredits Prensky’s notions. According to them, some researchers claim that due to the ways young people have grown to use technology, they also learn differently from past generations. Highly unlikely, they say, and so do I. And they present evidence to support this. Learning culture in formal institutions is so deeply rooted, that it will take more than a geneartion (or an army of bulldozers) to change that. Evaluation, competition, standards etc. are taking care that the ways people learn are not changing easily!

Bennet et al. question that a generation of digital natives actually exists. It is self-evident that a growing number young people have grown around technology. For many of them, using computers is an everyday activity. Statistics show that most young people in western countries do use computers a lot, for e-mail, many for instant messaging and so on. And most university students own computers (90% in Sibelius-Academy, similar numbers of over 90% in American universities, according to research cited by Bennet et al.). And almost everyone has a mobile phone. But what is also evident, is that computers are mostly used for word processing (as was in late 80’s!), e-mail and reading periodicals etc. Internet is mostly used for one-way communication, the way Web 1.0 was designed to be used. As Bennet et al. state ” It may be that there is as much variation within the digital native generation as between the generations.” And: ” Generalizations about the ways in which digital natives learn also fail to recognise cognitive differences in young people of different ages” (Bennet et al. 2008).

According to my research, as well as research reviewed by Bennet et al., only around 20-30% of students use technology in initiative, truly self-directive, creative and social ways (e.g. edit & present video, publish their own music, maintain a blog, write to wiki’s). Hartshorne & Ajjan (2008) surveyed the use of and the attitudes toward web 2.0 applications among university students & faculty in the Fall of 2007  (in a large US university). According to their survey, 56% of the students don’t use and do not plan to use blogs (46% social networking, 20% wikis), and only 7% of them use blogs frequently (20% use wikis, 10% use social networking frequently). 62% of faculty do not plan to use blogs, 74% will continue to disregard social networking and 56% don’t plan to use blogs ni their academic activities. 1% of the faculty use social networking. Still, 69% of the students and 42% of the faculty see Wiki’s improving student learning. So, pedagogical benefits are acclaimed, but people choose not to use them. I guess it is easier to go on the way we have used to (see the complete results in the article! Highly recommended!).

I do believe that popularization of Facebook and other social networking services may change this slowly in the informal side of student life. But most of them seem to adhere to the more traditional ways of use in the formal side of their life -  in their studies that is. Research points out that technology plays such a different role in students’ home and school lifes, school activities often beinf teacher directed and strictly controlled (Bennet et al. 2008). The authors conclude that “..student’s every day technology practices may not be directly applicable to academic tasks, and so education has a vitally important role in fostering information literacies that will support learning”.

The so called digital natives are also claimed to be more skilled multitaskers than previous generations. Bennet et al. have not found evidence to support this (before students worked in front of TV, now in front of computers with distractions). Also, they point that “Multitasking may not be as beneficial as it appears and can result in a loss of concentration and cognitive “overload”…” I sure have noticed that when not in a state of “flow” in my work!!

So, a lot has to happen that technology be used in more initiative, creative and social ways in educational institutions. Lately I have also noticed (and my colleague Don Lebler from Brisbane, Australia suggested this!) that we have to first provide evidence for the students that they actually can learn better and will profit in the future from the novel ways of using technology. As one student I talked this morning said, it is difficult to know how to use technology, if one does not even know about the possibilities available!

UPDATE: See Jonathan Savage’s post from 2006 on the issue here!

**Bennet, S., Maton, K. & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational technology, Sept. 2008.

**Hartshorne, R. & Ajjan, H. 2008. Exploring the role of Web 2.0 Applications in Higher Education. Paper
presented at the North Carolina Teaching and Learning With Technology Conference 2008, Raleigh,
NC. http://conference.unctlt.org/proceedings/2008/2008_Proceedings_Pedagogy.pdf

**Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9(5), 1-6.

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.

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.

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..

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!

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..”

He brings out the point about the current educational system being designed for a different age (”it was modelled on the the economic premise of industrialism”), and that most educational reforms just attempt to “improve it” or “raise standards” instead of compleately re-thinking it.

He believes “there is a parallel climate chrisis (to global warming).. A clobal crisis in human resources..” “In California, the state spent about 3 billion dollars to the state university system, and over 9 billion dollars on the states prison system. I don’t believe there are more potential criminals born each year than there are college graduates. What you have is people in bad conditions going bad.”

“The challenge is not to reform education but to transform it”

“We still educate people from the outside in. We should build educational systems in the model of personhood”

He talked about his upcoming book about the nature of human talent, for which he interviewed artists, scientists, business leaders, poets, parents and kids.

“It is based on the premise that people do their best when they do the thing they love, when they are in their element.”

“It seems that the evidence is absolutely persuasive, when people connect to this powerfull sense of talent in themselves, discover what is it that they can do, they become somebody else. And that to me is the premise of building a new educational system.”

He points out that the educational system is putting children to sleep (anesthetic) instead of waking them up (aesthetic) through artistic experience (”of what they have inside of themselves”.

“The educational system is modelled on the interests of the industrialism and the image of it.. Schools are still pretty much organized on factory lines; ringing bells, specialized in to special subjects.. we separate the kids by age group..Seems like the most important thing about them is the date of manufacture”

The shift, according to Robinson, should take place from industrial model to organic model:

Industrial model:      Organic Model:
*Utility                   *Vitality
*Linearity              *Creativity
*Conformity          *Diversity
*Standardisation    *Customasation

The levels of learning we need to pay attention to:

“Personal: We have to think differently about human capasity. We have to get over the old conception of academic / non-academic, abstract/ non abstract, theoretical / vocational, and see it for what it is: a myth.

Group: Secondly we have to recognize is that most great learning happens in groups. The collaboration is the stuff of growth. If we atomize people and judge them separately, we form a kind of junction of them and their natural learning environment.

Cultural: It is cucially about the culture of our institutions, the habits of the institution, and their habitants they occupy.”

But you should definately watch the whole speech. I wish we could get these on regular TV!

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).