Once connected to KAREN, small and rural schools will be able to make the most of high quality music education.

Schools - up with the beat

The National Centre for Research in Music Education and Sound Arts (University of Canterbury), in partnership with the Christchurch School of Music has recently completed a Ministry of Education funded e-mentoring music trial using video conferencing to offer remote music lessons to students.

The trial linked tutors in central Christchurch with students in small and remote schools, allowing them to provide music tuition which they would otherwise struggle to provide. A website hosted blogs, video footage, lesson materials, news items and links for students and teachers to share learning between lessons.

Material recorded and developed during the trial are available via the website to all teachers of the arts and there are positive signs for the expansion of the activity across music teaching and the arts.

Taking note of music e-mentoring exemplars

Merryn Dunmill, a Director at the Centre, has been leading a nationwide effort to establish good practice and exemplars for e-mentoring in music for school and tertiary students. The goal is to establish an ongoing international e-mentoring programme with expert teams professionally developed and linked to do this across New Zealand and Asia-Pacific countries.

This will bring together community artists and music centre tutors in collaboration with specialist music teachers. Monitoring of these sessions will provide information for innovative models of professional learning for arts education.

“Music e-tutors are upbeat about improved quality and usefulness of video conferencing over KAREN for instrumental music teaching in NZ,” said Merryn.

KAREN hits the right note

Using KAREN, students and tutors will be able to experience music mentoring via video conferencing without significant delays in reception, providing a higher overall quality of experience.

Instead of being distracted by blurred images and distorted sounds students and tutors can to focus their attention on the music rather than the limitations of the technology that they are using.

Once produced these lessons can be shared online, making information available on innovative teaching in music and the arts more widely available across New Zealand.

Communities around the country will have their own centres of excellence which will be able to develop and share exemplary lessons and teaching examples that will be available through live lessons and recordings made possible by KAREN.

E-mentoring in action

Drums lesson (mp4 - video, 6.9MB)

Clarinet lesson (mp4 - video, 6MB)

Voice lesson (mp4 - video, 8.3MB)

More information

http://www.merc.canterbury.ac.nz/

Image: Mark Walton (Christchurch School of Music Musical Director and Programme Director) giving saxophone lessons to University of Auckland student Peter Chiu.

Updated: 23 October 2007