How Music Elearning Development Tools will Work

A lot of my musician friends think that elearning for music is a silly idea. They think that having to go through online courses will not provide the same musical learning experience that traditional lessons can offer. However, I totally disagree with them because all it takes to make music elearning development tools work is to choose and combine the right types of tools, applications and software available to us today.

elearning development tools

The technology we have now is powerful and advanced enough to accommodate the challenges of musical education. If you go online, you will see that we have a lot of useful innovations and media that can be utilized as development tools for elearning. We have instant messengers, video calling applications, podcasts, instructional videos, music players and so many more. All of these things address music’s need for visual, auditory and tactile teaching and learning methods.

For example, teachers can record a video of themselves demonstrating how to play chords for a guitar. They can integrate text slides into the video if they want to further describe a theory or a tip to reinforce their demonstration. Students can access this pre-recorded instruction, pick up their guitars, and follow the teacher. They can even pause and rewind the video at their own discretion in case they have difficulty following the instruction in one take. With just a simple video, students were able to use their visual, auditory and tactile sense for optimal learning experiences.

The trick to ensure that music elearning development tools will work is to carefully choose what applications or programs you will need and then combine them to provide learners with meaningful learning experiences. You can create a course that features an instructional video like my example above, a listening quiz using a music player, and an instant messaging so the student can interact with the teacher or other learners. As long as the course designer considers the needs and preference of the students, this process will be a piece of cake!

Being a Teacher is Hard

You know, electronic learning is not only for students. In fact, before any student is to be taught the lesson, it’s the teacher that has to learn it first especially in this day and age when sometimes being a teacher means being a student all over again.

Any elearning company is primarily composed of teachers. I know this because one of my sisters works in a company that uses virtual learning to teach Koreans how to properly speak English. Sometimes, her work requires her to teach at home. This is where my cousin and I do a funny appearance behind my sister’s room whenever the door is left open. Then we hide if my sister suddenly looks back at an empty hallway, only the find us and then shut and lock the door tight. I bet some of her Korean students will suddenly see a paradigm shift in the lesson.

Now back to teachers. Besides technicians, software developers and, of course, the management, teachers are the ones that keep work going inside any elearning company. They may have the software, the good connection and good system to top it off, but no one’s going to steer the wheel of the business if the teachers are gone. This is me, typing on the influence of my economics textbook my professor recommended.

Although I have to say, online learning is really a strange business especially when the fact is, there are students who can’t even adapt to the classroom type of education. And that goes double for teachers. Why would they prefer this kind of teaching? Whatever happened to the dream of being present and teaching kids? But then, I figured, it’s also a tough life and not everybody gets what they want. Some don’t even have the privilege to take up college. This is made even tougher for the teachers since there are a lot of faulty connections and ill-fated equipments in the job’s nature. Bring an umbrella and expect a rainfall of tears and angst when the connection goes haywire. Not only are these people expected to lecture kids who are the actual students but they also need to teach older and working people who are not actually enrolled students. Add the fact that they haven’t really mastered some of things they teach.

Reminder to self: don’t be a teacher if you can’t handle sacrifice.