How technology can help in the music classroom

What’s the idea? In order for our students to make progress within the classroom, music teachers are particularly adept at giving immediate, usually verbal feedback based on the development of skills as well as understanding. It is often noted that ‘music teachers have long been used to doing proper formative assessment; indeed, the whole history of musical teaching and learning involves dialogic formative assessment’ (Kinsella and Fautley, 2020, p. 72). Booth states that ‘formative assessment is a process and involves working with students so that learners know where they are in their learning, where they need to be, and how they are going to get there’ (2017, p. 27). This feedback must be able to help our students develop a level of autonomy that is required of them as musicians. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered how music teachers can function. In my school, students from Y5-11 have each been issued a chromebook, and I have made use of these to help make m