Dalcroze meets technology : integrating music, movement and visuals with the Music Paint Machine

peer reviewedNew interactive music educational technologies are often seen as a ‘force of change’, introducing new approaches that address the shortcomings (e.g. score-based, teacher-centred and disembodied) of the so-called traditional teaching approaches. And yet, despite the growing belief in their educational potential, these new technologies have been problematised with regard to their design, reception, implementation and evaluation. A possible way to optimise the realisation of the educational potential of interactive music educational technologies is to connect their use to music educational approaches that stood the test of time and as such may inspire technologies to become a bridge between tradition and innovation. This article describes an educational technology (the Music Paint Machine) that integrates the creative use of movement and visualisation to support instrumental music teaching and learning. Next, it connects this application to such an established music educational method, the Dalcroze approach. Through the lens of a set of interconnected aspects, it is shown how the Music Paint Machine’s conceptual design aligns to the underlying principles of this approach. In this way, it is argued that integrating Dalcroze-inspired practices is a plausible way of realising the didactic potential of the system. An appendix with example exercises is provided

Is Student Motivation Related to Socio-digital Participation? : A Person-oriented Approach

5th ICEEPSY International Conference on Education & Educational Psychology in Kyrenia Cyprus (Oct 22-25, 2014)/ guest editors: Zafer Bekirogullari, Melis Minas.There is a hypothesized gap between the technology-mediated practices of adolescents and school, hindering student motivation and well-being. This study examined how students’ school motivation is associated with ICT-use. Previous research has shown that achievement goal orientations are related to students’ academic and emotional functioning. Simultaneously, adolescents engage in various socio-digital activities on a daily basis. Our aim is to integrate these two approaches to examine whether students with different motivational profiles display different patterns of socio-digital participation. The participants were Finnish high school students (N=1342) who filled in a self-report questionnaire assessing school motivation and ICT-use both in and out of school. We examined the structural validity of the measurement model by confirmatory factor analyses, classified the students by latent profile analyses and examined group and gender differences by ANOVAs. Four groups were identified: indifferent, success-oriented, mastery-oriented, and avoidance-oriented. The groups differed in their generalized motivational beliefs and there were meaningful differences in terms of their orientations to socio-digital participation: e.g. indifferent students were more likely to engage in hanging-out and gaming, avoidance-oriented students were the least engaged in academic activities. Also, there were some interesting group × gender interaction effects. We found that students’ indifference towards school is associated with ICT-engagement outside of school (gaming and hanging-out). We conclude that there appears to be evidence of discontinuities between today's schools and their students, raising a question of whether the indifference is the cause or the outcome. Furthermore, the findings raise new insights on achievement goal and gender interaction effects.Peer reviewe

Identity profiles and digital engagement among Finnish high school students

Developing a stable personal identity is considered a more precarious task in today's society than hitherto. Skilful digital engagement may, however, constitute a valuable asset in necessary identity exploration and commitment. Applying a person-oriented approach, we examined for the first time how identity profiles are associated with digital engagement, operationalized as digital competence, gaming seriousness, type of internet activity and excessive ICT use. After controlling for gender, life satisfaction and parental SES, this study of a Finnish high school sample (N = 932) revealed that adolescents with future commitments and some exploration of options (achievement, searching moratorium) were the most advanced in digital skills and, in the former case, least prone to excessive ICT use. By contrast, adolescents desperately trying to solve the identity task (ruminative moratorium) scored highest on friendship-driven internet activity and excessive ICT use, whereas diffused individuals had the weakest digital competence. No differences between the profiles emerged regarding gaming and interest-driven internet activity. The results suggest that the digital world and related devices are purposeful tools for shaping and maintaining healthy identity commitments.Peer reviewe

Las competencias en TIC de estudiantes universitarios del ámbito de la educación y su relación con las estrategias de aprendizaje

Este estudio se enmarca en el contexto universitario, y concretamente en los estudiantes, ya que son los actores principales de su proceso de aprendizaje. El objetivo se centra en analizar las competencias en TIC (tecnológicas, pedagógicas y éticas) de estudiantes universitarios del ámbito de la Educación y su relación con las Estrategias de Aprendizaje. Además, se tienen en cuenta en el planteamiento desarrollado determinadas variables personales y contextuales claves. La población de referencia la constituyen los estudiantes universitarios de titulaciones pertenecientes al ámbito de la Educación de la Universidad de Valencia. La información se ha recogido a través de cuestionarios. Se ha demostrado que existe una influencia de las Estrategias de Aprendizaje del estudiante en su competencia respecto a las TIC (tanto tecnológicas como pedagógicas y éticas), muy especialmente las relacionadas con el procesamiento de la información. Los resultados obtenidos nos permiten ahondar en la relación entre las competencias en TIC y las estrategias de aprendizaje que los estudiantes ponen en marcha en los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje y la influencias de las variables personales y contextuales clave.This study corresponds with the university environment context, and specifically with the educational environment of the students, since they are the main protagonists in their learning process. The aim is to analyze the ICT competences (technological, educational and ethical) of University students in the field of education and their corresponding relationship with appropriate learning strategies. In addition, several significant personal and contextual variables are taken into account in the developed approach applied. The reference population of the study is represented by undergraduate students within the educational environment scope at the University of Valencia. The suited information has been collected through questionnaires. The study has shown that, regarding the ICT competences (technological, pedagogical and ethical), there is a corresponding influence found within the learning strategies of the students, especially within those related to the processing of information. The results obtained by this study have allowed for an in depth analysis of the relationship between the ICT competences and learning strategies that students activate in the teaching-learning process; moreover, allowing for the obtainment of valuable insight about factors which influence relative personal and contextual variables

The net generation and digital natives: implications for higher education

Executive Summary "Our students have changed radically. Today�s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." (Prensky 2001 p1) 1. There is no evidence that there is a single new generation of young students entering Higher Education and the terms Net Generation and Digital Native do not capture the processes of change that are taking place. 2. The complex changes that are taking place in the student body have an age related component that is most obvious with the newest waves of technology. Prominent amongst these are the uses made of social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), uploading and manipulation of multimedia (e.g. YouTube) and the use of handheld devices to access the mobile Internet. 3. Demographic factors interact with age to pattern students� responses to new technologies. The most important of these are gender, mode of study (distance or place-based) and the international or home status of the student. 4. The gap between students and their teachers is not fixed, nor is the gulf so large that it cannot be bridged. In many ways the relationship is determined by the requirements teachers place upon their students to make use of new technologies and the way teachers integrate new technologies in their courses. There is little evidence that students enter university with demands for new technologies that teachers and universities cannot meet. 5. Students persistently report that they prefer moderate use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in their courses. Care should be taken with this finding because the interpretation of what is �moderate� use of ICT may be changing as a range of new technologies take off and become embedded in social life and universities. 6. Universities should be confident in the provision of what might seem to be basic services. Students appreciate and make use of the foundational infrastructure for learning, even where this is often criticised as being an out of date and unimaginative use of new technology. Virtual Learning Environments (Learning or Course Management Systems) are used widely and seem to be well regarded. The provision by university libraries of online services, including the provision of online e-journals and e-books, are also positively received. 7. Students do not naturally make extensive use of many of the most discussed new technologies such as Blogs, Wikis and 3D Virtual Worlds. The use of 3D Virtual Worlds is notably low amongst students. The use of Wikis and Blogs is relatively low overall, but use does vary between different contexts, including national and regional contexts. Students who are required to use these technologies in their courses are unlikely to reject them and low use does not imply that they are inappropriate for educational use. The key point being made is that there is not a natural demand amongst students that teaching staff and universities should feel obliged to satisfy. 8. There is no obvious or consistent demand from students for changes to pedagogy at university (e.g. demands for team and group working). There may be good reasons why teachers and universities wish to revise their approaches to teaching and learning, or may wish to introduce new ways of working. Students will respond positively to changes in teaching and learning strategies that are well conceived, well explained and properly embedded in courses and degree programmes. However there is no evidence of a pent-up demand amongst students for changes in pedagogy or of a demand for greater collaboration. 9. There is no evidence of a consistent demand from students for the provision of highly individualised or personal university services. The development of university infrastructures, such as new kinds of learning environments (for example Personal Learning Environments) should be choices about the kinds of provision that the university wishes to make and not a response to general statements about what a new generation of students are demanding. 10. Advice derived from generational arguments should not be used by government and government agencies to promote changes in university structure designed to accommodate a Net Generation of Digital Natives. The evidence indicates that young students do not form a generational cohort and they do not express consistent or generationally organised demands. A key finding of this review is that political choices should be made explicit and not disguised by arguments about generational change

Epistemic Beliefs and Googling

With the introduction of internet as a source of information, parents have observed youngsters’ tendency to prefer internet as a source, and almost a reluctance to learn in advance since “you can look it up when needed”. Questions arise, such as ‘Are these phenomena symptoms of changing beliefs about knowledge and learning? Is it at all possible to learn on a deeper level simply by looking up the basic facts, without memorizing them?’Within an existing line of investigation, epistemic beliefs have been described as a set of dimensions. Although internet-based information and internet as a source of information have been acknowledged, studies so far have not explored how dealing with internet-based information relates to other epistemic beliefs dimensions.To capture how users view internet-based information per se but also in relation to other epistemic beliefs, I suggest three new dimensions, out of which the most crucial is labelled ‘Internet reliance’. Offloading memory using memory aids is not a new phenomenon but the ‘Internet reliance’ dimension indicates that especially internet-reliant users may be confusing external information with personal knowledge, with all the risks it may entail.Besides including beliefs about learning, this study also challenges earlier assumptions regarding uncorrelated dimensions