Metronomes and tuners used to be stand alone devices and now there are computers with these functions available, and I have seen the growth of tuners and metronomes on devices such as iPads, phones, and tablets. This makes the technology used for music making skills readily available. There is no need to go to a music store to buy a tuner. Instead, one could go on the iTunes app store and download an app, or if they didn't have a phone or iPad, they could go to a music store online and have it shipped directly to their door.
Technology is making education more readily available to the public. Where once you had to go to a library to borrow a book, one could go online and read it on their tablet, or purchase it. This use of technology has brought the information closer within our reach. Now one could argue that technology in that sense has made the human race lazy, but that is another topic for a different time.
"For teachers to effectively integrate technology into teaching and learning, they would have to have knowledge of technology. (Bauer 35)" This statement is completely true in the sense that as a teacher, I would need to know what technology I want to utilize before I use it. I cannot go into class blind about the materials I wish to utilize. Dry-erase boards used to be a new technology that replaced the traditional chalkboard. Unlike computers which are unstable (Koehler and Mishra 2008) in the fact that they change frequently, whiteboards (dry-erase boards) don't need a lot of introduction on how to use them. All you need is a general knowledge of how to work a marker and eraser. Computers on the other hand require a deeper knowledge of the technology.
Computers in the classroom open up the range of tasks a student and teacher can perform. One of the most basic tasks is the use of the internet to do research on a topic. Since the internet is open to different authors, one must be able to differentiate between reliable information and unreliable. This is the type of skill teachers need to know first before they use it in the classroom. Otherwise, teachers might send a student to Wikipedia to do research on Civil War era fashion and the information might find the page is more geared towards the military uniforms versus the entire style.
That is why a teacher must have knowledge of the technology in addition to content knowledge. This use of Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge or TPACK is essential to optimal integration of technology into the music classroom. A teacher must have the content knowledge that is similar to a person who majored in that subject but is not teaching (Bauer 39). In addition to this, a teacher must have the pedagogical knowledge of how to teach based on the development of the students. All together, a teacher must have the knowledge of the use of technology and how it can be used in the classroom. For a teacher to be successful in integrating technology, that teacher must have TPACK as well as content knowledge.
In music, you must be able to know what intonation is, how it is used and developed in the process of making music, how to measure it, and how to utilize a tuner to complete the measurement of the intonation. All of this process is simplified into "here's a tuner, use it to get in tune." But, a music teacher must teach their students the necessity of tuning. Beginning band doesn't necessarily teach tuning off the bat because the students need to develop the skills of instrument playing and aural skills first. Gradually, as the students become more advanced, the teacher integrates tuning into the lesson and process of playing. Then it becomes natural for a student to be listening for ensemble and individual tuning.
All in all, technology can be an important tool that is useful in the classroom. It is up to the teachers to know how to use and utilize into the curriculum effectively.
