Kate is an experienced musician and teacher and has been teaching piano for the last 15 years. She loves to share her passion for music with others and has many students from children as young as four through to adults, conducting several hours of lessons every week.
Kate understands that the adoption of new technologies helps the teaching process between her and her students, and is always open to trying new ways to support her pupils’ practice. She also knows that remembering what was covered in a lesson can be hard for some of her pupils, especially the younger ones, and after hearing about the Aroundsound app, she figured that sound recording lessons would be a great addition to the suite of learning approaches she uses.
Kate uses the Aroundsound app to record lessons and share them with her pupils (or their parents, for the younger ones). This really helps enhance the practice as the pupils can play back the lesson and reflect on the teaching from that lesson, or listen back to how a piece should be played, and reinforce what they have been taught.
Some pupils have used the app to record their home practice and share this with Kate so she can hear how they are getting on between lessons. Kate can even leave comments on the practice shared, giving extra tips between lessons to the students and enhancing their playing.
For pupils of a young age, the recordings are particularly useful, because they can be shared directly with the parent and listened to together at home, to jog the child’s memory of what the lesson contained. It’s wonderful for the parent to hear the lesson and listen back with the child in their own time in a relaxed manner, and for less musical parents, an essential tool to supporting practice!
Kate appreciates that Aroundsound isn’t intrusive during the lesson; she is able to use it without the pupil being self-conscious as it is only the sound being recorded. She doesn’t have to hold the device to record the lesson, simply presses the record button, and pops her phone near the piano. Afterwards can add the recording into a collection for the pupil and share easily with the student and even their parents. Once the collection has been shared there is no need for Kate to share each lesson she just adds the recording of each lesson into the collection for the pupil to listen to at home.
Kate also thinks that “recording lessons and listening back is something us teachers should do more often. Private individual tuition is isolated and other teaching settings allow opportunities for regular assessment, evaluation and reflection. The recordings are useful for my ongoing pedagogical reflection and evaluation so that I can make sure the students get the best of me too.”
If you’re a music teacher, it’s really easy to get started using Aroundsound to support your lessons. Aroundsound is free to use for early users, so get started now without paying a thing. Just download Aroundsound here for iPhone or download Aroundsound here for Android. You can easily set up collections for all your pupils, and add any recordings there, then invite pupils and parents to join as members. The don’t need to have the app to listen, but if they do they can comment on collections and be notified any time you add a new recording.
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