Preparing for online music teaching during COVID-19

The World Health Origination issued new guideline to help protect children and schools from transmission of the COVID-19 virus this week. In the event of school closure, the measures include remote learning option such as online education etc.[1]So far as I know, nearly all universities and schools in China have remained shut for over one month now. Although the schools are shut, teaching continues online. Because of COVID-19, there are 290 million students out of school worldwide, something which is completely unprecedented the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation says.[2] As teachers, we have conflicting interests; we want our pupils, our families and ourselves to be safe (therefore less contact / lessons), yet we also want the pupils to be educated and us to maintain some income. It might be that everything is locked down and no one knows when this disaster will end. So perhaps this is an ideal time to prepare for teaching online. My son is a maths tutor and so he is in a similar situation; in investigating this we have found that there are some similarities in teaching maths and music theory online, but that teaching a pupil to play an instrument online presents its own unique challenges. Now, before any lockdown, is the ideal chance to start the online teaching, while we are still able to discuss the practicalities of online teaching while sitting with the pupil and often the pupil’s parent. It is also a good challenge to expand our current teaching capability after reading the Section 26.4.2 Online Community Music. “Online music-making has reflected the growing realisation that both music and community can be established in offline (in-person) as well as online communities.”[3] In another example, Educator Kruse (2013) also shared his experience of learning mandolin solely through online resources. Data sources included online instructional video observation, weekly practice logs, recorded practice sessions, personal journal entries and personal memos.[4] [5] In my limited experience of recent online tutoring, teaching piano remotely is manageable for adults and experienced learners about 8 years old above, but it’s challenging and particularly difficult for very young pupils, parent need to help out definitely; The technology for this form of tutoring is mainly HD camera, a microphone and speaker (or headphone). We set up a small desk beside my piano, with the camera positioned so that the pupil can see my face and my hands on the keyboard. The software could be Skype, Wechat, Facetime or WhatsApp. Using an iPad or a laptop are also ok. A few of my students are happy to carry on, some are still thinking. If you have large number of students, registering with agents, they provide booking and invoicing services, but students have to pay commission per session. Tutorful, takelesson.com provide such service. Some experienced teachers just like Kruse’s mandolin teacher have gone through a lot of hard work, prepared videos and printable materials, learners pay subscription or buy lessons, then can log on and study at any time. As a learner, I was very happy about my grade 8 music theory online course, studied on the train, walking on the treadmill. I also thought about doing some similar for my piano teaching but neither have time to do videos, nor have accumulated a lot of electronic teaching materials. There are also teachers organise their own online group chats. I really enjoyed some music history and harmony sessions before. If you can advertise yourself, Zoom, Wechat are popular for online classroom. About online music theory, several software packages are available, but one we like is BitPaper. This is quite easy to use and allows the tutor or pupil (or their parent) to upload documents (e.g. theory question) which both pupil and tutor can write on in real-time. We use a graphic tablet so writing is like with a pen but it is also possible to write with a mouse. At the end, BitPaper allows us to generate a PDF document of the session so all the work and notes are kept. If anyone else has other ideas or experience, please share. I hope we can carry on working through online classes during this difficult time.