MusicFirst Aims for Complete Online Music Teaching Solution

Despite steps forward by standards such as Teoria and MusicTheory.net, theory and notation instruction software has yet to catch up to the types of software and services that would let music teachers take full advantage of 1-to-1 and BYOD teaching environments. MusicFirst is a new company with several familiar faces aiming to capture the blended learning music market, although it is still a work in progress. I had an opportunity this summer to see some of the features of MusicFirst in action, and hear their goals moving forward.

 

MusicFirst comes from noted Music Ed Technologist James Frankel. As Frankel described at a special interest session at ISTE this summer, he originally started with needing a web-based content package for music which would allow recording and distributing audio along with access to sheet music selections. The absence of a robust web-based recording platform is a major weakness in music classrooms trying to move to a 1-to-1 environment, and even app-based solutions such as GarageBand or TwistedWave on the iPad are a bit clunky for most music class needs. The recording and playback engine in MusicFirst appears to be much more satisfying for individuals recording and submitting practice examples, and will allow ensemble directors to really manage the process of collecting and reviewing those recordings. Anyone who has tried to manage that process through Audacity and Dropbox, for example, knows that there is much opportunity for a new tool here.

 

In these initial tools, MusicFirst resembles a true web-based competitor to SmartMusic– distribute sheet music, including access to method book libraries, and record practice examples. MusicFirst is seeking to build out a comprehensive platform, though, by including other features that represent history, theory and notation, including some you may recognize:

Other components round out what is clearly a package designed offer a wide range of music education resources. All of these are wrapped within a learning management system which offers the tools and features one would expect from any classroom LMS: assign activities, collect student submissions, grade/evaluate and return comments, and manage student data over time. Again, since this is all web-based (and is built on HTML 5), the entire package should be device-agnostic and work for a variety of school technology deployments.

 

Herein lies two key questions about MusicFirst. First, how successful will the web-based environment be? Musition and Auralia, for example, are still available only in their traditional desktop application settings. While data can be collected through the web portal, the program must be run within Windows or Macs, which would eliminate Chromebooks or iPad programs and force choral students to use laptops. If Musition and Auralia could be ported to a completely web-based package, it would represent a major step forward above currently available web-based theory and ear training software. Those familiar with these two programs know that there is little in the programs that couldn’t be rebuilt using HTML 5, so this seems like an easy problem to solve.

 

Second, and this question may be more fundamental to the nature of the product, do music teachers want a complete learning management system purely for music classes? This platform will clearly be most appealing to schools with some kind of 1-to-1 or BYOD environment. Those schools, though, largely have their own learning management systems such as Moodle, Canvas, Haiku or Schoology already in place. It has been my experience in the case of textbook publishers who offer their own assignment portal or LMS-lite that teachers find it awkward or burdensome to use a seperate environment for their classes while complying with school, department or district requirements to use their core LMS platform. In essence, they must use two duplicate systems and find shortcuts to connect the two. If MusicFirst can integrate Single Sign-On authentication with other LMS, employ a standard linking file that makes it easy to access individual assignments from an external website or LMS, or even deploy their individual tools as external packages in cooperation with the other LMS vendors, it would go a long way to avoiding some of the burden of early textbook web systems.

 

In the end, these may point to a different audience for early adoption of MusicFirst: youth choir programs, which often offer theory/ear training curriculum, but with a minimum of dedicated instructional time set aside. These programs could ensure that their young musicians have the appropriate technology to support the entire platform, and likely don’t have existing systems which MusicFirst would duplicate. 

 

MusicFirst has an impressive goal and is already offering tools which are major contributions to a technology-enhanced music teaching environment in the web-based recording platform. Monitoring their growth and how they manage the entire suite of tools they’re trying to integrate will show how useful the platform will be as a comprehensive teaching environment.