Web 2.0 with Alert Support for Busy Parents in Suzuki Method of Children Music Teaching

1. Web 2.0 with Alert Support for Busy Parents in Suzuki Method of Children Music Teaching

2. Introduction • Suzuki method for children learning musical instruments • well received and practised worldwide • developed and expanded for various kinds of instruments • Key requirements • Parental involvement and learning environment • Become obstacle for busy parents in metropolises • Solution: • Web 2.0 with Alert Support for Suzuki method Platform (WASSAP) • provides a virtual musical environment for teachers, students, parents • Alert Management System (AMS) to facilitate their communications • Enabling ICT infrastructure: high computing penetration, high-bandwidth broadband and wireless infrastructure.

3. Philosophy of Suzuki method • All children have potential to become musical • Applying “Mother tongue” method to children’s music learning. • Environment rather than genetics will determine the success and failure of students.

4. Curriculum of Suzuki Method • Careful and sequential planning of curriculum • Breaking each new skill into the smallest possible steps • Avoiding dry technical exercises • New technical skills and musical concepts introduced and disguised with the context of familiar musical pieces • Interesting and attractive to the children and their families. • Motivation for learning comes from the desire to learn new pieces in the repertoire.

5. Technical concepts of Suzuki method • Begin lessons early • Suzuki Triangle: strong partnership among student, teacher, and parent • Daily listening to recordings • Learning by ear before reading music notations • Like learning mother-tongue • One-point learning - focus on only 1 technique at a time • Individual lessons at each child’s own pace • Use group classes to review the materials presented in the private lesson and to introduce the skill of playing together.

6. Parent’s role suggested by Suzuki • To cooperate with the music instructors • Give positive encouragement to their children • Attend child’s lesson • Learn to play the instrument even before the child • understand what the child is expected to do. • Foster the musical environment by attending concerts and playing recordings at home

7. Review of the role of parents in children’s music learning in Hong Kong • Observation based on the authors’ experience • teaching music in school • instrumental tutor • conversation with parents. • Little involvement of parents in their children’s learning. • Parents are busy and exhausted with their daily job. • Over-relying on household helpers • Education level of parents.

8. Specific problems of parent involvement • To cooperate with the music instructors • Parents have inadequate knowledge and motivation • No time to attend lessons due to long working hours and trips • Give positive encouragement to their children • Seldom – because of Chinese culture • Parents don’t know how to appraise their children’s performance • Learn to play the instrument to understand what the child is expected to do • No time, inadequate educational background • Foster the musical environment by attending concerts and playing recordings at home • Not so often, too much other entertainments • Short-sighted motivation • Just for greater opportunity to be admitted to a better school

9. System Architecture Laptop PDA Desktop Mobile XSLT Processor Web Portal Parents Teachers Students Administrators Public Content Services, e.g., Youtube, Facebook, … Web / mobile Internet Access Alert Content Mgr Curriculum Mgr Event Mgr Session Mgr Forum Mgr Messaging Mgr User Mgr Configuration Mgr … Alert Alert Input Management System Triggered Action Application Logic Web 2.0 with Alert Support for Suzuki Approach Platform User & Curriculum Database Content Database

10. Main Entities and Relationships

11. Parent Assistance Offered Communicating and cooperating with music instructors • Understand children’s progress and performance in lessons • Forums • event announcement • provide assistance • Messaging • teacher’s comments starts conversation • Response from parents or even children • progress monitoring • Increase parental involvement in their children’s learning progress

12. Parent Assistance Offered (2) Increase parental involvement • AMS alert the parents of the start of lessons and other related events • Maintain an open, warm, and supportive atmosphere via messaging for busy parents • Video conferencing to support interactions of remote parents with teaching sessions • Recording of the sessions for parents' review. • Sharing music media with their children • Teachers share their own recording clips • Teachers prescribe media for their daily listening and practice • Facilitate parents to practice music with children at home

13. Parent Assistance Offered (3) Fostering a virtual musical environment • Organizing various kinds of events and activities • Web activities now often considered as entertainment • Share appropriate concert video clips • Virtual music competition • Discussions among teachers, parents, and older students • enhances the motivation among the children • sharing challenges with peers • Old students as mentors • Notification of events and important messages can be adequately supported by our AMS

14. Conclusions • Key to Suzuki’s method: parental involvement and learning environment • Our platform helps busy parents and creates e-learning environment • Contemporary Web 2.0 and ICT facilitates collaboration:music sharing, recording, messaging, discussions, … • Provides fundamental support for (e-)curriculum design and execution • AMS further helps event notifications • Help busy mobile people in learning participation, overcoming much restrictions of time and space.

15. Future Work • Carry out these remedies in our professional practices • Performance evaluation and process improvement • Comparative field study • Further development of the ontology for clinical processes. • Application of ontology and other social networking technologies (e.g., reputation system) for this purpose.

16. Question and Answer Thank you! Contact: dicksonchiu@ieee.org