Questions arise- is screen time as effective as time with an experienced person talking in tones and nuance which acknowledge your child’s effort? Human (face to face, or zooming ‘live’) attributes vs algorithmic humanlike replies? Suzuki triangle: the parent or the teacher…
In our summer teaching institutes we hear about the “rain forest” prodigies who use you tube and other tech based teaching apps to learn excellent music with truly amazing success. If equitable access to learning is empirically good, why or why not not pursue screen supported apps that listen to your child at the keys?
It bears repeating that I think long and hard about children having age appropriate awareness of the intersection of tech in every aspect of our lives. Once they are completely capable of ‘turning off’ the spigot, (could this be when their homework load dictates it? Schooling on Zoom during the 2020 pandemic now begs this question from a new angle) that’s when a fruitful conversation about self directed access can begin. Not before. I don’t want to frighten a 5 year old. But I don’t want to encourage dopamine fueled screen addiction either. Since we adults have a hard time regulating time on smartphones, ipads and TVs, all the more reason to adjust exposure for young children.
If your student believes an ipad app has been developed to relieve the chore of a parent spending time at the keys — “Mom I don’t need you to sit and nag me anymore, I’ve got this cool app to keep up with reading assignments…” perhaps you’ve been dreading the pushback at working with your child on reading. Don’t cave in. Don’t worry if some extra time is spent on digital learning, but add it on top of your child’s regular assignments.
2024 UPDATE: Many accomplished musicians will organize and work from digital copies of repertoire. Digital pens allow note taking on a score upon on a tablet to reflect his or her personal work. As our students mature, some will begin keeping their music in digital form. I encourage students to keep curious, even when I’m discouraging lots of other screen time!
The philosophy of Ge Wang who is a Duke/Princeton trained Stanford professor is to keep acoustic music alive using digital very accessible tech. He invented the SMULE ocarina app which can be played with people globally.
About CCRMA Stanford. Center for Comupter Research in Music and Accoustics… a humble wonderful Cellist Madeline Huberth also visited Berkeley with Wang for an MSRI lecture. Imagine that your parental time invested in physically with your child is more valuable for the goal of becoming a confident musician than anything she will find out in the digital universe.
This is why I’m in music education via Suzuki - the parents’ role gives another quality to the early learning of piano music. Which after all, can be an ensemble instrument!