The iPad in Music Education

Brenda S. Scott, Adjunct Assistant Professor and Curator of the Duke University Musical Instrument Collection, Department of Music

Project Description:

During the Fall semester of 2010, Brenda Neece-Scott, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Music, explored how the iPad can be used by musicians and faculty teaching music.  Joining her in the exploration were Duke’s music librarian, Laura Williams.

Scott designed a Spring course that will use the iPad.  Williams explored useful apps to share with faculty and TAs in the department.  Some of the types of activities they explored included the use of the iPad for annotating scores, apps and iPad content that demonstrate or allow students to explore musical concepts or history, and how the iPad’s recording function might be used with students.

forscoreBrenda prepared playlists in iTunes that students can use to purchase listening examples for her course.  She also tried readings for her course in different formats including iBook, Kindle and Kobo.  For course activities, she explored several applications – ForScore for annotating music scores; Tempo and Cleartune, an iPad based metronome and tuner.  In addition, Scott looked at 3D Gallery Lite for use in student presentations and productivity apps such as Adobe Photoshop Express, SugarSync for sharing files and Moodboard Pro for brainstorming and notetaking.  Laura looked at similar apps, along with apps for the Naxos music library and Alexander Street Press‘s streaming music collection.

Project start date: September 2010
Funding awarded: iPad loaners