The Convergence of Networked Technologies in Music Teaching and Learning
The convergence of the Internet and mobile phones with social networks – “networked technologies” – has been the subject of much recent debate. In this chapter, I consider what new media researchers have already discerned regarding networked technologies; most importantly, that more significant than any given technology is how we use it, the effect(s) its use has on us, and the relationships we form through it and with the technology. Music education researchers and practitioners have tended to focus on technology as a knowable “thing” – i.e. hardware and/or software with its “practical classroom applications” – and not the greater epistemological issues underlying its use. How will we engage musically in a meaningful way with a generation of students – “digital natives” – who have grown up technologically “tethered?” How will these different “ways of knowing” change music learning and teaching now and in the not-so-distant future?