Published in: No. 32 of the EDUCATION 3.0 Magazine

At 550 meters from the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, ​​there is this center that for 25 years has been providing music education to students of all ages, levels, aptitudes, conditions and origins. For classes with a higher degree of difficulty, such as the reading of musical notes, those in charge considered necessary to integrate resources closer to the students' daily experience to motivate them and, in turn, increase their performance. Therefore, they decided to acquire five interactive Clevertouch Plus Lux monitors (distributed in Spain by Charmex).

"We counted on the advice of the Red Green Blue Audiovisual company and with the training of Charmex, with the aim of modernizing ourselves", explains Yolanda Mallofré, professor and coordinator of the school's musical and digital resources.

Previously, they used to visualize some resource, but with the monitors it is easier for the students to get involved in the contents, because they can interact directly with the touch screen and get more involved in the topics we are dealing with ", highlights Mallofré After one year of the implementation of these teams, the coordinator highlights that the interaction and participation of the students has increased.

Specifically, for sensitization and musical language, they have a piano game with which the students of Infant learn the notes. Similarly, they delve better into auditory dictation-where notes and rhythm are treated in a more technical way-with applications that work intervals by adding various instruments. This makes it easier for students to develop a sense of hearing and recognize different timbres. As the coordinator points out: "If they learn only with the piano, then differentiating the same notes in a trumpet or double bass is more difficult, Therefore, it is important to use different instruments."

In addition, the school has used multimedia material such as animations and videos to work with the musicogram (an active form of musical listening), which uses a visual representation of the work through different graphic symbols such as drawings or diagrams. "Also in the corals we use the monitors." Instead of having the songs on a sheet, we put it on the monitor and we get the students to be in a more straight position and focus on the intonation, "explains

Another advantage of these monitors is that they adapt to the classes and the programming of each teacher. In fact, students come to class with the expectation not only of what they will learn, but how they will be challenged, since it is possible to create a lesson and do the activities in different ways, either individually, in pairs or groups; later, the same activity can be changed to a greater difficulty ... which increases its involvement and motivation.

According to Mallofré, they use the monitors differently depending on the age of the students, for example, "with the youngest ones, from 1 to 4 years old, I used it as a kind of prize or incentive in the last 10 minutes, because I know that They like to touch and play with the older ones, it is on during the whole class because we read the books in PDF format or do different activities ".

Mallofré also highlights the ease of use of the equipment: "They are quite intuitive and if you know how to use a tablet or a mobile this is not very different, since it comes with integrated Android". Therefore, when the five teams arrived at school, the challenge for the 40 teachers was not to understand how to use them, but to find the programs and suitable applications that could work to reach their objectives.

Hence, teachers first investigate what games and activities could work best, as well as the monitors' functionalities, and then receive training from the Charmex team and be able to make a 'battery of advanced questions'.

Each Clevertouch monitor includes five licenses of Snowflake Multiteach software that allows teachers and students to develop interactive stories aligned with the curriculum, as well as providing a secure community for online and small group collaboration, as well as personalized, one-on-one instruction. "I have created several lessons and activities in Snowflake from my computer." One of my favorites is a roulette with all the names of the students, which I mean when I want them to explain to their homework. their hands to say that their name has not yet come out and want to participate, "says Mallofré.