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World Band: K-12 Music Education on the Net
Collaborative Learning Environments
David Reider
Scientist, Education Technologies
Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc
BBN Corporation
70 Fawcett St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-873-3795
dreider@bbn.com
World Band is a project focusing on bringing new methods to K-12 music education using Internet
and midi music technology. Both mediums have tremendous yet untapped pedagogical potential. Research
over the past two years has resulted in new learning modes and access to previously unattainable music
education concepts, especially in younger ages. The project involves member classes at geographically
disparate sites who use the Internet to trade musical compositions and fragments, eventually building full
works. By doing so, a new type of collaborative learning model evolves; students at very young ages with little
or no previous formal musical education begin to compose and most importantly, they examine the musical
process from an aural perspective rather than an intellectual or written one.
Advanced musical topics such as orchestration, form, and arrangement are studied by middle and
high school students regardless of performance abilities. The work has proven that far more students are
musically “aware,” that is, intuitively knowledgeable, than just those that have been classified “musically
literate” by traditional standards.
In a typical World Band scenario, a course that lasts a semester, exercises in the form of computer
midi files are sent to students and they are guided to re-work the pieces from the compositional level. They
examine elements of composition and form. Students study rhythm, bass lines, harmony, melodic shape, and
timbre within a completely wholesome environment that is non-intimidating and fosters experimentation. They
need only common computer editing skills and their ears. As many subject areas embrace creativity in the K-
12 years (language arts, painting, drama, etc.), musical composition is often excluded because of the technical
and theoretical knowledge base required by the traditional model of music education. The electronic
environment permits students to hear their works as they shape them both aurally and graphically. The
repertoire can be chosen by the leader (teacher), or students may work from scratch. By emphasizing
composition, the student gains creative ownership and insight, and inquiry into the “how” of music follows
naturally.
Students send “works-in-progress” to other connected sites, where their peers, or partners, collaborate
in building the piece. Different parts of each composition are created by different composers, while
relationships between students from different locations develop entirely through and within the medium of
musical discourse. Musical issues, as well as ethnic, cultural, and sociological develop. This approach serves as
the basis for building networked learning communities, where any subject matter may be taught
collaboratively.
The presentation will discuss and demonstrate current and past projects, including a live interactive
Internet concert that took place in May 1996 between students in Seoul, Korea and Stuttgart, Germany. Using
a new software tool Interplay, developed by BBN, students demonstrated the uses, both educationally and
musically, of such technology. Students performed synchronously with each other over the Internet
compositions they had collaboratively composed during the previous months.
World Band projects involve middle and high schools in seven states as well as sites in Germany,
Korea, Italy, and Japan. World Band has just begun a two year project with the Memphis City Schools where
elementary school students from 6 schools working with high school musicians will be using new electronic
music technology and the Web to study and produce a recording of blues music. World Band will enable them
to share their research and production with other sites as they develop the disc.