A World Apart or Same Difference? Reflections on Facilitating Online Global Creative Projects in Music Teacher Education

Drawing on participatory culture in media education (Jenkins 2006), collaborative co-construction of digital music projects using Green’s (2002, 2008) informal music learning pedagogy can contribute to the development of student voice (Spruce, 2015). Similarly, digital music technologies for creating provide a powerful means to support active, creative music making for students at all levels of prior musical experience (Kuhn & Hein, 2021).

This chapter shares reflections based on collaborative self-study research (Samaras, 2011) that we undertook as music teacher-educators. We examine our experiences of facilitating two iterations of a global online creative music and video creation project and share insights that others might draw on. We discuss the following: implementation guidelines, benefits and challenges of the projects, pedagogy and frameworks used: Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) and Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition (SAMR). We also unpack our choices in relation to the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that we chose, Soundtrap for Education.

We argue for greater attention in teacher education to build confidence and competence in using online digital collaborative tools. Our experiences suggest that facilitating real-world creating projects may make teacher education meaningful for all through nurturing creativity and collaborative experience using digital tools. Our research also highlighted the affordances of digital collaborative music technology tools to facilitate interdisciplinary real-world creating projects for students at all levels of education which can also make a potential contribution to sustainable development education more broadly.