Artificial Intelligence in the classroom, whether you are a fan or not, is here to stay! Now is the time to embrace how it can be used as a teaching tool in the music classroom. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly advancing technology with applications in all areas, including education. It has the potential to revolutionize how students learn music and compose their own pieces. AI in the classroom can be used several ways from helping to improve student writing in music by providing feedback, speeding up the research process, as well as helping students craft and write meaningful classroom presentations. In this blog post, we will explore five ways that AI can be used to help students in the music classroom.
The 5 ways to use artificial intelligence in the classroom are:
- As a tool for improving writing about music – from a paragraph to an essay.
- As a way to quickly research a topic for a class presentation or assessment
- As a planning tool for writing the script for a classroom presentation or assessment
- As a way to provide feedback on a piece of extended writing.
- As a lyric writing tool for creating a song
Using AI in the Classroom to Improve Student Writing
Music educators and teachers are beginning to explore the potential of integrating artificial intelligence into music teaching. AI capabilities offer music educators new ways to assess and enhance student writing skills. For example, AI can detect mistakes in the written word, providing valuable and timely feedback to music students. In addition, AI can be used to provide targeted instruction that takes into account a student’s needs and abilities when it comes to writing about music. This could lead to an increased capacity for music teachers to improve their student’s overall writing proficiency.
One of the best ways to use artificial intelligence in the classroom, is not for the music student, but for you as the music teacher. Students learn best when they have an example to use when they are constructing their own writing about a topic. AI can help you to quickly generate a number of written samples for your music students. You can then use those samples as a basis for discussion about what is good or bad about each sample. This discussion will be invaluable to your students as they will be able to see exactly what is expected of them. And one the best things about AI is that you can use it to generate simple sentences, paragraphs or even whole essays!
Of course, there are all the “apps” and tools out there for students to use, that have been around for quite some time. Tools or extensions like Grammarly, WordTune and even auto-correct aid the student in simple ways to make sure that their writing is free of simple errors.
Using AI in the Classroom as a Research Tool
Another simple way that AI can be used in the classroom is through research of a topic. To make this more effective, you will need to show your music students how to write a “prompt” or “command” to get the best results. This is just like when we all had to learn how to best “search” for something in Google! You need to be specific to get the information that you need.
One of the best ways to get the information that you and your music students need is to use good questioning techniques. If you only need a simple answer, then use simple questions, but if you want a more in-depth answer, you need a better question!
Using Blooms Taxonomy will help your students to construct a good question to hopefully get the answer and research that they need quickly. For example, if your students want to know something about Classical Music, then they need to really think about what do they exactly want to know? A search prompt in AI such as “what is classical music”, will only get a surface level response. However, if they use a question like “what has been the impact of classical music on the development of the orchestra”, well then, the answer and AI generated research will be very different!
Please note that there are lots of limitations to the types of AI research that can be provided. As of the time of writing this blog post, AI is using data collected up until 2021. This means that the most recent information and research that a student might need does not exist in the “system”! You will also need to show your students how to check the accuracy of the information that AI gives them. When Google recently tested their own version of AI – BARD – the very public demonstration yielded incorrect results making the Google shares to take a dive on the stock market!
Using AI in the Classroom for Classroom Presentations and Assessments
Using artificial intelligence in the classroom as part of the presentation and assessment process can be another way to use this technology to both you and your students’ advantage. See the following steps that AI could potentially be used to complete a music assessment for a speech or extended piece of writing.
- Decide on the topic to be researched and presented
- Create a set of questions to use in the research process using AI
- Use AI to research all the questions and keep a record in a document
- Student critically analyses and checks the information, makes judgments about which research can or cannot be used in the presentation
- Write the presentation/speech
- Use AI to check for mistakes using tools that are available such as Grammarly, WordTune or even just auto-correct
- Student could use AI to check for feedback using the rubric provided for the assessment.
- Student makes any adjustments as required
- Student submits assessment
This is of course a very simplified set of steps for how a student could use AI in their research and presentation of an assessment. Personally, I would ask my students to keep all drafts and information that they collect in an assessment diary and then ask them to annotate the research justifying why they chose to keep some parts and discard others. Your students could even use digital avatars to record and present their work!
Using AI in the Classroom to Provide Feedback
As a music teacher, you know the importance of timely feedback with your students. You know that providing feedback is an essential part of music teaching. Now, with the emergence of artificial intelligence in the classroom, music teachers can find new ways to provide real-time feedback to their students. AI-powered technology can help music educators assess each student’s performance and accurately provide meaningful feedback that they can use to improve their techniques. With the ability to gain insights into a student’s performance, music teachers can better understand individual learning styles and tailor their instruction accordingly. This technology provides powerful possibilities for music education and allows music teachers to reach new levels of engagement with their students.
For a long time now, a lot of music making has been “gamified”, remember using the WII and Rock Band or Sing Star? Both of those games gave the player immediate feedback on how they were progressing in the song. There are so many apps out there for music students, especially piano and keyboard players where they can get immediate feedback on how correctly they are performing a piece of music. These apps or games give feedback on correct timing and pitch, and the music student can quickly and easily try again to master the song.
Another way that AI can be used to provide feedback in a timely manner is by having the student submit their writing into an AI tool. These tools can “improve” sentences, grammar, spelling, paragraphs and even a whole essay. Students can quickly use these tools to correct and improve their writing before submission to the teacher. It is advisable to show your students how to do this by using the marking guidelines that are provided in the assessment.
Using AI to Write Song Lyrics
The last, and most fun way to use artificial intelligence in the classroom is to have it write song lyrics! A lot of students struggle to write lyrics to a song, but with AI, this stumbling block is easily removed.
A word of warning, to get the best out of AI as a song lyric writing tool, it is best to give it explicit instructions as a guide. For example, if you are creating a 12 Bar Blues composition with your class, then make sure that you add that into your “command” or prompt.
Below is an example of a command and the result that I used to try this out!
Command – create song lyrics about going to school on a bus in the 12 bar blues format
Result or Output –
Verse 1:
I’m riding the bus to school, on a sunny day
Gonna learn something new and it won’t be so bad
Listen to the engine rumbling as we drive along
The teacher’s waiting, I can hear his song
Chorus:
Bluesy beat of the bus come to carry us away
To school we go, for another fun filled day
Passing by the houses and all the trees outside
Gonna learn something new with a smile on my face inside
Verse 2:
My friends and me, we take the same bus every day
We laugh and joke, but it’s still so hard to stay awake
The ride is bumpy but the morning sun helps us see
Sitting on the bus, as our destination comes closer to me.
Chorus:
Bluesy beat of the bus come to carry us away
To school we go, for another fun filled day
Passing by the houses and all the trees outside
Gonna learn something new with a smile on my face inside.
Verse 3:
The windows give us a view of where we are headed
Glistening through the glass like an artist painted them red
The driver steers us through the town without any sound
From one world to another as everything around us gets more profound.
Chorus:
Bluesy beat of the bus come to carry us away
To school we go, for another fun filled day
Passing by the houses and all the trees outside
Gonna learn something new with a smile on my face inside.
Is it perfect? No. But could this be used as a teaching tool to construct a class composition and performance using these lyrics – most definitely!
As technology continues to evolve, music educators will have access to more powerful tools than ever before when it comes to teaching writing skills in music classes. From providing immediate feedback on assignments to creating unique song lyrics with ease, there are many ways you can leverage Artificial Intelligence in the classroom using this technology in your music classroom today! By using these innovative tools, you can give your music students the best possible chance at becoming great writers by providing them with personalized instruction and opportunities for creative exploration!
Until next time
Happy teaching
Julia from Jooya