Imagining the Integration of Technology in the Orff Classroom

By Sue Snyder

The phone was ringing as I arrived home one recent Sunday evening.  A young man on the other end of the line was asking my thoughts about a research paper focusing on technology in an Orff classroom.  He had found my website, and thought I might have some ideas that would broaden his perspective.  (My recent appointment as educational consultant to the Ready to Learn Partnership evaluation team, awarded a Ready to Learn Media grant from the US Department of Education, has me thinking about appropriate use of technology and media these days.)  As we engaged in a lively dialogue, I jotted notes down on a piece of scrap paper, and those notes will now become our guide to this topic.

First, let’s define technology – that ubiquitous set of “stuff” that has infiltrated our lives and those of our students so deeply in recent years, and is not going away.  We will use the definition, for our pupose, of technology as “the group of electronic or digital products and systems through which ideas are recorded, manipulated, transmitted, and/or communicated.”

At first thought, the elemental, interactive, and communal nature of Orff-Schulwerk seems to put it at odds with technology – an antithesis, an opposite pole.  Where could the data-driven character of technology possibly fit?  Oh, sure, the teacher can use technology for record keeping, grading, keeping track of who had a turn, and how well each student did based on some criteria.  Technology is perfect for those time-consuming and messy administrative tasks.  A grade book is functionally the same as any other database or set of records.  But this usage begs a question that emerged long before current technology became ubiquitous:  Is it the teacher or the student who manipulates the tools, and who should it be, and why?  Is the tool being used for learning, or simply to record the results of learning?

Orff teachers generally have imagination and flexibility, so perhaps those characteristics can be applied as we consider technology as a delivery system for the understandings and skills we intend for our students to discover.  Are we clever enough to imagine ways in which technology will free and challenge our students, rather than limiting?  When and where in our lessons does use of technology make the most sense? 

If learning is a process journey to a destination goal, then technology can provide some of the vehicles we utilize to take the journey: visual, aural, and/or kinesthetic opportunities to learn. 

Stimulus
Often in an Orff classroom we start with some stimulus through which students experience the concept or skill we intend to teach – an art print, a piece of music (vocal or instrumental), a pattern or group of patterns (rhythmic, melodic, movement, and so on), a story.  Any of these could be presented through technology rather than by a live teacher doing whole class instruction.  The teacher could prepare a series of centers where students went and completed a task designed to provide the first experience in a sequence of lessons. 

1. Working from part to whole, the tech experience might be echo clapping or other imitation of patterns provided digitally from the teacher or some other leader (The principal?  A favorite other teacher?  The town mayor?  A popular and coordinated peer?)  This echoing might provide the building blocks for a composition, or motifs that later represent characters, or become signals in a game that provide entry into magic kingdoms, open doors, and fix musical mistakes.  Students who are ready can elaborate or improvise answers rather than imitating exactly, without annoying the entire group.
2. Working from whole to part, technology could provide a listening map to a listening selection which will eventually provide the form, melodic or rhythmic elements, or other elements for creating and/or performing.  As in Kay Greenhaw’s Magic Maps or The Nutcracker Experience, the map becomes an animated movie that tracks the visual representation of sound.  Or perhaps there is an art print with horizontal layers that can be imagined in sound for later exploration.  Or a movie of a setting such as The Secret Garden growing, with the sound turned off – great for imagining sound and movement.
3. The simplest and most elegant use of technology, perhaps, is the presentation of a song, played from a CD, perhaps with a visual display or the autography (notation) for students to follow.  There might be an accompaniment track that encourages students to sing along, then sing alone.  Perhaps the text will be highlighted as it is heard.

So with a bit of imagination, we can see that technology might provide a motivating or novel starting point for exploration.

Brainstorming
Once the stimulus has been experienced and the desired elements identified, our next step in the process is usually to mess with the stuff somehow – combining and recombining in a multitude of ways – avoiding the hurried judgment in deference to divergent thinking, the generation of many ideas.  This opportunity to elaborate is at the center of creative thought, leading to increased fluency and flexibility.  Can technology help students brainstorm? 

1. Text messaging is one way to have students communicate with one another while practicing their writing skills, requiring clear written communication for understanding.  They would need to use vocabulary, which might lead to a word wall where they could find correct spelling and generate ideas.  When a good idea is reached, it can be recorded on a computer.  With several computers available, the pair or group can read ideas posted by others and respond to those as well.  All the ideas can be collated onto one file page or a series of PowerPoint slides, and then  presented using a data projector for discussion and further elaboration.  This skill of critical thinking and decision making is a powerful skill, not only for music, but also for life.

Divergent thinking eventually leads to convergent winnowing of the best ideas, and finally to one or more choices.  Perhaps three great ideas are selected, or synthesized by combining several OK ideas.  Then students might choose one of these ideas to work on.
Undoubtedly, there will be skills the students will require in order to accomplish the tasks they have chosen.

Building Skills
Can technology help students build skills?  Let’s say that there are several rhythms the students are going to use as building blocks to create a melody on Orff instruments using the e minor pentatonic scale.

1. A PowerPoint presentation with embedded sound clips could guide student through a series of activities that help them identify and build the e-minor scale, practice reading rhythms or pitches, play patterns using their rhythmic building blocks, help them combine patterns in their own ways and write them down, then create their own melodies.  The PowerPoint could also guide them to learn two different bordun accompaniment patterns and choose the one that best suits their melody.  Or perhaps they will consider the expressive elements, choosing dynamics, tempo, style, and so on.
2. To create a story using patterns as motifs, a program might be created where students can drag and drop characters and paired motifs into boxes that allow them to create a story sequence.  They can write in the narration as text, and then choose and practice motifs for the characters.  Through practice, each group member has the opportunity to narrate and to play each character’s motif multiple times.
3. For an Orff orchestration, my long-time friend and colleague Marilyn Davidson has become a master at teaching orchestrations through PowerPoint presentations that embed sound.  Computers today so easily record voices or instruments, although a noisy classroom would make this more difficult, and you might find some students wanting to use the room at more quiet times.  These PowerPoint presentations allow students to see, hear, and practice the patterns using correct technique.  They can challenge the most able, and provide simplified patterns for struggling students.  Everyone can choose her/his level of comfort or challenge.
4. To learn a song and/or dance, Mary Goetze’s Global Voices provide a lovely model of what technology can deliver.  Students may choose to learn the text, sing the song, learn the dance, find out more about the culture, or visit with the person who introduces the piece.
5. Another choice would be to create the soundtrack for a film.  Just imagine an Orff accompaniment for that garden growing, leaves emerging, buds blooming, colors emerging.  What sounds would your students choose?  And what skills would they then need?

Creating and Performing a Product
While the end goal is really the learning gained as a result of the process, one of the hallmarks of the Orff process is usually a product of some kind that is performed for a real audience, such as classmates, another class, a concert for faculty or parents. 

1. When that product is performed, video and playback technology, whether analog or digital, will allow students to assess their own performance and determine what they have gained from the experience, and where they need to work next.  And off you go again!

Technology can fit into any step in the process, and is not necessary at all steps.  A good teacher mixes it up, and uses many strategies to keep things interesting.  Still, as we brainstormed these ideas over the phone, we realized that technology would allow the students to be responsible for their own learning, and remove the teacher from that sometimes awkward place between the students and subject matter.  We thought technology would facilitate creative thinking and minimize the type of teaching that is more drill than creative work.  As we travel ever deeper into the technological age, we surely can use our abundant, collective creativity to put technology in the hands of children in the Orff classroom.

In the end, two very important technologies are the ones that brought us two into dialogue:  the search engine and websites of the Internet that allowed this teacher from far away to find me, and the humble but ever so useful telephone.  These media that allow us to converse so freely with colleagues who share out passion for children, learning, music, and movement would be case enough for linking Orff and technology, should all the other suggestions fail to convince.