Must Have Equipment & Software For Music Teachers
Teaching in the last year has really changed & here I want to talk about some of the best equipment we should use moving forward both during covid and after covid. There are a wide range of different software and equipment that can make teaching music so much easier both online and offline. Some of these are quite obvious and some aren’t so obvious. After speaking to a few teachers at musicteacher.com, here are some the different things that all teachers are using at the moment to help with their lessons.
One of the most popular video conferencing platforms that has risen to fame in 2020 and will continue to do so in 2021 is Zoom. After speaking to Josh at Singing Lessons Leeds, he let us know that without zoom he would've been out of a job. It’s been a key part in allowing music tuition to carry on throughout the year. Zoom allows teachers to call students and conduct music lessons via video chat. It even supports group lessons so if you were a teacher who relied on group lessons then this is the best way to keep them going. Overall I feel like this was the most useful tool for music teachers throughout 2020 and will continue to be throughout 2021. It’s also made many more students more open to trying online lessons because it’s the only way to keep up their tuition which has really pushed numbers of online classes being taken to the highest they’ve ever been.
The other platform that teachers have been using has been skype. This has been a platform that has been used for years for video conferencing and online music lessons and 2020/21 has been no exception. It’s still an important tool for both music teachers and students and can be downloaded for free.
For those who still teach face to face then providing a safe environment has been a difficulty. One of the things you should definitely invest in this year would be protective screens. This allows students and teachers to still be close to each other without the threat of spreading anything from one another. This has also been a great tool for singing teachers who, for obvious reasons cannot utilise masks during lessons. It allows students to project their voices properly without holding back or having to worry about consequences. Although singing students would benefit the most from this, many other types of teaching can also implement protective screens to make music teaching safer for all.
Wearing masks is something else that has become really important for teachers to be able to teach safely. For guitar teachers, Piano teachers, Bass teachers & many more this has been essential in keeping both teachers and students safe and for creating a safe learning environment. For singing teachers, wearing masks can be quite problematic and isn’t something that can be utilised. Along with masks, I’ve also found that many teachers are now providing hand sanitizer for students which again helps to provide a safe learning environment for everyone.
Whilst looking for useful software to help teaching online I came across the platform called Musico. Musico is a platform that allows students and teachers to share worksheets, videos and learning materials online both during lessons and after lessons. It’s a great tool for providing a top notch service for everyone involved in the learning process. Teachers can also leave lesson plans and practice plans online so students can learn from their teachers whilst at home. There is also a space for uploading videos of your practice and for teachers to upload files which all in all is a great tool for online learning which is the future of music teaching at this stage.
Overall, there are a wide range of tools we should be using for both convenience and for the safety of students and teachers. There are hundreds more we can and should be using but these are the ones that I felt were the most practical and most important for 2020 and 2021.