I am always looking for ways to make it easier for my kids to use SmartMusic. I also believe that kids should be gently prodded to use this powerful tool whenever possible.
This week's problematic observation was that students only use SmartMusic if there was a SmartMusic assignment.
To help with that limited use idea, you could give out a huge number of assignments. But that makes tons of work for you evaluating the assignments.
We spent some time talking about what SmartMusic does for you. Talk about the support for rhythm and fingering SmartMusic supplies and mention that practicing something wrong repeatedly isn't helpful for learning. Don't forget to remind them it is more fun as well!
I also found a place to make the method book more prominent! Yes, "Method Books" is one of the choices in the left hand side "My Library" column. But there is also a way to make it show up as a big picture on the right side of the student home page. To do this go into your teacher home page and add your method book to your class and it will show up on the student's home page whenever they log in. A visual (and much bigger) hint. Hopefully, your kids will pick up on it.
You know, I bet the next million dollar idea is the electronic method book. Runs on your favorite pad like device. Then there is this little icon right next to the line that says "SmartMusic this?" With the near impending doom of paper printed texts, this pad may be the way we distribute what we tradtionally put on paper. Why not make SmartMusic more of a part of the text than the text part of SmartMusic?
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