Technological Rythms: Use of Robotic Applications in Music Education

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to determine teachers’ views about the usage of robots developed with different robotic kits -like Arduino, Lego Mindstorm EV 3-NXT, and enable playing music in music education, which course objective could be taught with these robots
and what kind of co-ordination should do between computer and music teacher to disseminate the use of robots in a classroom. This study was designed with the exploratory sequential mixed method and while quantitative data was collected with the questionnaire, qualitative data was collected with interviews. Ten music teacher and ten computer teacher participated in the study. While data obtained from interviews were analyzed with In vivo Coding, questionnaire data was subjected to frequency analysis. Results show that the greater part of teachers has the opinion that robots could use in music class and could adapt to some course objectives. Besides, they think that robots could make music lesson more entertaining, get students going and make students more successful. But, they also added that if robots are used in a classroom, firstly classroom infrastructures must be improved and teacher must have technical and pedagogical knowledge. In addition to these, teachers emphasized that cooperation between music and computer teachers could accelerate the process.