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Jean-Paul Delon

Digital technology, a simple tool

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Digital technology and general pedagogy

I was fortunate enough to have a long career as a primary school teacher, then as an educational advisor, which enabled me to experience from the inside what I would call three digital revolutions, starting from the middle of the 1970s. In this paper, I would like to adopt a broad definition of digital technology, considering that all technological tools helping both teacher and student in the construction of knowledge and skills are currently an integral part of digital culture, whether the information is processed with 1 or 0, or through analogical methods.

So when I was studying at the École Normale in the middle of the 1970s, a lot of energy was deployed by our trainers to make us understand the importance of audiovisual media in our teaching: during our on-the-job training, we used to project slides to support the geography lesson on French rivers, we listened to commentaries on floppy disks, we switched on the school radio and we had the feeling of being at the heart of modern pedagogy.

Also, in the middle of the 1980s, the program Informatique pour Tous (information technology for everyone) was created to enable every child in France to use the T07 and the ‘nano-network’ in order to practice educational activities on a television screen, and to sharpen their sense of logic and deduction by managing, among other things, to program the movement of a small turtle on that very screen.

Finally, in the middle of the 1990s, public authorities (whether it was the Ministry of Education or regional authorities) acknowledged the necessity to equip schools with IT and provide them with an Internet connection.

We were at the beginning of what I might call a social and cultural vision of the use of digital technology, allowing children to have the necessary skills to get to grips with the new tools of society. It was at that time that all these skills were codified by the implementation in elementary schools, then in middle schools, of the Brevet Informatique et Internet (IT and Internet Certificate). This social and cultural vision was developed further with the implementation of the ‘espace numérique de travail, EN’ (digital work space) or the ‘tableau blanc interactif, TBI’ (interactive white board, recommended by the report of the first Fourgous mission in 2010). This commitment enabled many local politicians who had financed a TBI in each of the classrooms of their municipality to present a modernist profile, without further questioning of the new pedagogical approaches enabled by such a tool.

However, the social and cultural vision of the use of digital technology clashes with the ponderousness of the school system. It must be acknowledged that some students often possess, thanks to social or familial practices, a considerable head start in the use of digital technology, compared to those offered at school.

The fundamental question is that of the transformation of educational practices: how can the use of technologies (digital or not) prevent the illusion of modernity, when the educational model remains the same?

The reading of the works of former primary school teacher and Ministry of Education inspector, Pierre Frackowiak, brought some of my practices as a young teacher into question: in 1985, in the age of the program ‘IT for everyone’, I was happy to spend hours programming many series of exercises of mental arithmetic in Basic language that students were to solve on the screen, and I thought it was much more at the cutting edge of pedagogy than the use of the Lamartinière process, meaning chalk and raised slate.

In fact, my use of digital technology was not at all transforming an educational strategy organized in sequences typical of a teaching method directed towards transmission. This currently has a bright future: revisiting previously acquired knowledge, discovering a new notion with the help of examples and a kind of directed dialogue to give the illusion of discovery to the class, fixing through writing, practical exercises, assessment, or correction. I never ask myself the question that any educator should ask themselves: in the words of Pierre Frackowiak, how can digital technology – and its tremendous possibilities – guarantee progress throughout the learning process?

Of course some answers can be found in the use of digital technology serving what I would call an educational approach centered on the student, but now I would like to address this question in the field of pedagogy in musical education.

Digital technology and pedagogy of musical education

Digital technology in school: many avenues

The first element that should be noted is that the use of digital technology (in its broad definition) in musical education combines a range of extremely varied practices: the art of sounds fixed through recording, the editing and transformation of sound; live musical production with sound production systems, loopers and effects; the link between gestures and sound with control interfaces; and the intersection of the arts and interdisciplinarity. This list is far from exhaustive and practices are constantly evolving.

With this diversity in mind, I would like to focus on something, which, for me, is truly new, as well as being essential: the possibilities brought about by digital technology in the construction of a child’s relationship to time. All professionals of musical education know that it isn’t easy to lead students on the path of coding and the visual representation of a sound phenomenon and musical thought.

In this field, the advances in IT and digital technology are, in my opinion, real and concrete: for instance, thanks to audio digital sequencers, we have the possibility of visualizing (both in succession and simultaneously) the organization of sound events – something that was not possible twenty or thirty years ago.

Through trying to design the ‘Tempera’ tool when I worked at the Muséolab at the Erasmus Center, under the leadership of Yves Armel-Martin and Christophe Monnet, I became aware of the fact that many people were doing research on the question of the representation of the sound phenomenon. Among other things, Dominique Saint-Martin brought a lot of expertise to the possibilities provided by the Acousmographe, the newest software from the INA-GRM, which enables working with the visual representation of sound movements.

The second element that should be explored is the facilitating nature of practices using digital technology: an easy production of new sounds; sounds that we have never heard of; infinite possibilities of memorizing; invention thanks to abilities of détournement which artists are always known for; and more and more intuitive interfaces. However, a more detailed analysis quickly reveals the limits of such apparent ease: mastering a machine or an apparatus often requires instrumental learning as advanced as that of a traditional instrument. Moreover, in the field of musical production in the last fifty years, it has not always been easy to avoid such a trap. Two simple examples, taken from the artistic field, deserve some attention: the first is that of the facility with which digital technology generalized ‘copy and paste’ production, initiated by the practice of the locked groove followed by the loop of magnetic tape used by the forerunners of concrete music, then largely generalized with the invention of the sampler and its transposition to the computing tool. This possibility of duplicating sounds, which underlies many forms of artistic expression, is not enough in itself to guarantee the presence of real musical and artistic thought and can lead to a lack of rigor. The second example is that of the systematic use in recording studios for the last 15 years of software that corrects the intonation of the singing voice (Autotune, for instance). In the current production of mainstream music, the use of such a treatment of sounds seems completely accepted, which leads to a standardization of perfect intonation, provoking a massive rejection from more demanding artists.

Educational approaches associated with the use of digital technology in musical education

When I ask the crucial question again of the difference between a computer and the chalk and slate, I have to think about my responsibilities as an educational advisor in musical education, and later as a trainer in the CFMI, which led me to conduct or observe many situations in which digital technology was used in the practice of music in school. I can say that in the majority of my observations, the educational models used moved away from the traditional model of transmission that I previously described, perhaps in a slightly exaggerated manner. We could even say that the different approaches allowing children to practice music along with technology seem to easily adopt models enabling them to build their learning processes by themselves, and they could be characterized as follows:

- — specific attention to sensitive experience and orality;

- — frequent use of a project-based pedagogy;

- — the central role given to creative activities: we learn because we create but also with what is created;

- — a musical approach based on the pedagogy of listening;

- — the importance of working on the awareness of sound.

These educational models observed in situations where digital technology was used are very consistent with the values that the CFMI have defended for nearly thirty years and which have been recently summarized and published by the CFMI committee. Yet, it should be acknowledged that these models did not appear with the rise of digital technologies; rather they have their origins in the ideas of precursors like François Delalande and Guy Reibel at the beginning of the 1980s (as well as Colette Bertin who was at the heart of that research). We do not have to use digital technology in order to be inspired by these models; which does not mean nevertheless that we should stop ourselves from bringing our students in touch with the rewarding experiences that today’s artists are doing the spadework for.

Conclusion

In my opinion (and this will be the direction of my conclusion) the new educational paths provided by digital technology are to be found in other areas.

One of the major inputs of today’s pedagogy is the importance of the notion of ‘metacognition’ in the construction of knowledge and skills in children, meaning enabling a child to describe the process behind his/her thought, reasoning and choices, to compare other approaches, and enabling him/her to answer the simple question: ‘how did you gain such knowledge, competences, or skills?’

And we, as professionals of musical education, must constantly question ourselves, because I think that this educational approach is often neglected in the actions we undertake. In other words, we are perhaps often in the process of ‘making children practice music’ (which remains positive); but we perhaps tend to overlook the phase which will give children feedback on ‘how’ they made progress.

For me, it is precisely these endless possibilities of memorizing provided by technology that are the perfect tool to keep a record of the different stages of a process. As far as I know, this area of reflection has not been researched in the field of musical education. It needs to be looked into to allow for the emergence of pertinent tools.

Translation: Paul Warusfel

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The author

Jean-Paul Delon began his professional career as a teacher in a primary school in Haute Loire, while being very interested early on in North American acoustic musics. This led him to become one of the experts of Bluegrass guitar in France. He diversified his artistic and educational training by studying at the CFMI in Lyon and then became an academic advisor in music in his department.

After 10 years in this position, he became a training manager in the CFMI in 2006. This new occupation enables him to keep on developing his interest in technologies and digital tools used in musical practice and teaching.

Digital technology, a simple tool
Jean-Paul Delon

Éclair #2

Collection of the Centre de Formation de Musiciens Intervenant à l’école de l’Université Lumière Lyon 2, CFMI de Lyon

Resources center in artistic and cultural education cfmi@univ-lyon2.fr – www.cfmi-lyon.fr

ISBN: 978-2-490238-15-6

ISSN: 2270-7263

Free

Editorial organization: Amandine Monnet and Marion Orlandi

Translation: Paul Warusfel

Graphic design: Pascale Péronnet ij design

© CFMI, Lyon, 2018

© CFMI, Lyon, 2013 for the original draft in French

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Legal submission 4th trimester 2013 for the original draft in French

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