The ‘Make your own Device’ is a festivity of artistry, innovation and investigation illustrating the relevance of the Music Maker Movement.  Our ‘Make your own Device’ is a Project Based Learning (PBL) program where students can learn, inspect, create and design their own piece of musical technology. We have designed the ‘Make your own Device’ as an inexpensive way to allow all music students to have a chance at performing and composing music, sharing the importance of the use of technology within the music classroom.

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Technology Integration

The frequent use of technology in civilisation today provides an amplification of ideas to use in musical learning. Technology supplies new directions for musical understanding and distribution of knowledge. Music Technology acts as a beneficial aid for educators to instruct students on music creation through multimedia utilities, guided learning through DAW software and other music mixing applications that relate to the modern ways musicians perform and create music in the digital age (Cremata, 2010, pg 20). This further integration between technology and music encourages the creative thinking and exploration of broader musical concepts allowing students to develop an appreciation for music conceived in the cyber world (Lin, 2005, pg 15).

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The Maker Movement

The Music maker movement is an engaging approach compressing music and technology to educate the role of mechanics within the music industry. The music maker movement is based on the ‘Do it Yourself’ ethos combining Music and STEM (Science, technology, engineering, mechanics) expertise. This allows students to understand and explore the transformation of energy while producing their own sounds. Within our ‘Make your own device’ scheme, students will be constructing and designing Midi controllers of which they will use to create sounds and compositions in the classroom. The ‘Maker’ bears all creative control in designing these devices supporting students into making unique and exclusive gadgets heightening creative thinking within the maker.  The creation of these devices demonstrates the process on deconstructing and reconstructing equipment encouraging the “reuse and repurposing of everyday materials”, finding new ways to use everyday objects (Pelly, 2014, pg 6).  An immense factor of the desire for the maker movement experience is through the open-ended exploration a student experiences. This gives more opportunity for students to experiment with the creation of the device along with game-like play (Peppler, 2013, pg. 3).  The music maker movement also provides the opportunity for students to learn the necessity of problem-solving, problem-finding and the potential of group work and social study through interactive activities to concur any sized problem (Smith, 2016, pg.4). By sharing and communicating with peers, teachers and other ‘makers’, it inspires students to reflect on how they’ve designed their own project and what they encountered during the process.

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Available To All Schools: Financial Benefits

Not only is our ‘Make your own device’ program intellectually sufficient for students, it is a very budget friendly program and can also be used to aid non-music educators to teach music. Due to the current deflation of government funding, schools around Australia have reduced subject funding, having the decision to cut programs in the curriculum. Most schools choose to reduce funding in Art programs, music education in particular (Slaton ,2012 pg 2). The average amount of funds supplied to music departments across NSW High Schools is around $22,000 annually and can range from $100,000 to having no specific budget for music at all.  This budget must also cover maintenance for band and/or choir, professional development, print expenses, sheet music purchasing, possible music camps, instrument tuning and cleaning as well as the purchasing and repairing of instruments. With the average metallophone costing $269, only 33% of high schools can afford having a sound instrument for each student to play (Johnson, 2013, pg 52) . These instruments are then quickly broken or missing parts which then must be replaced frequently. The devices created for our program cost less than $40 per unit including the Arduino boards, buttons and programming software (excluding designing materials). Students will be given some designing materials however, we encourage students to f designing materials and/or bring recycled materials from home to use when designing their midi controllers.  As the student is a vital part of the building process, they will develop a sense of responsibility and be trusted not to break their instruments. If tech parts are broken, there is always Arduino support to help students and teachers with their tech troubles. These instruments can then be deconstructed and reused for the following years to come.

How Primary Schools Could Benefit

Additionally, from the Australian Music Education Statics 2012, 9.4% of primary schools in NSW have no music program due to the lack of staff or priority in the school. Out of the 30 universities that offer a primary teaching degree, 23 of these universities teach music as part of an Arts course incorporated with other subjects such as Dance, Drama, media and visual arts (Hoegh-Guldberg, 2012). This means that 78% of primary educators do not have the acceptable training to teach music in a classroom and as music carries a large importance to our lives today, this is an extremely worrying trend. Our program can then be altered to fit all year groups from Kindergarten up to year 12 and consists of a range of digital procedures accessible online with many resources to educate both teacher and student. This is a simple way for non-music teachers to teach a fun and unique component of music without needing formal musical training. Our Make your own device program is an advancement to the formal music education system used today and we hope to inspire many students and teachers to create, discover and share. 

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