AN ICT-BASED APPROACH TO IMPROVE THE PEDAGOGY OF MUSICAL ARTS EDUCATION

Nowadays, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are the essence of the information society, facing the emerging technological proliferation of “touch screen" era, m-learning diffusion and its easy adaptability to the "digital natives". Their main potentiating agent is the new generation of students. More than using the resources of ICT in the current educational system, the teacher must employee their features with their modus operandi, inside and outside the classroom. Each student has its own style of learning, which deserves a particular didactic method from the teacher.

Concerning ​​music, there are two kinds of public education in Portugal. Within the musical arts education, the pedagogy is unique, being an individualized and personalized teaching compared with music education, which is more generalist. There is a construction of a comparative point between the musical arts education and the music education. These characteristics differentiates it from the more technical and interpretative teaching. This pedagogical uniqueness and the continuous transformation and need to adapt the contemporary society to the digital era, have contributed to a wider range of possibilities to explore between teacher and student, bringing an emerging paradigm: the reformulation of curriculums, establishing a pedagogy founded on complementary technological contents to the continue teacher mentoring synchronously and asynchronously.

There are many observational and exploratory studies about the best tools for musical education, dominating the development of applications that attract students to resort to this type of tools. However, after a review about the existing literature, it appears that a systematic and specific method to choose the best applications for the teaching / learning process is missing. Teaching skills are easily confused with the playful nature of their use. So, the analysis and ranking of the best applications for musician teaching and training has been made.

Another subject area approached in this paper is the use of an online platform for student pedagogical support. There are several studies about the utilisation of websites as teaching tools and supplement of the lessons. However, this study explores a different didactic perspective: the application of the platform during school holidays. Thus, it is possible to continue the work made with the student, encouraging his performing maintenance and consequently stimulating the autonomous learning. With this hybrid educational model based on presential learning and m-learning, the author turns his teaching strategy into a model ajustable to the student's needs and requirements, creating one more possibility for teachers who want to safeguard the arts education progress based on the use of ICT.

The research was made within an universe of 15 students of a semiprivate arts school (Águeda Conservatory of Music) in 2014/2015 and analysed two exploratory areas: the use of mobile applications and the continuous learning through the platform. The evaluation of the results was made qualitatively and quantitatively, using questionnaires, surveys, interviews and performative observation of the participants. The observational study ran during 24 lessons divided into two categories: 12 classroom lessons taught using the selected multimedia tools and 12 lessons taught through the online platform as a pedagogical continuity during school holidays.