Teaching Guitar Class Via the Internet

In Sept, 2007 CDLI began offering Applied Music (guitar) to students throughout NL. This is a new course for CDLI and as far as I know, this is the first k-12 course of its kind.

To deliver this course we use several pieces of communication technology: Elluminate Live, Desire2Learn, and Polycom video conferencing. The combination of these technologies allow me to create a learning experience for my students that built on each student's own unique learning style.

In today's class I was working with an individual guitar student in Labrador using the Polycom video conferencing system. He is an intermediate level player with a couple of years experience. Through our discussions he has identified scales and picking as an area in which he would like to focus. Today I played him a blues scale in E and showed him how to play it himself. I asked him to explore the scale by improvising around on it. He realized that no matter what order he played the notes, it all sounded great. I then played a 12-bar blues chord progression and asked him to jam along with me using the blues scale. He rocked.

I asked him what he thought of the process. "Wicked" was all he could say.

I then sent him the tab for the blues scale and asked him to continue practicing it. I then recorded myself playing the 12-bar blues with Audacity and sent him the MP3. His assignment is to use Audacity to record himself improvising on the blues scale along with me on the 12-bar blues. He then needs to send me back the new MP3 for my files.

Andrew