Boys keen to jump on band wagon

Colin Lowndes, Joseph Kang and Sam Mitchell can now link into the programme. Photo / Martin Sykes

Young musicians from King's School are the first in the country to create their own one-man garage bands in an online classroom linked to Victoria University.

Designed by Dr Jan Bolton, a senior lecturer in music at the university, the new online music programme eMotive encourages students to write their own music on the Apple software GarageBand and record their compositions.

These are sent to a portal to be downloaded by their mentor, Dr Bolton or a postgraduate music specialist studying composition education at the university.

The mentor will leave voice-recorded feedback for the student to download the next time he logs in.

Dr Bolton is passionate about developing children's creativity through music, and said it was important that children learn to express their emotions and ideas in different forms.

But she saw that many New Zealand children were missing out on the music component because primary school teachers often lacked the expertise to include playing instruments as part of classroom activities.

"If they don't have the music, there is a whole wave of creativity in this world that they won't know about," she said.

Her thesis, completed last year, found eMotive was a practical way of overcoming barriers to arts learning in the classroom.

She saw the programme as a way of engaging with a range of schools, including those that did not run strong music programmes and successfully tested it in seven rural schools around the lower North Island before it began at King's yesterday.

The private boys' primary and intermediate school in Remuera does not fit into the underprivileged category - the collaboration emerged when Dr Bolton met King's director of music, Emma Featherstone, at the International Society of Music Education world conference in Bologna in July last year.

Ms Featherstone has transformed the music department since joining the school four years ago, and all 450 students are learning instruments and playing in bands.

She was hunting for ideas to build on the programme when she sat in on Dr Bolton's presentation about internet-based music education.

She liked the way the concept merged the boys' music knowledge and their interest in contemporary music, because it enabled them to play their favourite pop songs as well as compose their own.

Ms Featherstone says she is committed to using programmes that are practically based, and giving students the tools to create music, just as in sports classes students learn to play sport, rather than learning about sport.

"You don't say sit them down and say, 'Today we are going to learn about rugby, get your pens and paper out."'

Music has become "cool" since the instruments were introduced, and the school has also noted an improvement in mathematics achievement, listening skills and confidence since the programme began four years ago.

Dr Bolton hopes that other schools will follow the example of King's School and adopt the programme in the next 18 months.