This digital opportunity is a beautiful example that elevates the arts within the STEAM structure to feature authentic experiences with learning at its core. Reimagine the possibilities of technology in your classroom with OctoStudio.
by Hanako Sawada
The OctoStudio coding app offers many possibilities for teachers to incorporate the arts in STEAM into their lessons. Explore ways to incorporate the app into your teaching to initiate creative play with your students through technology.
by Hanako Sawada
Most music teachers know firsthand the beauty of authentic play in learning. This “experience first, then intellectualize” manifesto is embedded in our intentions within lesson plans and student interactions. Whether in writing a pentatonic Orff composition or dancing across space and time, the beauty of learning through doing – especially making – is enriching. We hear our students’ ideas through this “ear-mind-body” work and often remain inspired in our profession by how students surprise us with new approaches to creative learning, which re-energizes teachers to update plans for relevance and upgrade them for deeper purposes. At times, however, the lessons that “work” within our programmed structures, reminiscent of an industrial-revolution-inspired model of schooling, divide the leader and follower. To listen to our students who are rich with ideas and experiences, a “you do, we/I do” approach instead of always an “I do, we do, you do” approach may inspire teachers to lean into students’ voices. One app – a space for such creative thinking and doing, driven by student agency – is OctoStudio.
OctoStudio was developed by Mitch Resnick, Natalie Rusk, and the Lifelong Kindergarten team. Resnick is a self-declared “short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist” towards a creative society. Music teachers, and teachers at large, may relate to his idealism and firm belief in creativity. Resnick and his team are known in the education world for Scratch (which, in and of itself, incorporates many musical possibilities that are best accessed with a computer) and his renowned book, Lifelong Kindergarten. Within their book, he discusses what 4Ps for Creative Learning: Passion, Play, Peers, Project. This app practices skills and dispositions through embodying that of a music-maker within a project, learning from one another by playfully making something based on their passion, and realizing an idea of the mind or a feeling in the heart to a physical-virtual reality with others.
Lifelong learning, connections between music and life/world, making music out of passion not solely consumption. As music teachers, when we put these 4Ps in conversation with our music pedagogies – regardless of if you are informed or inspired by Orff, Dalcroze, Kodaly, or a combination of these and more – we might hear resonance in how we have a role in equipping students with skills and dispositions to prepare students for an unknown future. Much like when kindergarteners build and learn to communicate in a sandbox with others, such synergy motivates fearless exploration and a pause in time for flow through authentic curiosity, problem-solving, and creativity in community. To clarify, Resnick’s mentor, Papert, is a proponent of constructionism, not constructivism. Papert’s constructionism focuses on ‘learning to learn,’ particularly learning by making; The development of self-sufficient citizens through critical thinking, interdependence, and application.
Possibilities for incorporating OctoStudio in the music classroom might include the following (NCAS emphasis in brackets).
In this transitional time when societies are rethinking and shifting our roles within them, how can we remain relevant, joyful, and prepared? Rather than a dependency on technology as a distraction, we can support students with a virtual and physical “learning escape” – a focus on creative doing and making within and through the arts. Students can pause, turn on their senses to the world around them, find their voice within them, and listen intently to peers’ multitude of ideas and incorporate them. We know that musicking is authentic musical experiences in various means and places, not schooling bound by the isolation of subjects.
National STEAM Day is not a one-day celebration that marks a curricular event but an opportunity to remind us regularly and help our students zoom into when and where sound and music play a role in our lives and in new possibilities. This digital opportunity is one beautiful example that elevates the arts within STEAM and features our students’ authentic experiences with creative learning at its core. OctoStudio will never replace the ever-more necessary communal opportunities for listening and device-free musical wellness. But may STEAM month fuel the reimagination of possibilities to connect, inspire, heal, inform, and question.
OctoStudio. (n.d.). About OctoStudio. https://octostudio.org/en/about
Ryman, C. (2020, December 17). The art of play: A creative journey through childhood. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnYyLfhvpWc
Resnick, M., & Robinson, K. (2019, July 29). Transforming screen time: Kids can use smartphones to enhance their creativity. MIT Media Lab. https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/transforming-screen-time-kids-can-use-smartphones-to-enhance-their-creativity/
University of Toronto. (n.d.). Piaget’s constructivism. In Constructivism in education. https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/c.php?g=448614&p=3563161#:~:text=Piaget’s%20constructivism%20offers%20a%20window,of%20making%20things%20in%20learning
Contributor
Hanako is an international music educator who continuously questions and explores creative learning in and through the arts. She received her B.M. Music Education and Performance from the University of Miami Frost School of Music received her Ed.M. Arts…
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