PROJECT OVERVIEW

Supported by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme Priority 2.4.10 Technology Enhanced Learning

European music educational institutions need to increase their efficiency while reducing costs, in order to be more attractive and effective and to provide wider access. The i-Maestro project is supported by the European Commission under the IST Sixth Framework Programme to develop interactive multimedia environment for technology enhanced music education. The project aims to explore novel solutions for music training in both theory and performance, building on recent innovations resulting from the development of computer and information technologies, by exploiting new pedagogical paradigms with cooperative and interactive self-learning environments, gestural interfaces, and augmented instruments, with computer-assisted tuition in classrooms to offer technology-enhanced environments for ear- and practical-training, creativity-, analysis-, and theory-training, ensemble playing, composition, etc.

Music performance is not simply playing the right note at the right time. The i-Maestro project is studying and exploring many aspects of music making in order to produce methods and tools for music education with innovative pedagogical paradigms, taking into account key factors such as expressivity, interactivity, gesture controllability and cooperative-work among participants.

The main technical objectives of the projects include: basic research and development on new solutions and enabling technologies to support traditional pedagogical paradigms for music training; novel pedagogical paradigms, such as cooperative-working, self-learning and class-studying, with particular focus on Symbolic Training paradigms and Practice Training paradigms for string instruments exploring interactive, gesture-based, and creative tools; and a framework for technology-enhanced music educational models and tools to support the creation of flexible and personalisable e-learning courses to improve accessibility to the musical knowledge.

i-Maestro will utilise and improve upon current standards related to music education. The project aims to explore a unified educational model to maximise efficiency, motivation and interests in the learning processes and to contribute to the (i) deployment and improvement of ISO MPEG-SMR (Symbolic Music Representation) to support music education, (ii) the implementation of music notation/representation into MPEG-4, (iii) production of guidelines on how the music tuition courseware can be implemented in standard tools and models for distance learning.

The outcomes will be validated through a set of tools and methodologies including (i) tools and methods for music courseware production; (ii) interactive and creative tools for instrumental training in different environments such as classrooms and cooperative work, on different devices such as PC and Tablet-PC; and (iii) assessment and pedagogical models for music training.

The project includes demonstration and validation activities, which will be conducted by major European institutions such as l'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), the Fundación Albéniz (Madrid) and IRCAM (Paris). The final results of the project will be incorporated in various products and services that will be made available to the public and to educational establishments.

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