The iPad in Music Education

Abstract

In 2014 we find ourselves on the verge of a revolution in the use of computing technology in education thanks to the tablet computer. This is the result of a wave of tactile mobile devices that began as a ripple with the Apple iPhone’s introduction in 2007 and gathered momentum with the launch of the iPad in 2010. The take up of the iPad and other tablet computers in schools has been rapid. The tablet computer today is smaller, more tactile, more powerful, and more connected than desktop computers were less than a decade ago. For someone like me, who has been involved in music technologies in education for some time, it feels like the tablet form factor and the ubiquity of internet access have combined to be a tipping point that delivers on the educational promise long harboured by technologists; that the power of computing would be widely accessible to students and easily integrated into their learning. In this article I survey some of the many ways the iPad, as the most popular of current tablet computers, can be used in music education.