User group session helps educators navigate powerful music instruction platform

A dozen music teachers from the region gathered at the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center’s Harrison campus for a presentation on leveraging the MusicFirst platform to enrich students’ learning experiences.

The MusicFirst user group was led by Valhalla Music Teacher Anthony Maceli and Jason Panucci of MusicFirst.

“Today is all about problem-solving,” Maceli said. “I have had as many failures with technology as I’ve had successes. Whether it’s things being blocked or audio settings not working, today is all about navigating those issues.”

The teachers started at square one, taking on the role of students to get a ground-up understanding of how best to introduce MusicFirst’s powerful systems to their students. MusicFirst enables teachers to streamline assignment and submission processes, which allows them to spend more time teaching while students spend more time making and playing music.

“It’s like teaching a student to play clarinet when they haven’t ever even picked up their instrument before,” said Tuckahoe Music Teaching Consultant Marc Schneider. “You don’t ask them to start playing music right away. You start by taking the instrument apart. Then you put it back together again. It’s the same with the technology. You can’t just expect students to start using it.”

MusicFirst allows teachers to create and share assignments and compositions as well as manage and organize them for students to access. The platform can even automatically evaluate how well a student’s performance matches an assignment so that teachers can hone in on which students need additional help without combing through dozens of videos of performances.

“Every year the students are different,” Maceli said. “Even after years of teaching, you always get students who have different needs. Twenty years ago, that kid might have quit music. Now, this technology gives them more ways to engage with music and spend time playing their instrument.”

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