Ian Kenney

Concept

 

SoundBox is a web and mobile-based educational service for music educators, designed to monitor students' practice quality, duration, and progress through audio recordings.

 

No service currently exists that offers this type of service in a high-quality and comprehensive manner. For years, music teachers have had to trust that students are practicing their intended excerpts, with good focus, and for an adequate length of time. SoundBox aims to hold students accountable for their assignments, much like other web-based educational services allow students to complete homework assignments outside of class for a grade.

 

SoundBox will allow teachers to set weekly "benchmarks" for practicing and assign a grading scale based on various levels of effort. Students will log in to the web or mobile version of SoundBox, review their specific practice assignments, and then select “Record Session” to record their practicing through either a computer microphone or mobile device. Benchmarks can be set for a student’s total weekly practice time, a set number of days per week, minimum practice duration, or a combination of the three. Practice duration is determined by the length of the audio session submitted by the student. Once submitted, the student’s completed session will automatically be factored on the grading scale, which is then reflected in the teacher’s integrated online grade book. The teacher can then log into the system, view student’s grades, view the visual waveform of each individual practice session, and then listen to the audio of each student practicing to evaluate for quality and on-task behavior. The visual waveform also allows teachers to ensure that students practiced consistently for the full length of the session.

 

For a full list of anticipated features, please view the Features page.