Teaching Music Online

While I don't consider myself an online music teaching "guru," I have been doing it for awhile and, in my past Learning Technology/Instructional Design career in the corporate world, I learned a lot about making online learning successful.

Here are some things I've found to be from helpful to essential when starting your online music teaching business. FYI, I just updated this post on March 2020.

Benefits of Teaching Online

• Your customer base is the world. If they speak your language(s), they can be your students.
• Students don't have to fight traffic or travel long distances to get to you - and you don't even have to leave home to get to them.
• Lots of curricula can now be found online that is easy to integrate into online teaching.

How to Start

This may be something you've thought about for a while or something you're just now considering. Regardless, the big question is "What do you really want to accomplish?" Various teachers could teach online with different goals in mind. Here are a few possibilities.

• Teach online in same way as I teach in-person students
• Add some enhanced learning through technology to my live, virtual lessons
• Teach online group lessons with great student-to-student interaction
• Teach in a "blended" approach with students using supplementary online material, virtual sessions just to compliment in-person sessions.

As an example, my long-term goal is to establish something similar to an online academy where I offer piano, recorder, and native American flute courses with videos, audio files, printable components, and a messaging forum where they could video their assignments and submit to me for feedback. Students could also schedule regular live, virtual sessions with me or just occasionally when they need help. I'm not there yet but on my way. And, possibly, I could contract with other instrumental teachers to join me.

The Tools

What tools would help you achieve your teaching goals?
There are several directions to take in achieving the goals you have. They can range from a simple video conferencing tool to a learning management system where you can create self-paced online courses.

The good news is that I don't think one has to be a "techie" nowadays to accomplish these goals. The tools are more intuitive and automated than ever before. Here are some essentials and "nice to have" items you will want to consider.

The Essentials for Online Teaching

• Robust computer: Any computer may do okay since most of the processing comes from the Internet connection, however, the faster processors and larger internal memory (8 gb+) will offer a more stable experience.
• Wired connection: It can be slight but using wireless connections can present issues when trying to maintain continuous connectivity in a video-conferencing situation.
• Camera: At least on your end. I've done some without a camera on their end but the potential issues are obvious.
• Microphone : Essential for all parties participating.

Helpful Items

• Headphones: This is almost essential to hear clearly. I don't use the headphones with a built-in mic, however as they cannot also hear my keyboard.
• Multiple cameras: If you teach guitar or flute, etc you may not need more than one camera. I want two because I have one always pointed to my piano keyboard. The other can be on my face (ugh!) or sharing my screen, etc.
• Separate microphone: Meaning separate from your webcam mic. Usually, microphones built-in to webcams are are very average to below-average quality. I use a Samson USB microphone because audio quality is simply better.

Video Conferencing Tools
Though it's essential, I left it to the last because, well, it's the big one. You can have the best equipment but if you don't have a good software tool to connect - no one cares.

Not sure why but I love researching technology tools in the learning and educational areas. I also enjoy experimenting with various learning management systems software to the point of near confusion. We'll call it "quirky." Video conferencing apps/services, of course, do different things and have various pricing, including free. My current favorite is zoom.us. It offers better audio/video quality than most and is - so far - free. Here are some others.

1. Zoom.us: Download/login required; Free for one-to-one only for up to 45 min; Great quality; Easy to switch multiple cameras.
2. Google hangouts: Free and easy to change cameras during call.
3. WebEx (Cisco): Free for up to 3 people; stable quality.
4. Facetime: Apple users only.
5. Google Duo: Works very well and free.
6. Wiziq: Awesome but more for classes. As of this writing, premium plans only but they negotiate.
7. Teacherzone: Maybe not for smaller studios due to cost, but it does everything and I mean everything; video chat, scheduling, payments, notes, etc.
8. Skype: Download/login required; Fair quality; 1 camera only (my least favorite).

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Other Tools
Tonara: A practice and student management app has really improved over the years. I can do lesson notes, send videos, printed music (of course, it’s studio-licensed), and they can record their assignments.

Manycam: This enables me to overlay two (or more) cameras on the screen. I have two web cams with one pointed to me and one hanging from a mic stand pointed to the keyboard. You can make different configurations.

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Tips and Tricks

Things to remember when teaching live online:

• Don't expect things to be the same as your in-person lessons. You will need to talk a little slower, leave more time for student responses/feedback, and you won't be able to hear and see as well as if you're sitting there beside them.
• Activities must go faster and be shorter in length - even with adult students.
• For children students, parents still should be physically close by and be updated so they know what's expected of the student between lessons. I send Lesson Notes out to all students/parents, both in-person and online (I use mymusicstaff.com).

I hope this information helps. Please let me know how your experiences go with online teaching.