The Internet as Teacher

Social media has led to new opportunities for learning music. In less formalized settings, a whole new arena for learning music has developed. The aim of this article is to investigate student teachers’ experiences of learning to play an instrument with the Internet as a teacher. The investigation was done as an action research study where twelve beginning teacher-training students were given the task to use the Internet to learn how to play an instrument. The students were organized in peer groups to help each other. Documentation of the progress happened through logbooks. The project lasted for half a year in 2011 and had a triple intention: to provide the students with experience about learning how to play by help of the Internet, for the students to learn to play a second instrument, and to investigate if and how learning practices for learning an instrument aided by the Internet could be useful in music teacher training.