Institutions are increasingly adopting Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs to offer 1-to-1 mobile learning. Because it is only just emerging in mainstream practice, there is very little literature on BYOD in education, and nearly none in respect to music education. This paper does not attempt to establish a pedagogical or philosophical approach to teaching music in BYOD schools, but to provide a platform from which such work may begin, by providing a detailed content analysis and audit of 38 cross-platform music software applications (apps) on a range of hardware with class-compliant MIDI and audio devices.
Analysis methods were adopted from a wide range of software engineering texts, since no such single field of enquiry exists. Five categories (LMS, Productivity/Creativity, Content, Drilling, and Performance) were identified through a process of iterative coding, each with its own subcategories, and these were mapped to international music curriculum content. 14 apps from these categories were identified that successfully ran on target operating systems (Windows 8.1 desktop, Windows 10 desktop, Tablet and Mobile, Mac OS X, Apple iOS, Android, and Chrome OS), features were compared on a pairwise basis, and initial conclusions to aid strategic adoption of software were provided.
Keywords
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), Software, Native, Browser, Music Education, Technology
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