Music Ed technology for Dummies

Its amazing to think about what can come of music education when you incorporate technology.  For one I think about this new push in education surrounded by assessment.  Assessment is something that is hard to deal with in music for example, it is hard to explain or even show someone how a student has improved musically if they themselves do not understand music.  A student may not be playing harder pieces or even sounding good on their instrument yet tuns of improvement may be happens.  Think about a person that holds a pencil incorrectly, you may correct them but their hand writing may still be super sloppy.  You improved a part of their overall approach to writing but one may not see it right away.  So how can you show the administration that your students are improving.  Well there are programs  that a teacher can give students to take home that will show how a student is improving though its limited.  For example lets say at the beginning of the year you have the student play a piece and this program reads along as the student play and marks what notes they played right and which ones they played wrong.  At the end of the year they play the piece and again and it would clearly show results and others who don understand music will see some concrete assessment that they can understand.  From a musician standpoint we know that right notes does not always equal improvement because there is more to music then right notes.  However this is a huge step in the right direction and can really help those music educators that have administrators and Principles breathing down the neck fro results.  I'm sure in the future this programs will asses other aspects of musical understanding but at least now we as music teachers can prove are students are learning to those who feel we just sing songs and let students run wild.