The CrazySquare project for music learning in Italian school-age pre-adolescents: integrating technology into educational practice

The daily incorporation of music education and instrumental practice within school settings has been linked to various advantages, such as enhanced language skills and improved peer relationships. Mastering musical skills poses a significant challenge, necessitating proper teaching activities and adherence to specific learning theories. The rapid evolution of technology has emerged as a powerful tool for improving musical education. Nevertheless, crafting technology aligned with specific learning theories, including appropriate educational materials, remains a formidable task. Likewise, music teachers grapple with the challenge of seamlessly integrating technology into their teaching activities without robust support. This paper delves into this challenge, presenting the results from CrazySquare, a project that mainly focuses on guitar musical learning. It leverages the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework to enable the effective integration of technology into traditional teaching practices for Italian school-age pre-adolescents. The fruitfulness of using the TPACK framework is strengthened since it has been carried out through the Technology Enhanced Learning-oriented User-Centered Design methodology. This methodology inherently necessitates a multidisciplinary team at the core of the design process, and it has an iterative nature encompassing both expert-based and end-user-based evaluation steps. Such an approach can promote the controlled diffusion of technology in education as a scaffold for learning, reducing the barriers typically faced by teachers and students in the digital era.