In rapidly-changing society, we live in the age capable of interacting variously through the network anytime and anywhere by using a smartphone as a result of evolution of mobile phone. Recently, education has also changed in tune with such changes, and a variety of researches are being conducted together with plans for revitalization of smart education with announcement of <Smart Education Propulsion Strategy> of the Ministry of Education as a momentum.
With recent sudden increase in use of information devices in education field, interest in availability of educational utilization and educational applications according to dissemination of smartphone and tablet PC has also increased.
Thus, this study concluded judgment that analysis of presently developed applications for future development of educational applications and utilization in school field, and aimed to analyze presently-developed applications for music education and look in directions for applications for music education.
For the foregoing, this study selected 20 applications for music education and classified them as items such as operating environment, applicable objects, application type, interaction type and area of music contents, and made an analysis on detailed function, strengths and weaknesses of those applications.
As results of an analysis of applications for music education, the aforementioned applications were largely classified as 3 categories.
First category are the applications that learners can study themselves, that is to say applications enabling self-directed learning. Applications belonging to the type were mostly the ones not capable of satisfying learners’ learning needs.
Second category are the applications with strong instrumental characteristic which can be utilized for class in classroom. Applications that belong to the type have advantages of enabling all learners to take part in class by using a smartphone instead of musical instruments that each learner is hard to carry in class, but teacher’s explanation is essentially necessary as those applications are lacking in explanation of musical instrument performance within them.
Third category are the data-suggesting applications that provide help to leaning. Applications belonging to the category have advantages for obtaining a variety of information within a smartphone without carrying a thick dictionary and connecting to the internet. One thing that is lacking in, however, is that those applications failed in making the best use of function that enables learners to watch video and listen to sound that smartphone provides. An innovative function that strengthens smartphone‘s own strength differentiated from existing dictionaries is considered necessary.
Based on the above results, this study suggested several discussions and directions.
First, development of applications systematically composed of suggestion of learning objective, suggestion of teaching?learning method and evaluation of learning is necessary.
Second, development of educational applications matching learners’ age by clarifying the age of applicable learner.
Third, it is necessary to develop applications that are inclusive of functions for learning by making the best use of advantages of smart device.
Fourth, development of interaction-maximized applications is necessary.
The above results of this study are expected to be used as materials necessary for future development of educational applications that can be used for the purpose of music education.