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Looking for more student engagement from your music students? Do you feel that student’s practice work ethic is less than stellar? Practopus is a new digital tool that can help ease these burdens and help keep your students accountable. As a result, you will get more student engagement with Practopus. This mobile app will inspire your music students to practice and help them meet their commitments to you, the teacher.
The Challenge
Due to the fact that students, these days, are subject to a plethora of digital distractions, very little practice occurs. Certainly, our students face choices of what apps to download. While some apps enhance productivity, others promote laziness. Practice on your instrument can be easily overlooked when a you can play video games, go out to the mall or even lose your handwritten practice logs. Hence, the solution to this problem of getting students to practice more and maintain proper accountability is to use the Practopus app.
The Mission
Practopus was pioneered and created by music educator and creator Ben Potok. His in-house team of educators and developers are passionate about their objective of motivating practice amongst student musicians. This initiative provides students the incentives they need to bridge the gap between establishing healthy practice habits and the resulting long-lasting benefits that practice brings to student musicians.
What the App Includes
Many of our students are much more comfortable using technology than those of previous generations. As a result, the downloading of apps, and various tools is regular feat for our young scholars. Why not use a digital means, that students are comfortable with, to meet non-tech objectives?
Most importantly, Practopus was designed, built and tested by teachers.
The app includes:
- A timer to time practice sessions and earn points (called clams)
- Parent confirmation of practice sessions using a digital PIN
- Additional assignments designated by the student’s teacher
- Detailed practice tracking and assignment history
- A store where students “buy” digital items with their practice points
The Idea of Practopus
The concept of the Practopus app is to provide a tool for the music educator to engage students in easy to report practice time. Students will time their practice sessions with the free Practopus app that can be found in the Apple App Store for iOS users and Google Play Store for Android users.
Most importantly, teachers have access to interactive reports where they can view and arrange their students’ practice time. In addition, task completion can be evaluated based on these practiced periods. These tasks supply opportunities to engage students with practicing in various ways! Educators then have the opportunity to create a virtual store in which their students can spend their points (called clams) they make from practicing.
Getting Started
To use the app, students will need an active Practopus account. These can be obtained by the teacher through an invitation to create a username and password. The teacher has the ability to provide all specific content on the app, including the tasks and rewards. Even more, parents are also welcomed to the learning environment when an email is added to the student’s account.
Music Educator Benefits
Tracking Reports
Practopus provides music educators viewable practice reports for specific students and customized groups for a set period. Use this data to hold students academically accountable. Use this opportunity to gauge growth of student success.
Designate Tasks
Create and assign numerous types of interactive tasks for individual students or small groups. This option provides a more individualistic benefit to meet the needs of all students.
Reward Students
Students can use practice points as a form of virtual classroom currency called clams. Students use these clams to acquire instructor offered benefits and STAY MOTIVATED!
Practice Tracking
Students will time their sessions with the Practopus app. Educators will have access to interactive reports where they can see and arrange their individual students’ practice times. Educator tasks should be goal driven for the timed assigned provided to students. Consequently, both educators and students will have access to a graphical representation of their practice times.
Additional Practice Tasks
Motivate your students by providing them additional assignments to earn additional clams. These assignments provide extra chances for students to engage in different practice strategies! Your class can enjoy everything from watching awesome YouTube videos to taking interactive quizzes. As a result, these assignments are a great way to productively break-up the repetitiveness of practice time and re-energize your learners.
The Practopus app also provides the educator the ability to have students send back recorded practice sessions for review. The music educator can then provide written feedback based on what was submitted.
Inspire and Reward Students
Teachers can develop a digital store where students can spend their practice points (called clams.) The rewards are readily available and are used by their teacher. In addition, this set-up not only allows for more personalized instruction but also more satisfying rewards. Even more, Practopus notifies users when rewards are offered and documents when an educational reward transaction has taken place.
Additional Benefits
When teachers purchase premium memberships, they will be able access to avatars in their virtual store. Students will be able to choose which avatar they wish to display on their Practopus profile and dashboard. As a result, this provides students the opportunity to express themselves.
Trial
Try the Premium Version of Practopus for free for 30 days. If you find it to be a good fit for your music program, then sign up for the premium subscription or continue with the free plan.
Got Questions?
Send any questions, remarks or feedback to the developers of the Practopus app at support@practopus.com.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I feel that that music educators could strongly benefit from using this app. Most importantly, if you sell the idea to how this app makes practicing fun, you might find yourself with a stronger music program. Have you found a solution to getting your students to practice more? Worry not. Practopus maybe just the tool you’ve been waiting for.
