Opening a can of worms here...The route that many young musicians take in starting their encounter with the piano is changing very quickly these days. I'm speaking about the rise of online piano tutorials, which are increasingly becoming part of the piano pedagogy world, with their informative, engaging, and (mostly) free content. As blogged about by David Story in the Hamilton-Halton ORMTA blog and Patrick on Piano Street, online video tutorials (including popular ones by Yoke Wong, Hugh Sung, and webpianoteacher) can be both a blessing and a curse. And while I'm still a champion of the power of one-on-one teaching, I'm increasingly asking my students to watch some of these videos as a supplement to what they learn in lessons. After all, they're on YouTube (where students hang out anyway) and they're free.
My questions to the Collaborative Piano Blog community:
Is the genre of the online piano tutorial a natural evolution of the piano lesson that can easily be integrated into one-on-one instruction, or is it a use of technology that will wrest increasing numbers of beginners from traditional lesson/class instruction into the more streamlined business model of online mass instruction? Should piano teachers be excited or worried about this development? How can piano teachers take advantage of online lesson videos both from the content delivery and content creation vantage point?
(Image from piblet's photostream on Flickr)
