Guitar School for 100 000 students
The Guitar School (Kitarrikool) project is a complex system for teaching a musical instrument that is concentrated on the acquisition of practical skills. Unlike music schools where the instruction takes a long time and the goals are therefore more distant and vague, Guitar School teaches its students to play the instrument in a very short time. Each course has a specific goal and a fixed deadline for achieving it.
In addition to teaching the guitar both online and in live groups, the Guitar School project publishes innovative tutor books, releases guitar CDs and organises concerts. They also have an online guitar shop. Some of the school’s activities are strictly local and take place in Estonia, but as the largest field of work is the online school, students from all corners of the world are able to join these courses.
Being part of the science
The Guitar School’s online project is based on founder Kristo Käo’s PhD research at the department of educational technology, University of Tartu. To put it briefly in Kristo’s own words: “Music education over the internet is very new and even if you can find programmes that have good quality materials, the way the materials are presented still needs to be researched. So, the way the material is presented here changes over time as the science in this field progresses. As for our study materials – you can be sure they are top quality, as they are all prepared by university tutors in guitar pedagogy.”
No limits in geography or numbers
Currently there are more than 6 000 students all over the world learning to play guitar with the help of Guitar School. The founder, manager and leading teacher Kristo Käo, says that their goal is to attract up to 100 000 students.
Putting the internet and new technology together can open up new ways of teaching many students while still giving individual feedback to each one of them. In cooperation with the Technology Development Centre, Technopol, and Tallinn Technical University, the Guitar School is developing an innovative teaching tool – the electronic guitar sticker with LED-lights, which transfers the student’s performance data into the computer and from there via the internet to the teacher. This means that while playing the guitar in front of their computer students can obtain immediate personal feedback on performance and analyse this later to learn more.
