Symposium Looks at Use of High-Speed Internet for College Music Programs

INDIANAPOLIS – Imagine a California composer critiquing online a real-time, live guitar performance by an Indiana professor playing the composer’s original work. Or a double bassist from Miami’s New World Symphony performing live via high-definition television before an Indianapolis crowd of music educators.

Such were the makings of the first ever statewide gathering of college professors to discuss music applications for the super computers accessible to colleges and universities around the nation.

More than 50 collegiate music professors, along with other music and technology professionals, met recently at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis to discuss ways to use the high-speed Internet highway to enhance and extend music performance, instruction and research.

Symposium 2006: First Stop Indiana was held last month at the School of Music on the IUPUI campus. The meeting marked the first time college music professors from across the state have gathered to illustrate and discuss Internet2, organizers said. Participants also included professionals online from seven other states, and Asia, Canada and Europe.

“Symposium 2006 was meant to be seminal in its effort to stimulate interests between (attending) institutions and colleagues by demonstrating how the use of the Internet and Internet2 could extend, even enhance the work we undertake in performance, research and teaching.

“Ultimately our students and our profession should be the beneficiaries of the initiatives we undertake,” said Fred J. Rees, symposium director and head of graduate studies in the School of Music at IUPUI.

Initiatives discussed during Symposium 2006 included:

• Arranging videoconferencing for symposium members from their home institutions
• Developing hybrid courses in which students participate with on-campus as well as online visitations
• Organizing master classes for music teaching over the Internet and Internet2, the high-speed Internet system accessible to most universities
• Supervising student teachers in the field through videoconferencing
• Offering professional expertise online between collegiate institutions.