PRESTO project: How the schools could teach more music in varying circumstances?
PRESTO is a collaborative transnational research project that has developed multimedia learning resources and best practices for flexible teaching and leadership, which are now available for free at Kodalyhub.
Caprice has been working already for decades in musical distance education. The first distance master class was arranged back in 1997 to New York, and the company has seen the ever-increasing speed of the technology development, but also the change in the attitude towards online education.
Earlier, distance teaching was mostly a helpful tool for remote areas to access quality teaching. However, music education and all kinds of musical activities were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, when indoor gatherings were restricted and physical distancing became a must.
PRESTO - aiming at high-quality flexible music teaching
PRESTO - Practices and Resources for Equipping Schools to Teach Music Online aims at charting a path towards a high-quality and effective music education, despite the surrounding circumstances. The PRESTO project has developed multimedia learning resources and best-practice guidelines for flexible teaching and leadership across classroom-based music, instrumental teaching, and choral practice. The project is funded by the KA226 Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.
We’ve been a project partner in this 2-year Erasmus+ project, which has been coordinated and led by the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Academy, Hungary. Apart from Caprice Oy / Minifiddlers in Helsinki, the other project partners have been Dublin City University - School of Theology, Philosophy and Music (DCU), the National Youth Choir of Scotland (NYCoS) and Sing Ireland.
The 2-year project started in the spring 2021 and ended in April 2023. It is a "Good Practice" label awardee for the 96% evaluation score. More information about PRESTO can be found at the project’s website.
Free classroom, choral and instrumental resources
In the project all the project partners have produced learning resources, which offer guidance in teaching music in varying settings. These classroom, choral and instrumental resources are available for free at Kodalyhub.
Caprice has produced instrumental materials on the Kodály-based Colourstrings. These methodological videos function like visualized method books to assist especially teachers, but also children and parents. These videos can be used both in individual online classes and classroom teaching.
In the videos the inventor of the Colourstrings method Professor Géza Szilvay gives instructions to another pedagogue about a certain pedagogical subject. The pedagogue demonstrates the instruction by playing the studies and pieces. Thus the videos serve as guidance and example how a pedagogue could further teach children or other colleagues in an online training situation.