Upshur County teachers train at a Yamaha music workshop at West Virginia Wesleyan.

Upshur County music teachers are participating in a pilot music project to bring more technology into rural schools.

Nine teachers received approximately $55,000 worth of music equipment to enhance their curriculum, according to Upshur County Schools Curriculum Director John Haymond.

The project is through the Lyell B. and Patricia K. Clay Foundation and Yamaha Corporation.

Dr. Melody Meadows, chair of the West Virginia Wesleyan College, contacted Haymond and the two worked together to make the project happen with short notice.

Superintendent Scott Lampinen was also very supportive of this project, according to Haymond.

The teachers receiving the equipment had a one-day training prior to the beginning of the school year. Music teachers from Barbour and Randolph Counties also attended although they are not part of the pilot project at this time.

“Wesleyan’s partnership with Upshur County’s music program is a natural extension of the college’s mission for community engagement,” Meadows said. “While our student teachers will benefit from this pilot program, the ultimate beneficiaries will be area public school children.”

George Litterst, a consultant with Yamaha and the Clay Foundation, said the late Lyell Clay first contacted Yamaha about 12 years ago.

“He was interested in supporting music education throughout the state,” Litterst said.

“His ultimate goal was to see that the needs of public school music educators were met.”

Clay thought that by starting with colleges, a new generation of teachers would enter the market with those skills, according to Litterst.

“We found young teachers coming out of college were going to schools without the technology that they had learned to use in their classes,” he said.

The rural music initiative was born out of that need.

West Virginia Wesleyan College and Alderson-Broaddus College were chosen to work with the program because of their already long-standing relationship with the Clay Foundation.

Litterst said Meadows was one of the most adept faculty members with modern technology at any college in West Virginia and had conducted previous workshops with the Clay Foundation.

Chuck Avampato, president of the Lyell B. and Patricia Clay Foundation, said Lyell Clay was always trying to find a vehicle for music education.

The foundation has spent $1.3 million for programs — with the bulk of that in the state.

With the pilot project underway, Avampato said the foundation is already looking at what to do next.

“Our goal is to hit the schools and equip student teachers with the tools of the trade to reach more people,” he said.

Local teachers are still learning everything that their equipment can do. They had to write a vision statement on how they will use the equipment to enhance their teaching and will have to report back at the end of the school year.

At the elementary level, teacher Sharon Walton said, “I will use the Yamaha keyboard to accompany my various choruses and all of my classes as they are singing. I will also let the students play the keyboard to learn about chord progressions and various instrument sounds. I plan to use some of the ‘nature sounds’ on it to add sound effects to stories that we will read together. The keyboard can also be used to compose music that can then be printed in traditional music notation on the computer.”

Walton said she hopes to record concerts that students perform and then make these into CDs for students families — especially those that are unable to attend the concerts.

“I will record students at the beginning of the year and at intervals throughout the year so they can hear the progress they are making. It will also be used for making recordings of accompaniments for both my strings classes and choruses so that I may direct the chorus instead of trying to play the piano and direct at the same time, or to make CDs for the students to practice their string instruments with at home!

“The laptop also has a built-in web cam that I hope to be able to use to communicate with other music teachers and resource people around the world,” Walton said.

“These students are so used to using technology in their daily lives, (computer, iPod, cell phone, etc.) that it has made music class much more interesting for them to see how these pieces of technology can also be used in school.”

Middle school music teacher Jane Godwin said, “We’re all really excited about our new equipment, and the students are equally enthusiastic. Having the ability to project our new electronic books and highlight important ideas at a moment’s notice will really help those of us teaching from a cart.”

Godwin said that teachers had already received iPods and docking stations through the new textbook adoption, but now have laptops and portable speakers to amplify sounds.

“We can quickly access audio and visual clips of instruments, share Power Point presentations, play online rhythm and melody games as a group and show animated listening maps,” she said.

“Our 88-key Yamaha Portable Grand keyboards are incredible instruments. I’m overwhelmed with all of the capabilities, but we have shared ideas for projects involving improvising, composing and teaching various elements of music.”

Several students can play at one time, and all of the student projects can be saved and retrieved for later use, according to Godwin.

“The only downside to all of this, particularly at the middle school, is the antiquated facility,” she said.

“It’s hard to plan large-scale technology projects with only one or two working outlets available, and the lack of a classroom for two of us makes security and storage a problem. We hope that the powers-that-be will get busy and repair outlets, replace missing window blinds for easier viewing with the projector, and provide screens, white boards and adequate secure storage.

“While many other classrooms have similar problems, it would be a real shame if, at the end of the grant year, we had to return the new equipment because we were unable to show adequate utilization.”

“The technology is really exciting,” B-UHS band director Danny Williams said.

Williams said the digital recorder is a wonderful tool because he can record rehearsals and concerts and then play it back for the students, and because it is digital the sound is very clean.

“The possibilities for that are really nice,” he said.

A program that came on the Toshiba laptop is Noteworthy Compose,r which allows the teachers to write music. Williams said he can write a few lines and then use the projector so that all the students can see and then play the notes.

“The only slow part is learning how to best use this in the classroom,” Williams said.

“A big thank you to the Clay Foundation and Yamaha, it is a real kick to have money coming to arts in Upshur County.”