Music to Their Ears: Building Beats Sparks Student Interest in Tech
By Scott Campbell
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” – Plato
In ancient Greece, kitharas and lyres were among the popular instruments to make music. Today, it’s PCs and iPhones. In fact, you could easily replace the word “music” in Plato’s quote above with “technology” and the sentence would hold true. Tech has transformed how we create, innovate and access almost everything—including music.
It’s one reason why CompTIA Spark developed a dedicated curriculum unit for middle school students that bridges both tech and music. Beat Builders is a collection of lessons designed to help teach the digital citizenship as well as tech skills such as coding and app design—all while helping students write their own music.
Lessons So Fun, Students Ask to Do Them at Home
The curriculum has proven popular with students as well as teachers (who don’t need to be experts in either tech or music to lead the lessons).
“The Beat Builders unit has been very easy to understand and teach students. All student levels, including special needs students, have been able to feel successful and enjoy the lessons,” Jenna Smith, computer science teacher at Baker County School District in Macclenny, Florida. “The students have been engaged and even ask if they can do it at home. I have had several students tell me they have showed siblings their music at home.”
Beat Builders incorporates music creation applications like Chrome Music Lab and coding with Scratch to enhance students’ creativity as well as problem-solving and critical thinking skills, according to Kim Acosta, senior manager of curriculum development at CompTIA Spark.
“The skills students acquire from digital music can be easily adapted to a wide range of technical applications they'll encounter in the future,” Acosta said.
Tech, Music Expertise Not Required for Teachers
Within the lessons themselves, students use the music to create a song but they’re also learning foundational skills in Google or Microsoft productivity applications—Docs/Word, Sheets/Excel, and Slides/PowerPoint—to support activities around their composition.
“We also wanted students to learn some coding and reinforce skills in digital citizenship, all while having fun! We wanted to do this in a way that would be accessible to as many districts as possible,” Acosta said. “That’s why use used common applications that are whitelisted by districts. We wanted to make sure that we had an engaging way to teach technical skills, which inspired the music and technology theme.”
Among the skills taught across Beat Builders:
- Technical Skills: Using Chrome Music Lab to create music, coding in Scratch, Spreadsheet skills for generating random band names, and app prototyping in PowerPoint/Slides.
- Digital Citizenship: Sharing documents, providing feedback, and understanding digital footprints.
- Creative Skills: Remixing songs, designing band apps, and generating band names.
- Career Exploration: Identifying potential career paths linked to the skills learned.
The music and technology theme is designed to keep students engaged and interested in the skills they are learning, according to Acosta. “The Beat Builders unit emphasizes personalized learning, with flexibility in pacing and projects,” she said. “It supports students with diverse learning needs by offering bilingual options, extension activities and multiple assessment opportunities.”
Teachers do not need to be tech or music experts because the unit is designed with step-by-step instructional videos that allow students to learn independently. Teachers can act as facilitators, guiding students who may need additional support but without requiring deep knowledge of the content themselves. The unit includes videos, rubrics, and auto-graded assessments to make teaching and evaluation easier for instructors.
“I feel that teaching these music skills to this age group opens up their knowledge of different things they may be interested in but never have been exposed to. This keeps kids minds open to different career paths for their future,” said Smith.
Check out the Beat Builders unit.
Watch a case study video about a school using CompTIA Spark curriculum:
VIDEO: See CompTIA Spark in Action
Other CompTIA Spark articles that may also interest you:
How One School Is Growing the Future with Technology Education
6 Things That Are Hard to Do Today Without Digital Fluency
Does Tech Education Matter in Middle School? Yes, Here's Why
It’s Never too Early to Learn Cybersecurity Skills