Internet of Musical Things for Children

One of the musical activities that can be positively impacted by the Internet of Musical Things (IoMusT) is music education. However, although the IoMusT's properties hold a promising potential to enrich music learning processes, the extent to which early childhood music educators and scholars have embraced this emerging type of technology and explored their potential is still very limited. To bridge this gap, we first survey the relevant literature at the confluence of the Internet of Things, music technology, and education. Then, we propose a pedagogical framework to support designing IoMusT applications for early childhood music education. The framework is based on five dimensions: embodied sense-making, nonlinearity, participatory sense-making, privacy and security, as well as accessibility and inclusiveness. Furthermore, we corroborate the framework with a set of pedagogical scenarios showing its usage. Our study aims to foster interdisciplinary research at the confluence of pedagogy and music technology in an application domain, that of early childhood music education, hitherto unexplored.