https://anchor.fm/hitechpod/embed/episodes/26--How-to-Incorporate-Collaborative-Learning--Flat-e17sm8c

This Week's App: Flat

What is Flat?

Flat's tagline captures their concept in a single sentence:

"Flat is a collaborative music notation platform for beginner composers and professionals alike."

Their product is designed to help musicians collaboratively create music. With both a mobile and browser platform, users can take advantage of Flat wherever they are.

What can it be used for?

Flat for education can be used as both an activity and a homework experience. For instance, while you are in class with the students, you can have them collaborate on music or even watch you do annotation on the product. This practice makes for a live experience that offers a space for students to engage with the process, get immediate feedback, and try out new ways of writing.

However, you can also send them home with the task of collaborating outside of class time with their classmates. At any time, users can share a link with others to bring them into their creative process, review their notation, and even listen to the compositions thus far. The product offers a number of instruments that can playback the notations made.

How do I get started?

First head over to flat.io and create a free account. Once you can get started with learning the tool and how it works by going through Flat's Get Started: Step by step Tutorial.

It will teach you how how to create your first score, use the interface, add key & time signature, and how to add your first notes. We recommend using this tutorial to create your first work in the tool and get a feel for how it works. This should give you a better idea of how you can then use it in your class.

Once you have a good feel for the tool start to take a look at the work you currently do and look for a place where you or your students could benefit from collaborating on composing music. Could you try having multiple students compose different parts of a composition and then review each other's parts? Could you have different groups compose different parts of one arrangement and then provide feedback on the other's work? Or maybe students need to build different parts of one piece online, could you use Flat do it? Start small pick one activity or project where you can have your students use this tool to compose with their peers, then provide your feedback in the tool. With a tool like this, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.