Where did Tonic Tutor come from?

Feb 2nd, 2012

Posted by William

Christine and I have decided to switch up the Tutor Talk format a bit and include posts from me regarding the non-pedagogical aspects of Tonic Tutor. I'm hoping to use my posts to explore some of the decisions we've made with Tonic Tutor and give everyone an idea of where we want to go in the future. I'm also hoping to get lots of feedback - your ideas and suggestions have made it possible to continue improving the site. Tonic Tutor wouldn't exist in its current form without you, so please continue to send us your thoughts and opinions!

Where did Tonic Tutor begin? Early in 2009 Christine asked me to make a game that her students could play in her studio while they were waiting for their lessons. I had just finished a year long program in web development and it was right in the middle of the recession so I was underemployed and looking for projects I could hone my skills on. It didn't take long for that first idea to turn into a landslide of game concepts in Christine's mind, so before long our one game had turned into several. But the games alone didn't really offer much in the way of options or feedback. They seemed fun, but on their own they didn't really amount to much. We dared to dream that we could create an application that was customizable and easy to use for all types of music teachers and students. So my job at that point turned away from making games to answering the question of how to make the games useful for teachers. I went to work building systems that would let teachers control the difficulty of the games and what concepts they introduced as well as feedback on how students were doing. A lot of our work together at that point was trial and error since we were the only ones using it. It was exciting but also a bit terrifying since we didn't know what the end result would be. Would the finished product be useful? Would it be too difficult to use? Would students even like the games?

If you compared the version of Tonic Tutor we launched in August 2010 with the current version, you might not recognize it. We only had 16 games, and contests, goals, and many other important features didn't exist. Everything was a little bit rough around the edges. Since then we've tried to incorporate as much of the feedback we receive as we can to make the site more useful for both teachers and students. We still have a lot of ideas we'd like to develop in the future - after a year and a half we still wake up in the morning excited about our plans for Tonic Tutor. It's still fun and rewarding because we've been able to validate our original ideas and concepts and see Tonic Tutor work out in the real world. What could be more exciting than seeing something you've worked on have a positive impact in how a child learns? So as we head into the second half of our second year, we'd like to thank everyone who's come on board for contributing to Tonic Tutor's success and making it a great place for students to learn. It's also been a great learning opportunity for both of us. We're very excited about the future on Tonic Tutor and we hope you are as well.