Music Notation Software in the Classroom: True Music-Making?

When I was growing up, computers had black screens and green text, and were only accessible to the class when we earned a field trip to the computer lab to play Oregon Trail. It never crossed my mind- or my music teachers' minds, certainly!- that computers could be used in a music classroom!

This comes to mind because of a recent class discussion about teaching composition. I'll get to the specifics of the discussion in a moment.

When someone says "music technology in the classroom," one's default mental image is probably either recording technology, or notation software that every student can use. Finale even makes a barebones version, Notepad, that I encountered at my job two years ago. Apparently the previous teacher showed the students how to use Notepad, gave them some parameters (maybe), and the students composed. But were they really making music?

The principal was thrilled. She had a whole school full of little Mozarts working on Finale Notepad. She was constantly mentioning to me that I should get the laptops in my classroom to do some composition. However, I thumbed through some of the music portfolios from the previous year, and was not really surprised to see the low level of musicianship these compositions displayed.

I shouldn't judge too hard. After all, these students were only in their first year or two of music class. But it seemed like they were all boxed into the same assignment, with no leeway to incorporate musical elements that were important to them. They all had similar usage of the E Major scale, or whatever it happened to be. It looked like there wasn't any joy in it.

So I wonder: Is there a better way to teach composition? For students who have never encountered music before, perhaps notation is not the place to start. They may feel very restricted, and may have little interest in writing the usual tonal, Western-approved-type of music. Instead, start with something that will appeal to them, and spark their interest and creativity. I'm not sure what that is yet, but I wouldn't want to intimidate them by forcing unfamiliar notation on them, especially in the form of an often-confusing computer program.

After they know how to read music well, and are able to hear what they want to write before they put something down on paper, then students should be introduced to notation software. Until then, take the class set of Finale Notepad downloads out of the budget, and instead get some more instruments repaired.