Editing PLATO (computer system) (section)

==== Influences and impacts ====

Educators and students used the PLATO System for music instruction at other educational institutions including [[Indiana University]], [[Florida State University]], and the [[University of Delaware]]. Many alumni of the University of Illinois [[University of Illinois School of Music|School of Music]] PLATO Project gained early hands-on experience in computing and media technologies and moved into influential positions in both education and the private sector.

The goal of this system was to provide tools for music educators to use in the development of instructional materials, which might possibly include music dictation drills, automatically graded keyboard performances, envelope and timbre ear-training, interactive examples or labs in musical acoustics, and composition and theory exercises with immediate feedback.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gooch|first=Sherwin|date=March 1978|title=PLATO Music Systems|url=http://eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_1=%22Gooch+Sherwin%22&ERICExtSearch_Operator_1=OR&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_1=au&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&objectId=0900000b80102360&accno=ED161421|access-date=2006-04-13|publisher=ED.gov}}</ref> One ear-training application, Ottaviano, became a required part of certain undergraduate music theory courses at Florida State University in the early 1980s.

Another peripheral was the [[Votrax]] speech synthesizer, and a "say" instruction (with "saylang" instruction to choose the language) was added to the Tutor programming language to support text-to-speech synthesis using the Votrax.