Noble Pursuits

Music Enhances Learning

One of the more interesting studies at the conference was on music, and how it can enhance learning. I spoke with Willy Wood, who delivered a breakout session on “Teaching for Long-Term Retention”. He says that music does have a positive effect on learning, but you (the teacher) need to control it (no iPods) and it needs to follow specific guidelines. He recommends:

• 60 - 80 beats per minute
• instrumental only (no words, unless they are non-recognizable words, like Enya or Bjork)
• low volume Good: smooth jazz, some classical Bad: rock, top 40, anything by Neil Diamond

I talked to a teacher at my old school who has been experimenting with using music in his classroom. He has different songs for different phases of his activities: brainstorming, lab work, cleanup. We know that increased beats per minute affects students physiologically: their heart rate speeds up, blood flow is increased, and their energy level picks up. After 80 bpm, the effect is actually detrimental; too much arousal, and you run into a problem of focus. He has seen kids’ energy level visibly change with different types of music; they sit up straighter, seem more awake, etc. He said it was really cool.

The idea is to have the music on so that it masks distracting noises: a kid tapping his pencil, or kids laughing in the classroom next door. The idea is not to play music that you want to actively listen to, because then you are pulling your focus away from the task at hand. If the music is too loud, or too recognizable, it also pulls kids' attention away.

He also uses short one- and two-minute snippets of music to signal duration of time, e.g., “You have two minutes to think of as many examples of dynamic compression as you can. Stop when the song is over.” After playing the same song a bunch of times, kids get a feel for how long that span of time is (kind of like the “Final Jeopardy” theme.)

So starting today in class, I’m making some changes. First, I’m going to stop playing classic rock while my kids work on their labs. Second, I’m going to ask them not to use their own iPods while they work.

I suspect they will be far more upset about the latter than the former.

Third, and most important, I'm going to try to be the "cognitive DJ" and build some playlists of music for my kids during their lab time. I'll report back on how it works.

Shipping Up to Boston

I'm on my way to Boston for the Learning and the Brain conference. This time the conference is focused on technology.

A couple of days ago, at a Smartboard training here at our school, the trainer casually remarked, "You know, kids these days are different. Studies show their visual cortex is larger than ours," as a way of emphasizing the importance of using their product to present concepts visually.

I agree with making things visual -- it's one of the themes my partner CRT and I are looking at this semester (no pun intended) -- but the idea that kids' brains are physiologically different from those of the teachers who are teaching them... hmm, I'd need to see some hard scientific evidence of that. It seemed to be one of those throwaway lines that sounds good, but really... is that really true?

Personally, I'm guilty of drawing all sorts of conclusions about teaching and learning based on anecdotal evidence, or what sounds good or sounds popular. What I love about the idea of mixing it up with educators, scientists, neuropsychologists, and medical researchers at this conference is the prospect of applying objective scientific principles and academic research philosophy to the art and craft of teaching.

Along the way, I am hoping to find out more about the physiological differences in kids’ brains these days. Is there really a discernible difference? What about the idea of neuroplasticity: the brain that literally “rewires itself”? As we make more and more neural connections along specific pathways, can we strengthen those connections? Do our brains grow and change as we use them, in the way a muscle does? It’s another one o those theories that “makes sense” but is there any basis to it?

What about the “myth of multitasking”?  Does multitasking exist, or is it really “many-tasking”, no more than dividing your attention at the expense of focus? Are our students better able then we are at learning from multiple resources simultaneously? When I taught fourth graders I observed that some of my kids with attention issues actually seemed more successful at web-based research their most of their counterparts. I always thought that it was because their ability to jump back and forth between threads was actually less of a hindrance online, where they would have a number of windows open (since Internet access was slow back then) and they seemed better able to keep track of multiple threads of information.

Lots os interesting stuff to investigate, and hopefully I'll come back with some good stuff to report.

The Curriculum App Store

Blackberry and Palm are both trying to dethrone the iPhone's smartphone market dominance by offering App Stores of their own, touch-enabled screens, and numerous interface improvements. A recent article suggests that this will be difficult -- simply put, there are so many high quality apps for the iPhone to choose from, that iPhone users have crafted devices that are uniquely their own simply by installing numerous customized apps that provide a fully personalized workflow. In order to persuade a user to give up their iPhone, what you have to provide -- as a competing manufacturer -- is a phone that not only can replace what that user has created, but does it better. And that's going to be impossible with a "one size fits all" approach.

My iPhone is a combination voice recorder (for my interviews with teachers), panoramic photo studio (I love photography), game device, appointment book, and all-purpose Internet portal (my own Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) I have probably purchased three times as many apps as I ultimately use, trying them out and systematically deleting the ones that I don't like in a Darwinian natural selection that has resulted in a very refined, powerful set of apps that is uniquely personal. Many of my friends like some of the same apps that I do, but no one has exactly the same selection.

What if students took courses the way I choose apps?

Last year for the first time, I had a student take the AP Computer Science exam -- and score a 5 -- without the benefit of my teaching brilliance. In fact, not only had this student never taken my class, I had never even heard of him or seen him in any of the various extracurricular activities we have at my school, where the computer-oriented kids tend to come out of the woodwork.

"How did you study for the exam?" I asked him. He told me he took an online AP course that fully prepared him for the exam. He said it only took him about six weeks to study for it. He was already taking the maximum six courses that our school allows anyway, so he didn't have the time for my full year course. "Nothing personal," he assured me, as I openly wept in front of him.

Kids are increasingly able to craft their own learning experience by studying from some of the best college professors at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. Even science museums and discovery centers are offering online courses that are engaging and interactive. Most of these courses are free or very low cost. What happens when kids craft their high school academic experience the way I customize my iPhone, collecting, evaluating, and discarding courses like apps?

I think what they end up with is a very personalized learning experience, grounded in their own choice, chosen in a sort of fast-twitch Darwinian selection process (hey, just like shopping period at Harvard!) and with a course load that may share some favorite courses with others, but no one with exactly the same selection. And maybe, some students have a course that only 2% of the population find useful or relevant, but for those students, it is invaluable.

As traditional schools come to terms with the online revolution, I think it is vitally important that we realize that we may not be competing with this model yet, but it may be a lot closer than we think. And if this does come to pass, how do we provide a student experience that is as personalized, as relevant, and cost-effective as what students can get elsewhere? How do we ditch the "one-size-fits-all" approach to course load, course requirements, or course structure itself?

Perhaps most intriguing is the idea of how we might combine elements of freely available online courses to supplement our own classroom learning environment, and provide the best of both worlds -- allowing our own students to "mix and match" and customize their own learning experience within the context of our course. I am already experimenting in having a Stanford professor "guest lecture" in my computer science course, by assigning his videotaped lecture on Arraylists as homework. I work with my students directly in class after they have watched the lecture, and spend my time working with them on labs. I still have a long way to go before my kids are creating the "iPhone experience" in my class, but it's a start.