Multi-faceted Refractions

Here are my notes from the presentation by Sir Ken Robinson about his book The Element at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago. He as part of the Francine C. Rosenberg Memorial Lecture Series.

Nearly one month ago, we put aside the normal timetable in our high school for a special day of programming, Diversity Day. Diversity Day is a student organized and executed day which we explore various aspects of different topics. This year’s Diversity Day theme was Pluralism in Storytelling. As faculty members, we were asked to propose a workshop session for the day.

This year, eighteen students and I talked about the power of audience. Due to the rapid changes in networked technology,it has become easier now for a story to spread world wide. Because of:

• the power of connections in our social networks, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• the ease of being able to easily publish information
• the ability to connect to these networks through a wide variety of options, including cell phones, computers,

anything we publish has a potentially larger audience than was ever able to in any point in history.

During the workshop, we watched the TED Talk by Evan Williams on the Growth of Twitter Being Driven by Unexpected Uses, how AP students created a Facebook group phenomenon last year, shown the role of Twitter and Blogs during the Mumbai attacks, and how Twitter users communicated about a potential death threat at a school.

Wanting to then demonstrate the power of our networks, we did a social experiment.  Using our social networks and connections, over a 24 hour period, we asked users to go to a web site and fill out a simple form asking for:

• Who had sent them the message
• What City, State, and Country they were in

We then asked them to pass it to members of their networks. After 24 hours, users from the following locations accessed the web page:

United States (US) – 364
Canada (CA)- 13
Australia (AU) -7
United Kingdom (GB) – 6
Hong Kong (HK) – 4
Japan (JP) – 3
Philippines (PH) – 3
China (CN) – 2
Singapore (SG) – 2
Serbia (RS) – 1
Sweden (SE) – 1
Denmark (DK) – 1
France (FR) – 1
Bermuda (BM) – 1
Thailand (TH) -1
Brazil (BR) – 1
Mexico (MX) – 1
New Zealand (NZ) – 1
Spain (ES) -1
Turkey (TR)- 1

This represents views from every continent with the exception of Africa. Amazing. From these views, individuals from the following countries actually filled out the form and participated in our experiment.

As one can see, this experiment demonstrates, in a very small way, the power of networking and communicating. We are now living in an interconnected world, where news can travel extremely quickly around the globe. The implications blow my mind.

My wife has asked me to make a clarification. As a classically trained pianist, she wants my readers to know she knows how to read music. In fact, her sight-reading is quite excellent. My comments were focused more on the memorization of the music.

Sorry for any misunderstanding.

I am teaching students about musical intelligence and how it is woven in the world, not teaching musicians.

My wife continues her transformation as a teacher. At breakfast, she shared the above quote with me over a great meal at our favorite breakfast restaurant. She also was excited, sharing other insights that she has gained over the last few days.

She discovered YouTube and the fact she could learn music by watching videos. This after an evening of hearing the chords of Benny and the Jets for a couple hours last night. “I have learned memorized three songs in two days.

She discovered that she can memorize patterns of letters quicker, rather than traditional music notation, more quickly.

This then led her to ask, “If there is so much music that someone can learn by simply watching a video and then playing the piano, how does this shift the role of the teacher?”

Ah, the transformation continues. She is asking the question many of us are asking. This has led us to conversations about implementing individual, passion based projects with her junior high students. Letting them learn the keyboard, but using the song they want rather than being teacher directed.

A wonderful transformation indeed.

Playing Benny and the Jets on Piano