Book+Reviews

Please feel free to share your thoughts about any of our class readings or discussions here.

Daniel H. Pink. __A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the__ __Conceptual Age; "Why right brainers will rule the world (//Wired)//__. This book is in the Sprague Library Collection. Daniel Pink asserts that Americans need to be educated to work in areas that involve creativity, design, require empathy and that help people find meaning in their lives. Pink believes that our society is rapidly moving to one that will value people who have "right-brained" skills, in other words the designers, nurses, ministers, and writers. Music teachers are not specifically included in Pink's list but creativity is a huge element of success and happiness in music education. It did not surprise me that of the 10 people present in class one week, 5 were left-handed (right brained) and 2 were ambidextrous (using both sides of the brain). In his book, Pink encourages people to aspire to use both the strengths of our objective, detailed left brains and boost our creative, random, empathetic, and spiritual right brains. Only be doing so will we learn to create experiences and products that will facilitate a sense of meaning and be valued in our country. Lee Koss

Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. __The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life.__ I purchased this book from Barnes and Noble.com The authors are a psychologist wife and conductor/educator husband. I especially enjoyed Benjamin Zander's many accounts about the music high school that he directs and which has an affiliation with the New England Conservatory in Boston. The school sounds wonderful and is a world away from the experiences I had at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the '70's. He writes about the concept of "giving an A" (Hi Chris) and the freedom to try new experiences that "giving an A" can engender in a student. Lee Koss

Scott Watson, Ed. __Technology Guide for Music Educators.__ Available from Soundtree but I may have purchased it elsewhere. This well-organized book mirrors our course to a great degree. Some of the material is very advanced but I think that this is a very good reference, with lots of websites and music software that I had never seen. The comparison charts in the music production and technology-assisted learning chapters represent an enormous amount of work and probably save hundreds of pages of description of each product. At the same time, space is given to what I assume the editor considers the "best of the best" so that we can see the interface of the product. Lee Koss

Jane M. Healy, PhD. __How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds--For Better and Worse.__ This book is in the Sprague Library Collection. In this thoughtful book Jane Healy presents both positives and negative opinions regarding the use of computers by students. In brief, she believes that computers should not be used until age seven because children will otherwise miss out on many foundations for learning, ex. playing with legos, water play, painting, interacting with other children, active play, etc. While of course these activities are found in a good preschool and elementary school she is concerned that using computers at a young age may result in children not learning to integrate elements of early learning. She writes, "Having a computer do too much integrating (e.g. combining picture, sound, movement) so the child simply experiences rather than coordinates it all himself, eliminates an active process that may prove to be irreplaceable." Healy writes that use of technology can be positive in the elementary grades and higher. On the other hand, she makes a cogent argument that children still need to learn handwriting, spelling and math facts on paper because doing so helps the child's brain move knowledge into long term memory more effectively than doing drills on a computer. Lee Koss

David T Gordon. __The Digital Classroom--How Technology is Changing the Way We Teach and Learn.__ This book is in the Sprague Library Collection. This book is an anthology of articles previously published in the //Harvard Education Letter// that discuss the impact of technology on today's students and teachers. The articles are clearly written and accessible to the reader. Howard Gardner's article, //Can Technology Exploit our Many Ways of Knowing? (2000),// supports the use of technology in teaching. Gardner writes, "the new technologies make the materials vivid, easy to access, and fun to play with--and they readily address the multiple ways of knowing that humans possess. Moreover, for the first time ever, it is possible for teachers and other experts to examine work efficiently, at long distances, and to provide quick and relevant feedback in forms that are useful to students." (p. 35) I believe that I will see if Sprague Library subscribes to the //Harvard Education Letter.// According to this book 60,000 educators, administrators, etc do so.