Tinkerings

This morning I wandered over to the TED site to see what new talks might interest me, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a talk by David Byrne of Talk Heads fame doing a talk on how architecture has impacted the evolution of music.  I have always been drawn to “off the wall” music types that can demonstrate a truly educated mind.  Personally, I think David Byrne may be a genius on many levels.  But  I digress.

Byrne talked about how music changed through the centuries as the architecture used to house listeners also changed.  He covered the gambit from small store-front bars like those on Music Row in Nashville or Beale Street in Memphis to grand opera houses, concert halls, and stadiums.  In each of those settings, the creation of music changed to fit the audience, acoustics, technology, and more.  Store-front bars have little reverberation, so the music has to be played loud to get over the drinking crowd.  Stadiums have lots of echo, so rock bands started slowing things down and writing rock ballads in order for the music to come through more clearly.

Although he didn’t mention them, my mind thought back to the Beatles in the early 60′s and the frustration they had trying to play their music in places like Shea Stadium.  The technology of the time was simply not enough to boost their sound over the screams of ecstatic fans.  As a result, the Beatles stopped touring and moved all their music to the studio.  They had originally created music that would sound good on the radio and plastic albums.  It couldn’t be recreated in a stadium.  In the mid to late 60s they no longer cared about the radio as much.  Stadiums were out of the picture.  Their music took several new twists and turns and demonstrated their true music genius over and over.  You can hear this most eloquently in a YouTube video shared by a friend of mine on Facebook.

Near the end of his talk, Byrne moved his argument to nature.  Birds that sing in the canopies of forests have a much different, higher pitched call than those that sing on the floor of a forest, or even those that sing in the open fields.  Each has a call acoustically adapted to its environment.

This naturally gave me the leap to the classroom.  How does the architecture and technology of our classrooms change the way we teach?  I think we are all familiar with the industrial model of the classroom with a black or white board in front of nice straight rows of desks.  The teacher stands at the front of the class and writes notes that children copy into their notebooks.  All is quiet and orderly.  This model is the perfect description of the classes I attended from 1st grade through most of my college education.  Teacher control worked.

Today, our students have been brought up in a different environment.  Our classrooms no longer look like their world.  They are wired to cell phones, iPods, PCs, TVs, and more.  They listen to one thing while they read something else.  All the while images are on the TV with the sound muted.  In fact, this is quickly becoming my life at home.  NCIS is playing on the TV with no sound.  I don’t need it because it is the 4th time I’ve seen this episode.  Music is playing over iTunes, Slacker, or YouTube while I read the latest news online.

These kids won’t….maybe can’t….sit in straight rows and listen to our engaging lectures one more day.  They check out.  They are bored.  They act up.  And they constantly reach for the technology we deprive them of in our classrooms.

Interactive White Boards will only make a difference if lessons are designed for kids to come and work at the board.  PCs in the back of the room will only matter if kids are able to use them to find things that interest them.  The technology of our world has re-wired the brains of our students.

How is that evolving your instruction?  Your classroom layout?  Your management techniques?  Your assessment strategies?