Music to Teach Core Academic Concepts: A Look at Rhythm, Rhyme Results

One of the most popular posts on the Economic Sounds and Sights blog is a post that contains a link to the rap, Demand, Supply, by Rhythm, Rhyme, Results (RRR). If you work with middle or high school students, or you are a parent, you might be interested in learning more about these catchy, educational tunes.

Information from the RRR website:

"An extraordinary emphasis on assessing information recollection through standardized testing has subjected teachers and students to closer scrutiny. Researchers and educators note that some of the greatest problems in classroom education are the wide disparity of preparation of students, a variety of learning problems encountered, outdated or insufficient amount of teaching materials, and a lack of teaching tools for alternative learning styles."

"Textbooks alone have limited ability to engage students. Disengaged students often underachieve."

"RRR’s academic supplements assist in addressing all of these problems as well as bridging race, gender, and socio-economic divisions. Mnemonic devices enhance retention and are particularly effective with students who have visual learning disabilities, language difficulties, or poor reading skills; they appeal to a wide range of students and permit difficult information to be presented in an appealing and memorable manner.

As more schools embrace digital content they are able to access materials with fewer capital outlays, storage issues, and problems of theft or damage. RRR’s media library grows seamlessly and can be downloaded or streamed into homes or classrooms worldwide 24 hours a day."

Below is a video from Teacher Tube, using RRR's Photosynthesis rap along with slides created by a teacher, "Mr. D".

Photosynthesis Rap from RRR, along with related teaching resources

RRR's educational music page features math, science, language arts, and social studies songs, which can be purchased from their website, as well as through the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3

I couldn't find any scholarly articles to provide data regarding the effectiveness of this teaching strategy. If you are a school psychology, music, education, or special education professor or graduate student in need of an interesting research project, this might be the a good choice for you!

MICOLE: Open-source multi-modal software supports cooperative learning among sighted and visually impaired children

According to an article on the ICT Results website, a project called "MICOLE" explores the ways multi-modal computing can support co-operative learning among sighted and visually impaired children by harnessing the sense of touch through haptic input devices, and providing a means to produce pictures that can be felt.

This is a quote from the article:
“Adding the sense of touch to information and communication technology is just getting to the point where it can be commercialised,” Raisamo continues. “The first people to benefit are people with disabilities, especially people who are blind or have visual impairment. The more senses you can use, the more multi-modal your computer interface, the more inclusive the technology can be.”










MICOLE stands for Multimodal Collaboration Environment for Inclusion of Visually Impaired Children.

MICOLE is an open-source project. You can download the software and SDK (MICOLELib) from the website. There also is an on-line support forum and a list of publications.

From the MICOLE project website:
"The work in the MICOLE project aims at developing a system that supports collaboration, data exploration, communication and creativity of visually impaired and sighted children. In addition to the immediate value as a tool the system will have societal implications through improved inclusion of the visually disabled in education, work, and society in general. While the main activity is the construction of the system, several other supporting activities are needed, especially empirical research of collaborative and cross-modal haptic interfaces for visually impaired children."

According to an article about MICOLE on the Axistive website:

"Among the interfaces and application prototypes that have been developed are an electronic browser, rhythm reproduction, Post-It notes with a haptic bar code, virtual maracas (percussion instruments), a tactile maze game, memory games, a haptic version of Pong and explorative learning of the internal layers of the earth."

Related:

Hands on Learning for the Visually Impaired

Multisensory User Interface