Music Monday: Music and Learning

Today's music calls for a longer introduction.

See, in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders series, the Harpers of Pern are, among other things, the teachers of children and keepers of culture. Being harpers, they teach through music.

As a child of the '80's, I grew up with Sesame Street and Schoolhouse Rock, programs that used music as a tool to teach anything from grammar, to math, to civics and socialization. I know that there have been many catchy tunes that I would find myself singing over the course of my life, many different lyrics I've learned.  When an uncle showed me pictures from his time in Austria, I recognized Eidelweiss from the "Sound of Music" song.

Not Abandoned, just Quiet

I've been very busy, as usual.  Summer business classes are over, the fall engineering class has begun.  I think I forgot how comparatively easy business classes are vs. the mathematics of engineering.

I finally read "Lean In" over Labor Day weekend, and will probably write something about that eventually.  The short-short version is that it was better than I expected.

Chorus is in rehearsal.  Over the summer I started taking real dance for the first time ever, (Well, I square danced in college as part of a club.  I'm not counting that.)  and I'm keeping it up this year.  It's not martial arts, but it is fun, challenging, kinesthetic, and these things make me happy.

I plan to pull together thoughts I've learned about online classes.  Things that work, things that don't work for me, ways instructors can help out distance learning students.  It's going to take some time, since I have other higher priorities right now.

The whole point being, I'm not doing a lot of long-form blogging right now.  Feel free to follow me on Twitter (@stargazer412) and Tumblr (a similar handle, linked to my Twitter account) for the ultra-short and short forms.  When I read the news, I usually queue a lot of articles about a variety of topics: books, movies, geeky things (both SF / Fantasy and STEM), career and business articles.