How Does Music Stimulate Left and Right Brain Function and Why is this Important in Music Teaching?
By janice | May 16, 2012
Music research indicates that music education not only has the benefits of self-expression and enjoyment, but is linked to improved cognitive function (Schellenberg), increased language development from an early age (Legg), and positive social interaction (Netherwood). Music listening and performance impacts the brain as a whole, stimulating both halves – the analytical brain and the subjective-artistic brain, affecting a child’s overall cognitive development and possibly increasing a child’s overall intellectual capacity more than any other activity affecting the brain’s bilaterism (Yoon).
How does music stimulate the right and left hemispheres?
We often hear about an analytical person, like an accountant, being left-brained while a more “free spirit”, like an artist or poet, is considered “right-brained”. Yet music research indicates that the average professional musician or composer, despite incorrect personality stereotypes, encompasses both the analytical traits of the left brain and the more creative aspects of the right brain.
The right hemisphere engages in synthesizing several different parts to create a cohesive whole when processing new information (Williams). Almost nonlinear in processing information, the right brain is adept at visual imagery. The left hemisphere, sequential and linear in its data processing, moves step by step when processing new information (Williams). Just like any part of the body, any activity that stimulates the brain helps increase its overall functionality. While most activities like visual art, computing, and language largely work in only one hemisphere, music is one of the few activities that stimulates both sides of the brain.
The right brain, often considered the more subjective and creative hemisphere, focuses on the melody in music. The left hemisphere, considered the analytical part of the brain, is responsible for the understanding of musical structure and motor skills, such as playing the violin (Yoon). Rhythmic structures uniquely affect the brain extensively, such as supplementary motor areas and the basal ganglia, especially when compared to musical styles lacking a steady beat pattern (Phillips-Silver). Nonmusical activities, such as walking or martial arts, also aid the brain bilaterally when combined with a steady rhythm (Manjul).
Music Listening vs. Music Performance/Activity
Music research indicates that both music listening and music performance have significant benefits. Several years ago popular culture was abuzz with the Mozart Effect, the incorrect notion that simply listening to Mozart for several minutes a day increased a child’s IQ on a permanent basis. While subsequent music research indicates Mozart Effect does not exist, there have been several studies that indicate the listening to music does have significant physiological benefits.
- The act of listening to music has several noted benefits (Yoon):
- Stress relief and emotional release
- Increased creativity and abstract thinking
- Positive influences on the bodies overall energy levels and heart rhythm
Music research on music education suggests that musical activities like dancing, playing an instrument, and singing demonstrate long term benefits in memory, language development, concentration, and physical agility. (Netherwood, Schellenberg). Added memory and language skills help the average musician gain a better understanding of human language than those who do not engage in musical activities. (Moreno) Long term cognitive and language skills increased for student musicians who maintained long term commitments to music by studying an instrument or engaging in vocal performance.
Key Points
Music research shows that music education benefits students notably by its positive effects on the brain’s functions.
Some key points to remember:
- Music research indicates the music education benefits students by increasing self-expression, cognitive abilities, language development, and agility.
- Music is unique in its ability to affect more than a single brain hemisphere, incorporating both the right and left sides of the brain.
- While music listening has marked benefits regarding physiological effects of stress, playing an instrument or taking vocal lessons offers a marked increase in the benefits of music education, especially in regards to memory, language, and cognitive development.
Share your Feedback:
Please feel free to share your thoughts on the benefits of music education in the comments section below. Networking is a great way to be informed of the research so that we can educate students and schools about the great benefits of learning music.We’d love to hear from you!!
SOURCES:
Legg, R. (2009). Using music to accelerate language learning: an experimental study. Research in Education, (82), 1-12. Retrieved from the Professional Development Collection database.
Schellenberg, E. (2005). Music and Cognitive Abilities. Current Directions in Psychological Science (Wiley-Blackwell). 317-320.
Vitale, J.L. (2011). Music Makes You Smarter: A New Paradigm for Music Education?
Perceptions and Perspectives from Four Groups of Elementary Education Stakeholders. Canadian Journal of Education, 34(3), 317-343.
Netherwood, C. (2007). Music to your ears. Autralian Parents, 64.
Yoon, J. (2000, January 1). Music in the Classroom: Its Influence on Children’s Brain Development, Academic Performance, and Practical Life Skills.
Phillips-Silver, Jessica. (2009, June). On the Meaning of Movement in Music, Development, and the Brain. Contemporary Music Review. Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 293-314.
Williams, Linda. Teaching for the two-sided mind: a guide to right brain/left brain education. Simon & Schuster. 1986.
Bajaj, Manjul. Personal Growth – Cross train your brain. Lifepositive.com. http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/Personal_Growth/Cross_train_your_brain12003.asp.
Moreno. S. (2009). Can Music Influence Language and Cognition?. Contemporary Music Review, 28 (3), 329.
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Topics: Music Advocacy, Research into the Benefits of Music
Confused About Interactive Whiteboards?
By janice | May 10, 2012
Interactive Whiteboards can be really confusing: Especially if you’re looking around at what type to buy or you want to know more about them. And because you’re here reading this, I know you’ve probably found out pretty quickly that different people will tell you completely different stories about them.
Ever since we launched our Interactive Whiteboard Music Resources, we’ve found that teachers often touch base with us just to ask more about using Interactive Whiteboards in the classroom and how to get the best out of them. So I’ve put this article together to explain in just a few dot points on what we’ve learned about Interactive Whiteboards over these past few years. If I can share with you our experiences, then you can go ahead and use this information to help you make a more informed decision about interactive whiteboards for your classroom.
A Hidden Myth about Using Interactive Whiteboard Software
When you go and buy a whiteboard, a sales representative will tell you that you’ll need to go and download the matching software for the whiteboard. So for example if you purchase a SMARTBoard then it’s the SMART Notebook software which is associated with that brand and for Promethean Whiteboards, the software ActiveInspire which is associated with that brand.
Now that may be the case that you are best using the associated brand of software, however…. other brands of software WILL work on the board. We have tested ActiveInspire on a SMARTboard, and SMART Notebook on other whiteboards. It is simply NOT the case that you can only use the supplied software, and you have the choice of what software you’d like to use.
What really runs your interactive whiteboard program is your computer or laptop which is connected to your whiteboard. Think of the whiteboard as simply being a touchable projector screen. So what this means is that no matter what kind of whiteboard you have in the classroom, it’s the software that you install on your computer or laptop that runs it! Interactive Whiteboard Companies want you to believe that you need to use their brand of computer software, but the truth is that you don’t!
After extensive testing of all brands of software available for interactive whiteboard, the best software I can recommend is ActiveInspire from Promethean, and this can be downloaded for free onto any computer and projected onto any Interactive Whiteboard. Even if you have a Mimio or other kind of whiteboard, this software will work because it can be installed on your computer and that is what powers the whiteboard.
If you have a SMARTBoard then you can download their software free with a serial number, however anyone can download ActiveInspire personal edition from the Promethean Planet website, free of charge.
Choosing the Best Resources to use on Your Interactive Whiteboard
When you get started with the interactive whiteboard, you effectively have two choices:
1) You can acquire or write your own prepared lesson plans inside the software for the whiteboard
or
2) You can use websites, web-based software, or stand alone software programs on the whiteboard.
Now we obviously have a preference towards route #1 – as that is the way we have created our interactive whiteboard resources. Here is why we feel that this is a better route, and is the reason why we didn’t create our interactive whiteboard packages as stand-alone content:
1. It is possible for teachers to change the lesson content.
Teachers can go straight into the program and add extra pages or sentences etc into the already existing lesson structure so that it can better suit their classes or teaching style and any changes can easily be saved as you go and change them.
2. You can use the pens and the duster that come with the whiteboard.
Now this seems very obvious, but many web-based software resources won’t enable you to fully use pens or the erase function on an interactive whiteboard. By using lessons inside the whiteboard software you can fully use the pens, dusters and all the other functions of the whiteboard. Now, you may say… ‘I can still use the pens with another program’. That might be true, but the board won’t know what you’ve written on what page, and remember it. It’ll be like taking a transparency, placing it over the computer screen and writing on that. You’ll be able to write something, but once you’ve written it then you’ve got to rub it off and throw it away. Any ways of saving it cause problems, and from our experience using this feature at all massively slows down your computer – as it requires whiteboard software to be running on top of your program.
3. They require no Internet Connection.
Web based materials require a fully functioning, fast internet connection. With prepared materials inside the whiteboard software once the materials are downloaded onto your laptop via CD-Rom, there will be no need for an internet connection. It’s a bit like ITunes where once you’ve downloaded the songs you want, you’ll never have to use an internet connection to access them again because they are now a part of your computer.
4. It helps to better focus your students.
Unlike using web based resources, specific resources written inside whiteboard software won’t suddenly have a pop-up or have any difficult navigation issues. These lessons only show what is required for the students, so you don’t see an entire teacher’s desktop when working from the lessons and the content will fit the whole page without having to continually adjust it.
5. The board becomes your lesson plan
I feel that this is the single biggest reason why resources written inside the software platforms are preferable to stand alone programs. Inside the platform you can step through the activities of the lesson one by one, from a warm-up to an introductory activity, some revision, the main content of your lesson, and then revision concepts and games. You can have everything pre-planned, and because you can edit it you can shuffle about the order of the lesson until you get it perfectly the way you’d like to teach it. With pre-programmed software you are restricted to exactly the way the programmer wrote the software, and activities that you don’t like you are stuck with ‘navigating around’ all the time, in front of the students!
So what do you think?
Do you agree with our premise that using the whiteboard software is preferable to using stand-alone programs? We’d love to hear your experiences. If you have other questions, concerns or stories that you’d like to add to this topic, then please post them in the comment box below to share with our wider teaching community. It’s amazing what we can learn together and how quickly we can learn about new technology when we work on it together as a network.
P.S. Want to check out our materials for interactive whiteboard? Click here to download a free sample of Whiteboard Music Lessons Module One: Introduction to Music.
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Topics: Interactive whiteboards
Five Classroom Movie Projects to Make Learning Fun
By janice | April 27, 2012
Introducing video technology into the classroom can be a great way to engage kids, make learning fun, and help your students develop an interest in technology. Video is an ideal medium for your students to express themselves, and giving them a copy of their project after it is complete is a fun memento parents will cherish for years to come.
Incorporating video projects into your lesson plans shouldn’t take a large financial investment. These days, many affordable digital cameras come with video capabilities, some of them even supporting high-definition functionality. You’ll want to make sure the camera you choose has audio recording functionality as well. Audio will be important for filming your students reciting lines or giving presentations.
The sky is the limit on fun class movie projects that you can do with your students. Here are some suggestions to get your imagination flowing:
- Video pen pals. If your students are learning about a specific language or culture, have them participate in a video pen pals program. You could even do what this class did, and help out a less-fortunate group of students. Through these exchanges, your students will learn cultural awareness, compassion, and social skills.
- Events in History.After your students have learned about an important event in history, have them write a script for the event and act it out. Film their re-enactment, and then let them watch themselves. Encourage them to be creative, but insist they try to be historically accurate. (No, aliens did not assassinate Abraham Lincoln.)
- Claymation classroom. Claymation is a form of stop animation where clay objects are carefully manipulated and photographed, and the photos are strung together to create a video. A claymation project will allow kids to collaborate and use their creativity. Have your students re-create a scene from a famous book, or have them make instructional videos (how birds fly, how photosynthesis works, etc.). You can upload their videos to a service like YouTube or Vimeo to make them shareable. Creating a claymation video can be a lot of work, but having your students work in groups will teach them how to cooperate and compromise, and will help them learn planning skills.
- Rapping ‘Bout ‘Rithmetic. Kids usually relate well to music. If your class seems musically inclined, consider asking them to produce a music video. They could write rhymes about math, history, literature or science, and turn them into an educational rap video. You could even take it further and have them participate in rap competitions where they battle each other for the best rhymes. Encourage them to try to make their raps as informative as possible, and to keep the language clean. This can teach them language skills, and give them a method of studying that may increase retention.
- Stand Up for a Cause. Find a cause your students are passionate about, and have them create a persuasive video that appeals to others for support. For example, does your school’s athletic field need new bleachers? Is the local park polluted with litter? Is your school losing funding for much-needed programs? Have your students create a moving video, and distribute it throughout the community. You never know what a difference your students could make. What a wonderful way to encourage community involvement!
Video is undeniably a fantastic learning medium. Encourage your class to have fun, be creative, and be proud of their own creations. The classroom should be a place where children enjoy learning and feel involved throughout the process, and you can foster that enjoyment with video.
Sarah is an Outreach Coordinator for Voices.com, a site connects businesses with professional voice talents. She enjoys helping potential voice talent find creative ways to use their talents.
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Topics: Uncategorized
