Teacher Bytes

I just got though watching the Nintendo presentation at the E3 Expo and came away with two thoughts. First, Nintendo might have read my previous blog post about the possibilities of the Nintendo DS becoming an educational tool. Company officials talked about the various uses outside of gaming such as looking up airline information at airports, keeping track of baseball scores and ordering food at Safeco Field in Seattle. It was further intimated that Nintendo was doing a variety of tests to see what a DS could do.

The other announcement that intrigued me was Wii Music. This game allows four people to play a choice of 50 instruments to make music easily. The demonstration had Nintendo officials jamming to the theme of Super Mario. Unlike Guitar Hero or Rock Band, Wii Music allows players to have more control over their music by using the Wiimote to play an instrument. The software takes advantage of the balance board to help play drums. Finally, one player can play a song with different instruments then combine the effort to make a music video of a virtual one-man-band.

Wii Music might become a useful tool for music teachers to introduce students to making their own music then gradually move up to real instruments. Who knows, you might see a group of students playing in a Wii Music band on some parent night in the near future.

A friend of mine, who is a Pharmacist at our local Kroger supermarket, told me about a little in-house contest they have. The older employees will bring in old-school vinyl album covers and place them in different groupings. The object of the game is to guess the groupings such as dead artists. I asked my friend if the older employees usually wins since the albums would be considered oldies and released before the high-school aged employees were born. “Oh no,” replied my friend, ” the (high-school aged) kids usually win because they just do a Google search to get the answers.” Interesting how much research skills our students have but we sometimes don’t see it because we don’t understand the tools students like to use.