High School

Throughout nearly a score of years teaching AP calculus and college calculus, I have composed a number of songs to introduce, summarize, and solidify concepts. Not only do songs help pedagogically, they create an atmosphere of joy and excitement in the classroom. I will not only share songs that cover major topics in calculus, we will also discuss the fill in the blank method along with ways you can have students compose songs "live." Be prepared to sing along!

Music has long been recognized as an effective tool to help young children learn, but this teaching/learning strategy is rarely used at the high school and college levels. As a doctoral student of education (and a high school chemistry teacher) I am currently in the beginning stages of exploring topics to research for a dissertation. At this point in the process, the only idea I am passionate about is the general concept of using music to teach and learn STEM-related content. However, below I have included a few areas of possible research interest with respect to this general topic.

Encouraging students to express themselves via their own music surely promotes inclusiveness and equity in the classroom. Do these benefits also occur when the instructor writes or chooses the music, which is perhaps more common?

We are a group of high school math teachers (and college math professors) that encourage the use of song to teach math concepts. We are specifically passionate about supporting girls in STEM classes and careers. We have made 4 videos now, and some are really gaining attention on YouTube. In our presentation, we will discuss how the songs we choose help facilitate math learning and promote excitement in math class.

The possible benefits of using music to enhance learning of STEM content are numerous, diverse, and largely unproven. We sought to determine which of these possible benefits are most likely to be experienced by undergraduate students, and perhaps most worthy of further investigation. 440 students in eight physiology courses at two mid-sized American universities were asked to rate the usefulness of five short instructor-penned physiology songs, and to explain why these songs would or would not be useful study aids.

Thousands of STEM songs exist (the singaboutscience.org database alone has over 7000), but they vary widely in how readily a teacher can use them in her class. For some teachers, it may be enough that a song exists on the learning objective at hand, but for (probably, most) teachers, a song is not a self-contained lesson and it makes a huge difference if the song is supported by accompanying resources.

In this session, we introduce Deltaphone, a browser-based blocks programming language for generating musical scores. Just as learners used Logo's turtle geometry to explore mathematical space in a relative way, learners use Deltaphone's interval-based motion to explore musical space. The emphasis on intervals means that certain computational and musical ideas can be investigated quite naturally in code. For example, musical structures can be more easily abstracted into functions and reused in a variety of musical contexts, and custom chords and progressions can be built.

Numbers Never Lie will be presented as a music video that explores how statistics can both illuminate and distort issues pertaining to politics and social justice. It is produced by Rock In The Classroom which is a nonprofit organization promoting creative arts in education programs. A draft of the video will be included through the email link on the proposal page. The song examines how statistics can be a powerful tool that can empower historically marginalized populations and bolster arguments on the need to take action on environmental issues.

Between 2005 and 2017, three musical theatre productions were self-penned and produced, all promoting understanding of key concepts in the historical and theoretical development of Physics. This session will outline some of the successes this approach to pedagogy has had and the extent to which musical theatre can enable the understanding and enjoyment of complex concepts in the teaching and learning of Physics, as well giving all those involved an understanding that creativity and imagination are behind all intellectual and artistic endeavours.

The works discussed will include:

The video poster will be a brief outline of a project funded by the Stephen Hawking Foundation to create five music videos about high school physics. Research was done prior to their creation to inform the best approach to the song writing, video production, and accompanying resources and evaluation was conducted on the efficacy of the videos and their appeal to students and teachers.

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