MIND, music and math
When the MIND Institute first launched a pilot project to four schools and 102 Orange County, CA, students, it relied on face-to-face instruction to train teachers in course content. Now, however, the institute will provide online curriculum training, enabling teachers to spend more time in the classroom.
The MIND (Music Intelligence Neural Development) Institute, which is affiliated with the University of California Irvine, has developed an academic curriculum that integrates mathematics with music training. Called spatial-temporal reasoning development, the program combines piano lessons with fun math problems to teach children to grasp underlying concepts and to manipulate shapes in their minds.
“With 75 teachers in different regions, we needed an interactive solution to deliver ongoing training and support for our program,” says Dr. Gordon Shaw, professor emeritus of physics at UC Irvine.
The new system, which results from a partnership between Eloquent and FileNet provides teachers with any-time, anywhere access to curriculum content in a searchable format.
“With many more schools planning to participate this year, the system will enable us to deliver the curriculum instruction to our teachers throughout the year,” explains Dr. Linda Rodgers, the MIND Institute’s Education Program director. “It enables instructors to search for specific lessons, themes or concepts and view a demonstration of the curriculum in action. The feedback we have received has been phenomenally positive.”
The MIND Institute was formed in 1997 by a team of scientists conducting research that used music as a window into higher brain function.