IMPACT Conference 2016

We start with the premise that contrary to the notion of “students as blank slates,” children actually begin their educational journeys with a great deal of know-how and curiosity about the world around them. Our job as teachers should be to help develop this curiosity, and build on our students’ already forming intuitions—what our students already know how to do and understand. The interactive computer music program, Impromptu, with its multiple media, multiple sensory modalities and multiple representations has served as mediator in helping students to understand and effectively use this apparently troublesome mathematics. Engaging both music and math together in an interdisciplinary fashion has the ability to heighten the children’s perceptions about the real world applicability of mathematical principles beyond the confines of textbook based problems. Rather than being an abstract idea, Impromptu makes it possible for users actually to hear the math happening.