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The kind of product I shall pick on here has the form of a game: the player gets into situations that require an appropriate action in order to get on to the next situation along the road to the final goal. So far, this sounds like "tainment." The "edu" part comes from the fact that the actions are schoolish exercises such as those little addition or multiplication sums that schools are so fond of boring kids with. It is clear enough why people do this. Many who want to control children (for example, the less imaginative members of the teaching profession or parents obsessed with kids' grades) become green with envy when they see the energy children pour into computer games. So they say to themselves, "The kids like to play games, we want them to learn multiplication tables, so everyone will be happy if we make games that teach multiplication." The result is shown in a rash of ads that go like this: "Our Software Is So Much Fun That The Kids Don't Even Know That They Are Learning" or "Our Games Make Math Easy."

What is worst about school curriculum is the fragmentation of knowledge into little pieces. This is supposed to make learning easy, but often ends up depriving knowledge of personal meaning and making it boring. Ask a few kids: the reason most don't like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it is utterly boring.

game designers have a better take on the nature of learning than curriculum designers. They have to. Their livelihoods depend on millions of people being prepared to undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex game. If their public failed to learn, they would go out of business. In the case of curriculum designers, the situation is reversed: their business is boosted whenever students fail to learn and schools clamor for a new curriculum!

Download the files to your Mp3 player and listen on the go

Deep-listening experiences, wrapped in a pedagogy of music listening, take students far beyond the surface of their barely noticeable surround-sound environment and into the nature of music and its workings.

Attentive-listening experiences occur when teachers point out specified points of focus, put questions or challenges to the listeners, or merge graphics or visuals with the sound experience itself. Graphs or maps of particular musical features can be helpful, since visual cues may enhance listening. Teachers can provide diagrams of the contours of the melody or depict rhythmic components of a piece through iconic symbols-staff notation, splotches of color, or geometric shapes, for example. Instruments, real or illustrated, can focus student attention on their entrance or continuing presence in the music.

Engaged listening invites listeners to enter into the groove or the flow of the music, pick a part to contribute, and consequently feel more involved in the music. A phenomenon of "participatory consciousness"[ 5] unfolds as engaged listeners find their place in the music, find something in the music to hang on to (a melody, a pulse, an ostinato, a groove), and select a contribution to make back to the music. In this way, they connect with the music, joining the recorded musicians and their live participant-colleagues in a musical team.