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Chad Kafka shared: I will be presenting at the Google Education Summit during June 17-21 in Southeast Wisconsin!  It's a week long event focused on using Google in Education and participants get a Chromebook!   Here's a deal if you sign up, if you use the coupon code KAFKA, you get $100 off your registration!  Check it out.

Has anyone ever used something like this in his classroom?  I have students that greatly enjoy having some music playing in the background (I limit it to classical piano, mostly).  Anyone know of a study that demonstrates if this helps students learn?

I've used Simply Noise in my classroom of 5th graders and I have had mixed results. Some kids really like it and some hate it. I tend to prefer the brown noise as opposed to white or pink noise. I think I might make less of a deal of it with my next class next year and just use it for a little longer period of time to get a better read on its effectiveness. I took my students to on a field trip to Environmental Systems Inc in Brookfield, WI and they use brown noise generators throughout their office/cubicle area to mask ambient noise. I found it very soothing. They used to have it timed to go off at 4pm and they found that their employees subconsciously sensed it was time to leave for the day. Not wanting to encourage them to leave early, they decided to gradually bring the volume of the noise down over the course of 30 minutes and that took care of their issue. Not necessarily applicable to what you were asking about, but kind of interesting.

The article is mostly an interview with Covenant Eyes, who makes accountability software and recently produced a free e-book for parents. I downloaded it to check it out and ended up reading the first four chapters just today. Chapters are short and include discussion questions. For a non-WELS resource, so far they do a fairly good job of being gospel-centered/grace-driven. Looks like a great resource.