Educause Note – The Educause Conference in Denver was fantastic.� Over 6,000 educators were there, along with 1000 guests tuned in from a distance.� Jim Collins, of “Good to Great” fame, was a keynote speaker.� What an inspiration.� I spent much time in the exhibitors area watching demonstrations.� It is amazing what developments are taking place.� The technology is allowing for even greater mobility and getting more creative with highly effective collaboration.� Watch for Google Wave to explode in this regard.� It�allows for�collaboration in ways not imagined before.� See me if you want to experiment with it. It is not widely available yet but I do have a limited number of permissions.
What If We Had No Recorded Music – Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Professor of Law, gave a very stimulating presentation at Educause about the need to rethink the copyright law.� Lessig argued for�an “open access” copyright movement in education.� Of particular interest to me was his reference to John Philip Sousa, the entertainer and composer (Star Spangled Banner among many other marches).��Sousa was outspoken in his resistance to the phonograph that Edison had invented in 1877.� Here�are some amusing�statements he made about the detrimental impact the phonograph would have.
“SWEEPING across the country with the speed of a transient fashion in slang or Panama hats, political war cries or popular novels, comes now the mechanical device to sing for us a song or play for us a piano, in substitute for human skill, intelligence, and soul. Right here is the menace in machine-made music! The first rift in the lute has appeared. The cheaper of these instruments of the home are no longer being purchased as formerly, and all because the automatic music devices are usurping their places. And what is the result? The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technic, it will be simply a question of time when the amateur disappears entirely, and with him a host of vocal and instrumental teachers, who will be without field or calling….Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?…� When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabies, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery?…Let us not hamper it with a machine that tells the story day by day, without variation, without soul, barren of the joy, the passion, the ardor that is the inheritance of man alone.”
John Philip Sousa, “The Menace of Mechanical Music,?? Appleton’s Magazine, Vol. 8 (1906)
I remain convinced that internet and technology developments will�produce changes that are as radical and far-reaching in education as the phonograph has done for music.�Each change will�inspire innovators and inventors to�find new ways that meet interests and needs.� To be sure, not all developments will last, just as eight track and cassettes are largely�unused.� Click through tracks or fastforward through magnetic tape.��What a bother. �They did, however, make way for CDs, Ipods, and my newest favorite – Pandora, which I listen to on my mobile device.
And,�as an amateur musician from that great bluegrass oral tradition,� I listen carefully, over and over, and try to imitate the sounds that�Sousa’s menacing descendants play.� The phonograph did not kill the soul of music.� Technology will not kill the desire or need to learn.� In time, we look back� in education and say, “Go back?� No way.”� We could go back, but we won’t because each step along the way we will glean what serves us well and discard the rest, or try to preserve it…just in case.
Occasionally, I get out my turntable and records for the fun of it but the limitations become evident quickly and back into the box it goes.
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