Amy Burns wrote and intriguing article called Thinking Outside the Music Box: Using Digital Tools to Teach Music. Immediately one could tell that she was an enthusiastic and energetic teacher, even after 20 years of teaching at Far Hills Country Day School in New Jersey. Amy’s strong drive lies in her steadfast commitment to her learners and a forward-thinking embrace of music technology.
Enhancing Music Education
Burns realizes the importance of music education in the development of children’s brains and the correlation it has to deeper critical thinking. Technology can enhance the teaching process and reveal complex avenues of learning that on the surface do not appear.
One avenue of learning is musical composition. Burns has seen a tremendous increase in musical understanding through collaborative software tools that lead to complex musical creations. Seven-year-olds are developing melody lines that become vastly layered, multi-instrumental professionally sounding songs. A Cloud-based recording studio makes collaboration easy between users and encourages ambitious students to continue classroom assignments at home.
Creating a Happy Learning Environment
In the interview, Burns paints a fascinating picture of her whole learner environment. The classroom is filled with singing, dancing, performing, instrument playing, and complex music composition; every student marching to the beat of their own drum. Technology is Amy Burns’ best friend, colleague, and production department – all wrapped into one. It’s an infectiously happy learning environment steered at the helm by a remarkable educator.
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Greenville County Schools has had a strong focus on technology since the early 2000s. The Board of Trustees and the last two superintendents have understood the benefit of students engaging with technology to learn key content and skills. They began giving devices to students in 2006 as a pilot to see what was possible. Those were the early days of personalized learning, before anyone used that term to describe their initiatives. In 2006, Greenville used the term “one to one” to describe the technology initiative and rolled out several thousand devices to students. Several years ago, a re-visioning of that initiative took place and typical to the Greenville way, we learned from our mistakes. While the students enjoyed interacting with the devices, we found that there was a strong emphasis on the device and not enough emphasis on the learning taking place because of the device. That, and several other things that emerged, caused us to re-think what we wanted this initiative to look like. Today, personalized learning looks very different than it did back in 2006!
Creating a Strong Vision
Many districts overlook departments outside the Academics and Technology Divisions. However, when you embark on a Personalized Learning initiative of this magnitude, it is critical that all departments understand the district vision. Human Resources will play a vital role in dealing with potential HR issues. Finance must understand the initiative in order to budget for it and sustain it long term. Facilities must understand how a device for every child impacts building design. A Personalized Learning initiative impacts every department in the district.
Professional development is key for any large initiative, particularly one that asks teachers to change how they teach. Greenville recognized this early on and identified a key partner to help us on this exciting journey. 
Greenville County Schools re-boot of their Personalized Learning initiative under the new vision began last year with the roll out of 7,500 devices to ten pilot schools. These schools had a year of training in the Discovery Leader Corps prior to receiving the devices. The implementation in all ten schools has been exciting for the school communities and the students in those schools. While GCS has had multiple successful personalized learning initiatives in place at several schools since 2010, a rollout of this many devices was unprecedented. The initiative has been widely successful the first year thanks to the leadership of the principals and teachers in the schools.
K-2: Number symbols and names for numbers 1- 20, numbers and number lines, basic addition and subtraction
Grades K-2
Grades 3-5
Math topic: Probability
Finally, the probability of selecting the correct numbered ball from the fourth canister is 1/40.
What’s the capital of Iowa?
And where are the rest of the students? AWOL. Having a rich fantasy life. Working on a series of Baroque doodles or drafting the great American novel, one clandestine note at a time. They’re bored. Indifferent. Ripe for rebellion. And can you blame them? The teacher has made it clear that their presence is only required so the body count matches the attendance sheet. Participation is strictly optional—maybe even unwelcome from students with inquisitive minds or an argumentative streak. And that’s fine with them. School is simply a rehearsal for retirement, without the cane or walker.
But what if teachers do want to dig in and try some rigorous thinking? Really probe kids to find out what they’re wondering besides Is it lunchtime yet? They’re not likely to get many takers. Any kid who’s old enough to tie his shoes without assistance is too savvy to play that game because from the first day of kindergarten, we teach kids how to do school. The teacher asks a question. It has one answer. He already has that answer, but he wants to hear it from a kid. In return for the right answer, the respondent will get a smile or perfunctory “that’s right.” After a bit more lecturing, the class will get another question to answer. That’s how you do school, and woe unto the student who gives the wrong answer, or worse, asks a question back! Questions posed by students frequently earn the curt reply, “We’re not talking about that now.”
The structure of an inquiry discussion is relatively simple. The teacher asks an open-ended question and solicits many responses to the same question. Then comes a follow-up question to probe thinking. Finally, the teacher may Insert relevant expert knowledge that students can’t or don’t know but need in order to build on their thoughts. And then it starts all over again. A new question that will move the discussion to the next level.
But here’s the good news. While teachers have to work hard, students have to work even harder. Inquiry questions catapult kids out of their La-Z-Boys. Faced with a single substantive question that seems to have lots of answers, their brains kick in like the search engine on a computer. What do I know about this? Signals go out in every direction. Synapses crackle. The hunt is on and it looks different in every head. One student is searching for facts while another thinks in pictures. Some dredge up personal experiences, others work from logic or extrapolate from parallel situations. The point is, they’re all on task, rooting around in their heads for details, examples, evidence, ideas, theories and speculations. The teacher listens, thinks and asks another question and perhaps another to push students’ thinking. The result is that kids get smarter through their own efforts. They construct meaning by interacting with others, rather than waiting in a persistent vegetative state for another delivery of information.
You may be thinking that inquiry was a great idea in ancient Athens where people like Socrates had time on their hands and servants to tidy up after them. Whereas, teachers are alone on the front lines of the education battle, with jumbo-sized helpings of responsibility and little support. Probing questions and long answers require time that they don’t have. It takes patience, which may also be in short supply. Plus, teachers using the inquiry method must attend to every word their students utter, and evaluate both the articulation and the thinking behind it. That’s a hell of a lot more work than asking Who was the fourth president of the United States?
Training in the inquiry method conditions the brain to raise basic issues, probe beneath the surface of things and pursue problematic areas of thought. It also helps students:
My standard joke was “Who cares? These guys aren’t scientists. If a doctor told you that you had cancer, would you seek out Marco Rubio or Rick Scott for a second opinion?”
Back in the 1920’s there was another minor challenge to science education in the form of a little event called The Scopes Trial when teacher John Scopes, down in Tennessee, was put on trial for teaching evolution, i.e., the ridiculous notion that man was somehow descended from the same family as the apes. 
And my answer was, “Well, I’m not happy about one part of it… that you’ll probably be committed to an asylum after a 2300 mile round trip on a bus filled with teenagers, but on the other hand, I admire your sacrifice, not for the issue, but for the sake of the kids learning a great civics lesson because that’s exactly what good citizens are supposed to do. When you disagree with a law, you peacefully protest and make your voice heard. It’s a great lesson for the kids in civics and government.”