- Dr. Gordon Shaw Opens M.I.N.D.
Institute
- Source: AMC Music News, American Music
Conference
-
- On March 2 Dr. Gordon Shaw officially opened the new
- offices of the Music Intelligence Neural Development
- (M.I.N.D.) Institute in Irvine (California). The new
- headquarters will house the research team that developed
- the Spatial-Temporal Animation Reasoning (STAR)
- software that has been so successful, combined with music
- lessons, in teaching kids proportional math.
-
- In a press release dated February 24, 2000, Dr. Shaw
- explained that a curriculum combining piano lessons,
- educational math software and fun math problems can
- help second graders achieve scores on certain tests
- comparable to fourth graders, according to studies by the
- Music Intelligence Neural Development (MIND) Institute.
-
- The curriculum uses piano instruction to enhance the
- brain's ability to learn, then allows children to apply
that
- mental acuity toward math problems. In the studies,
- second-graders from 95th Street Preparatory School in
- inner-city Los Angeles were compared with fourth and
- fifth graders from an Orange County (CA) school with a
- higher socioeconomic level. The students took the
- advanced math concepts exams, which tested math
- problem-solving ability, in 1999.
-
- For 45 minutes two days a week, students got piano
- instruction from a music teacher at school. Then they
used
- computers to play an educational game developed by the
- study's lead author and neuroscientist, Matthew Peterson.
- They play the game, called STAR, for 45 minutes on
another
- two days a week. And, one day a week, their classroom
- teacher leads a math integration lesson, in which
students
- do brain-stretching problems aloud.
-
- Second graders who received piano training, used the
- software and practiced math puzzles and exercises every
- week attained scores comparable to fourth graders. Half
- of these second graders scored in the top 20th percentile
of
- the nationwide Standford 9 test in math, and these
students
- achieved scores on the advanced math concepts exams
- comparable to the Orange County fifth graders.
-
- For more information, check out the institute's website at
http://www.
MINDInst.org.
-
- For Source information,
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