O ur friends over at MyMac.com have published a great interview with a teacher using GarageBand in her class. GarageBand is Appleis consumer recording and mixing solution that Steve Jobs announced as part of iLife i04 at Januaryis Macworld San Francisco. During the course of MyMac.comis recent GarageBand song writing contest, publisher Tim Robertson found a teacher named Kathy Lies who was using GarageBand in her classroom. Students from her class ended up submitting several songs to the contest, which led to the interview. From MyMac.com:
MyMac.com: Kathy, welcome to My Mac! Could you describe the class (es) that participated in the contest? What specific class was it?
Kathy Lies: Actually, I allowed all three of my classes to participate in the contest. They kept opening the GarageBand program instead of what we were working on, and it seemed easier to switch projects and postpone what we were working on!
MyMac.com: You must be a fun teacher to let your students create music in class. What do you see as the benefit in this exercise?
Kathy Lies: I have found that my students generally learn best when they are trying out things for themselves. If I try and "lecture" to them, they tune out- I simply told them about the contest and let them go- they learned everything on their own. Some students became much more adept at finding all the extras, and they taught the others. If they learn things on their own, they will continue to do so, long after they have graduated.
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MyMac.com: GarageBand is an easy program to learn. How much of a learning curve was there for the students to learn?
Kathy Lies: Practically none- they were off and running immediately!
Ms. Lies also discusses the role of Macs and Windows in her school; thereis more in the full interview, which we recommend as an interesting read.