| Due to the many ways in which one can receive music in today's society, pop culture and mass media inform the music world at the same time influencing an adolescent's social and musical choices. This study examined how the creation and use of a prototype-computer based-interactive-multimedia music listening environment, Picture This! worked in three middle school classrooms of inner-city adolescents by capitalizing on their inherent interests. The dissertation focuses on the use of technology to actively engage adolescents, support the development of analytical listening skills, increase problem-solving abilities and incorporate cooperative learning strategies. This study did not seek to make comparisons among the three classes, nor to generalize across all adolescent populations, but rather to investigate the range of student abilities that could be served by this software.; The research involved three case studies, with one class from a technology magnet school and two bilingual classes from a Middle School participating in the Creative Arts Laboratory's (CAL) professional development program, which is based at Teachers College Columbia University. The CAL program was created to help change school cultures by preparing teachers of economically disadvantaged and educationally challenged students to integrate the arts into the core curriculums of New York City Public Schools. Building upon the CAL philosophy, this software applied the principles of student-centered, process oriented, inquiry based, arts integrated learning to the development of a “pre-packaged” software program, requiring little additional time or effort on the part of the classroom teacher.; As the study reveals, the students were actively engaged in musical creation, analytical listening, and reflective thinking. They were exposed to a variety of musical genres, including music they might not otherwise have been openly receptive to hearing. Students got to build on their knowledge by helping their peers and take leadership roles at various times in the process. It was discovered that this approach created an environment where students were more willing to take risks in front of their peers and share ideas with classmates and teachers. |
