superlearning with GarageBand

The above track is an example of a project I did with my New Testament students a few weeks ago, using GarageBand and my Powerbook. We did one of these for each gospel, then burned them to CD's for the kids to take home and use for studying. Obviously, there are still some kinks (hard to hear the voices, for one thing) that will need to be worked out, but I think this has potential.

"Superlearning" is a concept I stumbled upon in graduate school. I've always been interested in methods of learning, especially memorization, speed-reading, so-called "Mega-Memory" tricks and stuff like that. Superlearning is a method that uses baroque music at 60 beats per minute played over sound-bytes of information. The cadence of the music is supposed to put your brain in an alpha state (relaxed and alert at the same time) and the 4-second bytes of information are just about the right length for your brain to process at any given time.

You can imagine what too much Baroque music might do to these kids (the thought!) so I improvised, and we used GarageBand instead. Easy to set the tempo at 60, and the pre-recorded loops were enough to keep us busy. I projected onto a big screen and the students took turns picking out loops to add. Then they wrote their sound-bytes on index cards, lined up behind my desk, and took turns speaking into the mic.

I'm looking forward to improving the methods later this semester, so I'll share any other tips then.

(Hey, if anybody out there works for Apple, think about what a great feature this would make! But you wouldn't want to advertise GarageBand being run on an old G3 Powerbook now, would you? I'd like the 15-inch model with the SuperDrive, if you're feeling generous.)

Posted: Wed - March 3, 2004 at 08:20 AM

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superlearning with GarageBand

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