In the News
To read the full press release go to: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10720894.htm
Two Chicago Teachers Remix Music History with iPad Technology. Interactive Listening iBook Chosen as #1 Editor’s Choice by Apple
Created for digital-savvy students, Interactive Listening features Hollywood-style graphics, interactive 3-D instruments and computer games. At the same time, the iBook includes interactive educational content spanning 35,000 years of music, with sounds from every continent, from prehistoric cavemen to Beethoven to Coldplay. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Jennifer Foxx, President of the Phoenix Music Teachers Association.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) May 13, 2013
Interactive Listening announced today the launch of an ingenious new approach to music education with the release of its Interactive Listening iBook, recently named by Apple as the #1 Editors Choice in all categories of textbooks.
Interactive Listening is the brainchild of Pete Carney and Brian Felix, music educators and jazz musicians in Chicago, who were tired of the “dead-end” approach of using traditional textbooks to teach music. Instead they created a compelling iBook (interactive book) for iPads that remixes education with technology. “At last, music history is fun!” said Vandercook College of Music President Charles Menghini.
Created for digital-savvy students, Interactive Listening features Hollywood-style graphics, interactive 3-D instruments and computer games. At the same time, the iBook includes interactive educational content spanning 35,000 years of music, with sounds from every continent, from prehistoric cavemen to Beethoven to Coldplay. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Jennifer Foxx, President of the Phoenix Music Teachers Association.
In its early release in select markets in the United States, Interactive Listening is winning rave reviews.
“It’s thorough, and beautifully conceived,” said Barbara Freedman, author for Oxford Press.
“This book changes everything for education, not just music,” said Mike Lawson, executive director of technology in music education in Nashville.
“This book is the next step in education. Thanks for paving a way forward,” Jay Berckley, music director at the Village School and TED Conference Speaker.
The Interactive Listening iBook was designed for schools that are replacing traditional textbooks with iPads. The self-published digital title is priced at $14.99, ten percent of the $149.99 textbook price Carney and Felix paid for a comparable textbook in college.
The Interactive Listening iBook is available immediately on the Apple iBookstore for downloading at $14.99, and available in eight countries, including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click:https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/interactive-listening/id597212213?mt=13
About the Interactive Listening iBook
Music Educators Carney and Felix sought to create a more relevant, current experience for their students with Interactive Listening.
“We used the tactile experience of gaming and visual graphics from Hollywood movies to help music teachers in high school and college compete in the digital world,” said Carney, “Listening to classical, jazz or Tibetan music can be an entirely fun new experience if you’re receiving instant quiz feedback about your listening skills. We discovered that students had a blast playing musical games, such as dragging and dropping parts of a symphony into the right order.”
Carney said students are more engaged and drawn into their new interactive way of conveying the drama, history and elements of music.
“Instead of reading about the great composer Beethoven, we created listening homework for the digital world,” said Carney, “We found that students want to discover music, express themselves and test themselves, not read boring biographical fillers and factoids. The Internet is full of information about when Beethoven was born, but that doesn’t teach you how to understand his music. We believe our interactive approach instantly brings home the impact of music to our students in way old textbooks never could.”
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