Week 8

I spent this week reflecting on the feedback I received from my midterm presentation.

The miro board can be found here.

There was some really great feedback on the miro board. A few people mentioned the comparison of learning something else like a language to learning a musical instrument as an adult. This had come up before in one of my readings. In Learning to play music in later adulthood: A personal perspective focusing on the piano, Iritani says “The structure of music resembles the structure of sentences written in a foreign language.”. This is an interesting comparison since music notation is a completely different mental model and syntax for each instrument, so its like reading another language and then making the sounds with the instrument is like speaking a different language so it is very similar.

I want to look into this comparison further with some more readings.

Another person suggested looking at a skill older adults learn very quickly which I haven’t found anything yet but I think it’s an interesting concept. If I can understand how an adult learns that skill then I can hypothetically apply it to learning music.

Someone also said “I wonder if there’s a difference in attentiveness between children and adults — would online courses, for example, increase that gap, and would that change how they learn?”. I haven’t found anything yet abbout the attentiveness difference. I’m not sure how an attentiveness difference would affect online courses since I think both kids and adults struggle with engaging online in a constructive way.

Over all some really great feedback and I am excited to move forward from this feedback.