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Anyone who has spent any time in a classroom in the Facebook era knows that the old days of teaching students ust with textbooks and chalkboards is long gone.<\/p>\nAnyone who has spent any time in a classroom in the Facebook era knows that the old days of teaching students ust with textbooks and chalkboards is long gone.<\/p>\n
You have to capture students\u2019 attention visually and through sound. Developing brains today are bombarded by images and sounds from\u00a0flatscreen TVs, portable game devices and through their parents\u2019 phones.<\/p>\n
Rather than fight the trend, successful teachers embrace it. This week, CNN Money highlighted Marcus Blackwell Jr. and his company, Make Music Count, an Atlanta-based company which uses pop songs to teach math concepts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Blackwell studied jazz and classical piano at a very young age. He was indifferent in math because it was a subject \u201ctaught to be feared.\u201d When he was in college, he was playing at a wedding when a friend asked him to explain how to play the piano. Blackwell realized he was using math terminology more than music theory and a business idea was born.<\/p>\n He created a curriculum for middle school and high school and offered it for free to a middle school near his home. After realizing it would work, he then began pitching it to schools all over Georgia. It took about six months to land his first paying client. Since launching in 2012, according to CNN Money, revenue has grown from $12,000 to more than $250,000 annually and the recent publicity undoubtedly will accelerate that growth.<\/p>\n