9to5 Mac reports today on a news story from CBS about a school in Queens, New York, where a band of students with learning disabilities are using iPads to help them to play music for the first time. The story even caught the attention of Apple CEO Tim Cook, who tweeted about it, saying that it “makes our heart sing.”
Classical pianist Adam Goldberg, who is the students' music teacher, said that they found it difficult to play conventional instruments, because they had “a lack of ability even just to be able to sustain a beat, motor skill issues where they can’t really hold an instrument.”
Goldberg said that a friend suggested that he started using iPads with the students. He got a grant to enable him to buy eight iPads and then formed the P177Q iPad band , and it was an immediate success. “I already kind of knew that even if it wasn’t as awesome as I’d hoped in my head, it would still be really good,” said Goldberg. “My students kind of surpassed my version of awesome into something even beyond that.”
“When I saw them interact with each other, I just said wow, it’s more than just the music,” commented the school principle, Cathy Post. A parent of one of the students said, “We couldn’t believe what we saw. To see him, on that stage, with his band, playing and really enjoying himself, yeah, we cried. We cried with joy.”
One of the children, Jason, did not even talk until he joined the band, and now sings lead on a song that he helped to write called “Being Me.”
Source: Eight iPads transform lives of students with learning disabilities [Video]
