They Might Be Giants continues its cerebral dominance of the pop music world with Here Comes Science, a CD/DVD release created for kids but smart enough for the adults in the mosh pit.

Exclusively available digitally on iTunes and physically on Amazon.com starting Tuesday, the follow-up to John Flansburgh and John Linnell’s Grammy-winning 2008 effort Here Come the 123s builds on the brainy foundation laid down by the band more than 25 years ago. But since the subject this time around is science, They Might Be Giants‘ latest sonic workbook might not go over too well with the intelligent-design crowd.

(read more @ Underwire – Wired.com)

And here’s a great animation video from the album:

The seating arrangements are compared to airport traffic patterns. The student schedules are called playlists. And lesson plans are generated by a complicated computer algorithm for the 80 studentsin the class.

This could be the school of the future, according to the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, who visited Middle School 131 in Chinatownon Tuesday to promote a pilot program, the School of One.

The program, conducted in a converted library, consists mainly of students working individually or in small groups on laptop computers to complete math lessons in the form of quizzes, games and worksheets. Each student must take a quiz at the end of each day; the results are fed into a computer program to determine whether they will move on to a new topic the next day.

Mr. Klein said the program would allow learning in a way that no traditional classroom can, because it tailors each lesson to a student’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the child’s interests.

(read more @ NY Times)