Nothing to write home about, but I've pulled out over 200 records from my local Goodwills. Mostly classic rock like Bealtes, Zeppelin, Floyd, Rush, Sabbath, Yes, etc... I got a good copy of Dinosaur Jr - Where You Been recently. But my favorites are non-music albums that I would never find elsewhere. Such as a few soundeffects records, old comedy albums from Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, I've gotten a few instructional courses on morse code, speaking italian, and a learning technique called "inquiry sessions". There non-music albums help paint a picture of what life was like back 20 - 50 years ago or more.

The inquiry session on is rather interesting. It's a teaching technique for creative thinking. We would find it laughable today because the concept is so basic. In short, an inquiry session was a teaching method to allow kids to sort of think outside the box and approach problems in a natural way. This was a novel concept for 1966. I guess before then, most teaching was just a matter of parroting. The teacher would read the lesson, the kids would echo that lesson back to her, and then they would all move on to the next lesson. The inquiry session was a breakthru because it avoided parroting and required kids to actually use their brains.

The morse code lessons are kind of fun because it's just a record full of morse code and some instructions on the back. I guess the idea was that the instructor would play the record and students would have to do their best to transcribe it. each record increases in word speed, so if you did it over and over, you're supposed to get faster. It amazes me how some people can so easily transcode morse by ear. I hope to learn it some day.