The Story of Mimi Zweig StringPedagogy
Our beginnings...
by Dr. Peggy Wheeler
Though many people have contributed to StringPedagogy.com as Mimi’s introductory letter acknowledges, three of us, Mimi Zweig, Hideki Isoda, and Peggy Wheeler developed a working synergy that helped the website to flourish. Each of us brought a unique but necessary blend of gifts that energized the talents of our colleagues. Mimi brought not only her lifetime of teaching but also a vision of sharing that information with other teachers. I met her at the 2000 Indiana University Teacher’s Retreat, one of the primary ways that Mimi has been sharing her approach to pedagogy. It seemed to me that this information from the Retreat needed to be documented and organized so that it could be widely available to the string teaching world. At that time, Mimi was planning a CD-Rom for the information contained in Volume I of the website. There is no single title that can encompass Hideki’s talents and skills. He is a composer, tonmeister, filmmaker, graphic designer, and IT engineer, not to mention his expertise in web site design, development and support. When the three of us met, I functioned as the “string to technology” translator. I brought a working knowledge of music technology having designed and supervised music labs for the previous ten years. I was also an “outside observer” of her approach and had ideas about the kind of information and explanation that another string teacher would want. As Mimi shared her ideas, Hideki and I brainstormed about the various technologies that could embrace her vision. Together we were able to convince Mimi of the power and flexibility of the web environment for her project. Streaming video, still relatively new, was the critical application for the new website.
We have each grown through our work on this project. Hideki now can film a string teaching session and know exactly what a string player would want to see. I have had the opportunity to shape the presentation of the material, to edit and eventually co-author the text. Her ideas impact my teaching daily. Mimi has embraced web technology and even principles of editing. Her passion and energy continue to inspire the rest of us.
February 2003