As part of his budget presentation today, state schools Supt. Tom Luna played a video clip for legislative budget writers featuring Cathyanne Nonini, a violin teacher and wife of Sen. Bob Nonini (and his substitute in the Senate for the first two weeks of this year’s session), demonstrating a new technology tool: A computer program through which students can play a line of music, and then the program will tell them where they’ve made mistakes. In the clip, Nonini purposely played wrong notes the first time, then played the piece correctly the second time, demonstrating the different report on the computer screen.

As the clip started, seated in the audience, she squirmed at the wrong notes coming up, muttering, “This is terrible.” But in the second part on the video, with the right notes, she played longer; JFAC members noticeably relaxed, welcoming the musical interlude.