My thoughts on AGT 09 so far...

This is the best act I have seen so far in AGT this year. Unpretentious. Great voice. I put my money on him winning the competition. One thing that puzzle me is the lady below who appeared in both Kevin Skinner's and Lawrence Beaman's auditions. Who is she? If the clips are genuine, she and her friends (near her) must be working for the producer of AGT that they can afford to jet-set and attend auditions in different cities in America.

In Beaman's audition, she sat behind David Hasselhoff on the front row, swaying her body when Beaman sang. Skinner came in EP 3 when the auditions were held in NY and Beaman, EP 5 in LA. And in between these cities, AGT went to Houston. The clips looks so similar that I am encourage to believe it is only real for Beaman. I wonder when these audition clips were first made available to the public.

Anyway, another comment I want to make is that had Simon Cowell been one of the judges, half of the act that got throught the next stage would have been kicked out. Like The Texas Tenors and Timez 2. The judges have to commit to say "NO" more often to audience who are easily moved by county nationalism with little regards whether their support is aimed at real talent. Simon knows when to do that when the audience fails to discriminate craps from talent.

Lastly, what do AGT and American Idol teach us about learning? How you assess shape the kind of gems that will come out through the education system. You would not get to see that phenomenal talent of Kevin Skinner and Susan Boyle from the idol format. So again, it is meaningless to talk about how the effectiveness of educational intervention when assessment could not assess the learning afforded by the intervention. Just my thoughts...