Group items tagged

What stress reduction techniques can I provide and make available for allied health students? Here is a web sites I think anyone can utilize to reduce their stress.This site has a plethora of tools to help students with Attention and Learning ,Encoding and Retrieval, Group and Cooperative Learning, Memory, Monitoring, Motivation, Note Taking, Organization, Problem Solving and Critical Thinking, Questioning, Reading Comprehension, Test Anxiety, Test Preparation, Test Taking, Time Management, Writing, Proofreading and much more. A really nice plan for students and how they can reduce their stress while in school. Enjoy Mary McGurn

I think this is a good example of action research. The article discusses the relationship between stress at work and how it can have an effect on employees' health. It also gives ideas on ways to decrease stress at work thus improving the health of employees.

This is as very interesting article. The action research process is used along side quantitative data collection procedures to determine effects and solutions to employee stress and workplace changes. The article is extensive and I confess I did skip over the details of the subjects involved in order to see the author's results. The inclusion of employee input to determine matters that disturb them, which can be underestimated and overlooked, such as the simple need to be validated in the work they do, or the desire to have more input into decisions, is how the researchers were able to create interventions for change, by learning about the actual areas of stress.

This article is actually an interview of Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, and Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science; both are also organizational theorists. The two discuss how organizations can be more successful if they can work better with uncertainty, and incorporate meditation, derived from periods of silence in dialogue sessions, into their work. They claim that organizations need to accept that change should be accepted as the reality, and that life is a continuous state of change. The two also discuss the concept of "collective cultivation," wherein Buddhism teaches that cultivation is the practice of meditation, study, and service. Organizations not only need to accept change, but they need to collectively work hard and know how to accept this change. Unfortunately, most organizations don't have the tools or methods to support this idea. This interview allows the reader to think more about the concept of organizations and leaders in general, and how we understand them. We can't blame the hierarchy for the way things are, because we put the hierarchy in place. We are responsible for our own actions when we obey the demands of our leaders. If we can change our own views of organizations and the habits that we have adopted to work in them, then we can potentially change the way that they function from the inside out.

What struck me most about this article is their suggestion that we need to change our concept of what it means to be a leader in an organization. Particularly in the Western world, we look to our leaders, in fact expect our leaders, to have all the answers. As a leader, being comfortable sitting with uncertainty makes those you lead uncomfortable with you. The process of action research incorporates many of the same characteristics Senge and Wheatley identify: listening, being open, engaging in dialogue. Actively using action research in the workplace may help us reform our model of leadership.

I thought this article was very different but also very interesting. I like the combination of a business perspective and a religious one. I never really put too much thought into any similarities between the two. The suggestions on an effective leader and an effective organization are insightful. I agree there needs to be more dialogue as well as more reflection in order for things to work more efficiently.

This article can be used for those who may want to begin using humor in your class without losing sight of the learning objectives.

This is a great read and humor has many long term benefits for overall health and well being. In nursing, it can be very stressful and humor can be a very effective measure to relieve stress.

The brain-based learning material that I have been reading recommends surprise as an important tool to gain and hold students' attention. Humor fits with this. The article recommends a highly organized, thought-out, and planned approach which may work for some but other teachers might just want to wing it.

This article outlined several issues. 1. High powered politicians coming together to make decisions on federal policy that directly effect their financial profits. 2. The use of insufficient evidence from studies, the lack of scientific correlation and the improper transcription of results from studies being used to make "the best" decisions in standardized tests and phonics instruction on reading skills. 3. The emphasis and funding for schools being put toward standardized tests and phonics instruction along with materials/products needed for them instead of other places that may be in more need.

This article brings to light what Metcalf describes as the "Bush Revolution" in education. After providing a brief history of education, referencing Horace Mann and John Dewey, Metcalf stresses education as a business, connecting McGraw (Publisher McGraw-Hill) and Bush. Bush changes the system and creates new standards in education, as a result new materials are then needed to implement his new education 'revolution.' Metcalf implies the situation is more about business between friends than actually worrying about educating children.

This is a reference guide for Environment-Based Education for advanced learning skills and character education. EBL stresses developing lifelong learners; effective future workers and problem solvers; thoughtful community leaders and participants; and people who care about the people, creatures, and places around them. The article references the outdoors environment, specifically science and math learning, but I think that the 'environment' can take on a vast definition and the concepts are applicable to many learning objectives/situations.

This article stresses the fact that we were never really taught how to communicate in a way that produces desired results. The author bullets some of the obstacles that prevent a person from reaching certain objectives during the communication process. The key to evolving a person's communication skills is taking full responsibility for the outcome of each conversation. The author then offers ten questions to consider when determining how effectively you communicate.

"we ought to ask why meditation is useful. So I polled a group of meditation researchers, teachers and practitioners on why they recommend it. I liked their answers, but none of them were unique to meditation. Every benefit of the practice can be gained through other activities. This is the conclusion from an analysis of 47 trials of meditation programs, published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine: "We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (i.e., drugs, exercise and other behavioral therapies)." "