"Simply stated, the profound improvements that we found after just 4 days of meditation training- are really surprising," Zeidan noted. "It goes to show that the mind is, in fact, easily changeable and highly influenced, especially by meditation."
The meditation training involved in the study was an abbreviated "mindfulness" training regime modeled on basic "Shamatha skills" from a Buddhist meditation tradition
"Findings like these suggest that meditation's benefits may not require extensive training to be realized, and that meditation's first benefits may be associated with increasing the ability to sustain attention,"
seems to be strong evidence for the idea that we may be able to modify our own minds to improve our cognitive processing -- most importantly in the ability to sustain attention and vigilance -- within a week's time."
Both groups also improved following the meditation and reading experiences in measures of mood, but only the group that received the meditation training improved significantly in the cognitive measures. The meditation group scored consistently higher averages than the reading/listening group on all the cognitive tests and as much as ten times better on one challenging test that involved sustaining the ability to focus, while holding other information in mind.
"The meditation group did especially better on all the cognitive tests that were timed," Zeidan noted. "In tasks where participants had to process information under time constraints causing stress, the group briefly trained in mindfulness performed significantly better."
participants were instructed to relax, with their eyes closed, and to simply focus on the flow of their breath occurring at the tip of their nose. If a random thought arose, they were told to passively notice and acknowledge the thought and to simply let 'it' go, by bringing the attention back to the sensations of the breath."
"The simple process of focusing on the breath in a relaxed manner, in a way that teaches you to regulate your emotions by raising one's awareness of mental processes as they're happening is like working out a bicep, but you are doing it to your brain. Mindfulness meditation teaches you to release sensory events that would easily distract, whether it is your own thoughts or an external noise, in an emotion-regulating fashion.
"This kind of training seems to prepare the mind for activity, but it's not necessarily permanent," Zeidan cautions. "This doesn't mean that you meditate for four days and you're done -- you need to keep practicing."
This points to stark differences - what about subtle differences between cultures. Do our symbols affect brain development - do our tools affect brain development?
Other
Gestalt psychologists emphasized the common properties of mind in all
cultures
in the
basic forms, as well as in the content of people's thinking.
The early 1930
had experienced the conditions
necessary to alter radically the content and form of their thought.
we expected that they would
display a predominance of those forms of thought that come from activity that is
guided by the physical features of familiar objects.
Therefore we began,
as most field work with people does, by emphasizing contact with the people who
would serve as our subjects. We tried to establish friendly relations so that
experimental sessions seemed natural and non-threatening. We were particularly
careful not to conduct hasty or unprepared presentations of the test
materials.
As a rule, our experimental sessions began with long
conversations which were sometimes repeated with the subjects in the relaxed
atmosphere of a tea house, where the villagers spent most of their free time, or
in camps in the field and in mountain pastures around the evening campfire.
These talks were frequently held in groups. Even when the interviews were
held with one person, the experimenter and other subjects made up a group of
two or three who listened attentively to the person being interviewed and who
sometimes offered remarks or comments on what he said. The talk often took the
form of a free-flowing exchange of opinion between participants, and a
particular problem might be solved simultaneously by two or three subjects,
each proposing an answer. Only gradually did the experimenters introduce the
prepared tasks, which resembled the “riddles” familiar to the population and
therefore seemed like a natural extension of the conversation.
He characterized primitive
thinking as “prelogical” and “loosely organized.”
Primitive people were said to
be indifferent to logical contradiction and dominated by the idea that mystical
forces control natural phenomena
We conceived the idea of carrying out the first far-reaching study of
intellectual functions among adults from a non-technological non-literate,
traditional society
hamlets
nomad
1. Women living in remote villages who were illiterate and who were not
involved in any modern social activities. There were still a considerable
number of such women at the time our study was made. Their interviews were
conducted by women, since they alone had the right to enter the women's
quarters.
2. Peasants living in remote villages who were in no way
involved with socialized labor and who continued to maintain an
individualistic economy. These peasants were not literate.
3. Women who
attended short-term courses in the teaching of kindergarteners. As a rule,
they had no formal schooling and almost no training in literacy.
4. Active kolhoz (collective farm) workers and young people who had taken short
courses. They were involved as chairmen running collective farms, as holders
of other offices on the, collective farm, or as brigade leaders. They had
considerable experience in planning production, distributing labor, and taking
stock of output. By dealing with other collective farm members, they had
acquired a much broader outlook than isolated peasants. But they had attended
school only briefly, and many were still barely literate.
5. Women students admitted to teachers school after two or three years of study. Their
educational qualifications, however, were still fairly low.
Short-term psychological experiments
would have been highly problematic under the field conditions we expected to
encounter
Instead of scribbling marks in the margins of printed papers, I opened each student’s paper in Google Docs, highlighted text and inserted comments to clarify my thoughts, and then turned on the screen recorder (Jing) to record my voice as I scrolled through the paper and pointed to items with my mouse. Right after recording, I uploaded the finished recording to Jing’s companion hosting site, and then I simply copied and pasted the link to the recording directly into the Google Doc.
Adding value in context rather than providing repetitive written comments in the summation.
After about four minutes, they began the next task, copying and pasting my reflection questions into the bottom of their docs, and then responding to those prompts as they reflected on their work and my feedback.
As I watched them, I couldn’t help but remember the way that I used to provide feedback. Students would receive their graded papers, flip past the comments I had scribbled in the margin, glance at the final grade, and then forget all about it.
I always knew there was more I wanted to convey to them about their writing, about how they had or had not created meaning for the reader.
It took me about 10 minutes per paper, times 68 papers, so the last week and a half have been intense. If you’re doing the math, that’s over 11 hours of paper grading. If I am going to put in that kind of time for grading, I must see my students growing as writers. Period.
Technology tool is NOT a time saver. The main goal for using the tool is not increased productivity by the teacher, but instead increased understanding by the student.
On the flipside, writing is personal, and receiving impersonal and confusing written feedback can also be hurtful. The student spends so much time writing the assignment, but only receives a small amount of scribbled comments in the margin.
tried out a new way of assessing student work — screencasting
This working dog is a border collie mix.
A working dog refers to a canine working animal, i.e., a type of dog that is
not merely a pet but learns and performs tasks
to assist and/or entertain its human companions, or a breed of such origin.
“Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,”
But those who have the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work were being retained. They are the new untouchables.
Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.
“Studying something in the presence of an answer, whether it’s conscious or not, influences how you interpret the question,
participants studying a difficult chapter on the industrial uses of microbes remembered more when they were given a poor outline — which they had to rework to match the material
raw effort, he and other researchers said. Concentrating harder. Making outlines from scratch. Working through problem sets without glancing at the answers. And studying with classmates who test one another.
We know this- working with the material, incorporating it with that we already know takes time- time on task - if a weirder font makes us think about the material more, we'll remember more
Post-coup regime in Honduras carrying out unprecedented assault on most organized sector of the resistance, the teachers. Government slashes salaries, steals pensions, fires, threatens, jails, and in some cases, murders teachers and union leaders. "Once you accept the unions are the enemy, you can accept the organizations can be destroyed." Reports claims regime leaders got privatization ideas from US.
Group assignment via Excel file (.xls file with programming scripts - need to turn security settings to low); provides diversity within each group based on characterizations of each student; can also generate sequences of up to 10 successive group assignments (e.g., keep students apart who have been together in any group before).
Kids with attention deficit disorder respond best to specific goals and daily positive reinforcement—as well as worthwhile rewards. Yes, you may have to hang a carrot on a stick to get your child to behave better in class. Create a plan that incorporates small rewards for small victories and larger rewards for bigger accomplishments.
Seat the child with ADD/ADHD away from doors and windows.
Alternate seated activities with those that allow the child to move his or her body around the room. Whenever possible, incorporate physical movement into lessons.
Write important information down where the child can easily read and reference it. Remind the student where the information can be found.
Divide big assignments into smaller ones, and allow children frequent breaks.
The self-esteem of children with ADD/ADHD is often quite fragile
Develop a “secret language” with the child with ADD/ADHD. You can use discreet gestures or words you have previously agreed upon to let the child know they are interrupting. Praise the child for interruption-free conversations.
written behavior plan is near the student
consequences immediately following misbehavior. Be specific in your explanation, making sure the child knows how they misbehaved.
Recognize good behavior out loud. Be specific in your praise, making sure the child knows what they did right.
cross off each item as it is completed.
run an errand or do a task for you
play a sport—or at least run around before and after school.
Provide a stress ball, small toy, or other object for the child to squeeze or play with discreetly at his or her seat.
do one step and then come back to find out what they should do next
extremely brief when giving directions
write directions down in a bold marker or in colored chalk on a blackboard.
Read to children. Read with children. Make reading cozy, quality time with you.
Make predictions or “bets.” Constantly ask the child what they think might happen next. Model prediction: “The girl in the story seems pretty brave—I bet she’s going to try to save her family.”
Act out the story. Let the child choose his or her character and assign you one, too. Use funny voices and costumes to bring it to life.
If you understand how your child with ADD/ADHD learns best, you can create enjoyable lessons that pack an informational punch.
With organization
Establish a homework folder for finished homework.
Check and help the child organize his or her belongings on a daily basis, including his or her backpack, folders, and even pockets.
If possible, keep an extra set of textbooks and other materials at home.
Help the child learn to make and use checklists, crossing items off as they are accomplished.
Help organize loose papers by color coding folders and showing the child how to hole-punch and file appropriately.
Allow the child breaks as often as every ten to twenty minutes.
Teach a better understanding of the passage of time: use an analog clock and timers to monitor homework efficiency.
Neurological deficits, not unwillingness, keep kids with attention deficit disorder from learning in traditional ways.
If you can work with and support your child’s teacher, you can directly affect the experience of your child with ADD/ADHD in the classroom.
You make some very good points but I think you could go further. The reason we put so much emphasis on "originality" is because we were preparing students for a world in which they would have to prepare written and oral presentations individually. In the modern workplace, very little is done that way anymore. Authorship is not what it used to be. Now, everything seems to be collaborative, generated at "stand-up" meetings of the whole "team". I'm not sure the end result is better, but it's clear that the very concept of plagiarism needs reconsideration. What if we created exercises around the task of correcting other people's work? Wouldn't that be more useful and "creative"?
As part of my sabbatical project in which I explored the topic of "reading in the digital age," I looked at web tools that are useful in helping students (particularly college students) with their ...
A teacher can create engaging lessons that focus on one task such as a matching activity where students use either their fingers or a pen to match items. Another teacher might integrate multiple items into a lesson plan such as websites, photos, and music that students can interact with, respond to verbally or even write comments on the board itself.
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
Rebuild my webpage. Create my first 3 Committee webpages so I'll feel like I'm ahead. Watch video clips and TedEd flip them.
Marti Pike less than a minute ago
Print, read, and mark up interesting articles that might be used in class or committees.
Our mindset is the key to how we experience our reality. If we can help our minds land on thoughts that are energizing, empowering, and affirming then we'll experience our return to school in an easier way.
This committee they've made me chair might turn out to be a powerful Think Tank on issuses that are important to me. I'm looking carefully for applications.
Richard Ludlow started the nonprofit Academic Earth two years ago after M.I.T.'s OpenCourseWare helped him pass linear algebra as a Yale undergraduate. His site offers the courses of 10 elite universities — 130 full courses and more than 3,500 video lectures. Viewers can turn the tables on professors and grade courses. Other guidance includes "Editor's Picks" and "Playlists," lectures selected around a theme like "First Day of Freshman Year" and "You Are What You Eat."
Connexions, started at Rice University 10 years ago, debundles education for the D.I.Y. learner. Anyone can write a "module," the term for instructional material that can be a single sentence or 1,000 pages. Connexions hosts more than 16,000 modules that make up almost 1,000 "collections." A collection might be, say, an algebra textbook or statistics course.
Daniel Colman is a curator of sorts. He sifts through the vast amount of free courses, movies and books offered online to find what he considers the very best in content and production value. Then he features them on Open Culture, the Web site he founded in 2006. It's a task in keeping with his mission as associate dean and director of Stanford's continuing education program.
At last count, the site had 2,700 audio and video lectures from more than 25 universities; 268 audio books; and 105 e-books. Dr. Colman says he looks for lectures that "take ideas and make them come to life." And so you can learn 37 languages on Open Culture, or stream Jane Austen audio books, Hitchcock films and a John Hopkins biology lecture.
Why pay for test prep? M.I.T. OpenCourseWare has culled introductory courses in physics, calculus and biology, along with problem sets and labs, to help students prep for the Advanced Placement exams. (Not to miss an opportunity, there’s a link to the admissions office.)
Thousands of pieces of free educational material - videos and podcasts of lectures, syllabuses, entire textbooks - have been posted in the name of the open courseware movement. But how to make sense of it all? Businesses, social entrepreneurs and "edupunks," envisioning a tuition-free world untethered by classrooms, have created Web sites to help navigate the mind-boggling volume of content. Some sites tweak traditional pedagogy; others aggregate, Hulu-style.
