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Matt Renwick

The Genius Who Plays For A Living | Popular Science - 35 views

  • Hirsh-Pasek found that the second group—the ones engaged in what she calls guided play—came up with the most creative solutions. The same idea applies to scientists, she says: They do their best work when they’re free to play around with a known set of problems.
  • “Scientists actually are the few people who as adults get to have this protected time when they can just explore, play, figure out what the world is like.”
  • “We know each other so well that it makes for a really effective combination,” Erik says. “He’s always trying to reinject some playfulness into my serious work. It lets us do things that neither of us could do.”
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  • play is fundamental to science
  • When I ask him later why he chooses to teach the way he does, he answers simply, “I think this is a cool way of working, and more people should work this way. Sadly, not everyone does, so I try to pass it on.”
Kathleen Howard DaQuanno

Boko Haram Falls Victim to a Food Crisis It Created - The New York Times - 14 views

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    Across northeastern Nigeria and bordering Cameroon, farmers have fled, herdsmen have rerouted cattle drives, and markets have shut down.
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    Across northeastern Nigeria and bordering Cameroon, farmers have fled, herdsmen have rerouted cattle drives, and markets have shut down.
Jac Londe

Truly random numbers - 41 views

  • At a quantum scale, the motion of electrons and protons is completely and genuinely random, since it doesn’t follow a clear path of cause and effect. You basically have no idea what’s going to happen. If you can measure this somehow, than you’ve got yourself an absolutely random value.
  • “If you want to defeat an adversary who is trying to hack into your system, basically you need large quantities of random numbers,”  Sussman said.
  • “…a truly random number generator will provide impenetrable encryption for communications — be they military transmissions, secure banking, or online purchasing — that underpin the modern connected world.”
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  • The researchers used pulses of laser light, which only last a trillionth of a second, that were directed through a diamond. The light comes and goes through the diamond, however when it exists it’s changed, since it has to pass through quantum vacuum fluctuations, the microscopic flickering of the amount of energy in a point in space. Scientists can measure these pulses of light that emerge from the experimental set-up, measurements which are the truly random.
  • random numbers
  • with quantum physics
Kate Pok

Idaho Teachers Fight a Reliance on Computers - NYTimes.com - 32 views

  • Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that requires all high school students to take some online classes to graduate, and that the students and their teachers be given laptops or tablets. The idea was to establish Idaho’s schools as a high-tech vanguard. To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators. And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.
  • “Teachers don’t object to the use of technology,” said Sabrina Laine, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, which has studied the views of the nation’s teachers using grants from organizations like the Gates and Ford Foundations. “They object to being given a resource with strings attached, and without the needed support to use it effectively to improve student learning.”
    • Kate Pok
       
      What a pity, a sign of how little respect people actually give to the profession of teaching; the only profession where people don't take the comments of practitioners seriously.  Can you imagine saying to your doctor, "I know this is your diagnosis, but I'm going to go with my Great Aunt's diagnosis."
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  • They complain that lawmakers listened less to them than to heavy lobbying by technology companies, including Intel and Apple.
  • under the state’s plan, that teacher will not always be in the room. The plan requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits.
    • Kate Pok
       
      I actually find this somewhat troubling...so little research exists as to how students are actually learning online.  Are they using Facebook or are they going through MIT's Open Courseware?  I'm inclined to think the former.  I'm slowly adding more and more technology to my classes and frankly, I'm surprised that students are not more technologically savvy... the first and second digital divides are increasingly evident...
    • Carol Pearsall
       
      Interesting article, however, you can't ignore that students today will be doing a significant amount of learning on a computer. If our high school students can't master managing an online class in high school, how will they fare later on? It's another learning tool. 2 classes out of 47 credits? How is that detrimental to the development of lifelong learners? We can research until the cows come home, but at some point if we don't dive in, we miss the boat. While we can all wish for all our students to graduate high school and then go on to college, the reality is that most of them won't. That's reality... Preparing our kids for future learning and building those skills necessary to be successful to master online courses is a skill they will need to succeed in their digital world.
Tricia Hunt

How to Teach with Technology: Social Studies | Edutopia - 74 views

    • Tricia Hunt
       
      I find that having a "back channel" conversation during a presentation to actually do the opposite.  I am so busy commenting on what was just presented that I miss what is being talked about next.
  • "I think it's a good idea to use Skype (10) for learning about other states and countries.
    • Tricia Hunt
       
      I like the idea of Skyping with people from other countries.  I could get the kids to come up with a list of questions first.  My biggest question is HOW do I connect/find someone from another country?
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  • For more information on Lykowski's Global Explorers Project (including rubrics and other resources), go to Global Explorers (13).
  • FreePoverty is a geography game that presents you with a city or landmark. You have a short amount of time (5-10 seconds) to locate it on a map. The closer you are to the target, the more cups of water are donated to people in need around the world. (FreePoverty is seeking a nonprofit organization to work with to help turn the site's revenues into water donations.)
Ryan Ingersoll

Why Online Programs Fail, and 5 Things We Can Do About It - Hybrid Pedagogy - 76 views

  • More and different types of learning and teaching are available in the digital environment. We must convince ourselves that we don’t yet understand digital education so we may open the doors more broadly to innovation and creativity
  • we shouldn’t set off on a cruise, and build the ship as we go
    • Rafael Morales_Gamboa
       
      Why not? I might not be possible in the physical world, but that does not mean it cannot be done in the digital one.
  • Few institutions pay much attention to re-creating these spaces online
    • Rafael Morales_Gamboa
       
      They do not need to. The digital learning space does not have to be like the physical one.
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  • What spaces can we build online that aren’t quantified, tracked, scored, graded, assessed, and accredited?
    • Rafael Morales_Gamboa
       
      Are social networking applications you are talking about?
  • What we have is a series of online classes with no real infrastructure to support the work that students do on college campuses outside and between those classes
    • Rafael Morales_Gamboa
       
      In physical schools that work have to be done on campus, because when students leave they become distant from each other. But that does not happen online: students are close together both inside and outside the "campus"; actually, they are simultaneously inside and outside campus.
  • Up to now, online learning has taken little notice of the web upon which it’s suspended
  • Today, the road to access doesn’t necessarily detour through the university, and anyone, of just about any age, can travel it.
    • Rafael Morales_Gamboa
       
      This is, of course, an overstatement, as not everyone is prepared, given their development and living conditions, to take advantage of Internet.
  • We’ve created happy little caskets inside which learning fits too neatly and tidily (like forums, learning management systems, and web conferencing platforms). We’ve timed learning down to the second, developed draconian quality assurance measures, built analytics to track every bit of minutiae, and we’ve championed the stalest, most banal forms of interaction — interaction buried beneath rubrics and quantitative assessment — interaction that looks the same every time in every course with every new set of students.
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    A critical view about e-learning as it mostly happens today.
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    A critical view about e-learning as it mostly happens today.
Ed Webb

Dawn of the cyberstudent | University challenge | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

  • students often have more experience of using new technologies than many university managers — even if they need guidance in using them effectively
    • Ed Webb
       
      And there's the rub. Students can often read, too, in the basic sense. But our job as higher educators is to get them to really read, to read critically and do something with that reading. So, too, with the affordances of web2.0.
  • the research process is likely to become much more open
    • Ed Webb
       
      We can hope
  • a balance that suits them, which may lead to more varying degrees of face-to-face and online contact,
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  • "If you are in Second Life listening to a lecture, your ability to fly through a bush isn't that relevant,
  • All this will put added pressure on university staff, with increasing demands to respond to students 24/7. Read suggests one answer could be for universities in different parts of the world to share the load so that, as often happens already in industry "the work moves around with the sun".
    • Ed Webb
       
      Interesting concept. Dickinson and other internationally-connected institutions would be in good shape to innovate here.
  • learning culture
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    Guardian on how higher ed will have to adapt. Not sure the revolution is here quite yet.
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    "Cyberstudent" is a hideous term.
Tony Baldasaro

When did teachers start to fear technology? | SeacoastOnline.com - 0 views

  • My students are more involved with technology than ever before. They have taken the lead in mass networking and graphic design
  • They block network programs such as Facebook because of a fear of what might be abused. They block all Web-based e-mail systems that in all reality should help the majority of students. They also reject the use of iPods and cell phones because they believe the use of these new technologies would reduce a student's capacity to learn
    • Tony Baldasaro
       
      The opposite is true, these technologies increase a student's capacity to learn.
  • no one is going to stop the use of these technologies.
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  • The second thing it published was pornography.
    • Tony Baldasaro
       
      I wish this comment wasn't here, it cheapens his argument.
  • Facebook technology should be used in our classrooms to communicate with classrooms around the world to show the concept all students are in the process of attaining their dreams.
  • Today it is the other way around.
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    Since I've been teaching for more than three decades I remember a time when technology was accepted by all teachers. In fact, I remember a time when my administration gave me my first Apple computer to use. My students were all huddled around me as I investigated new learning tools. The graphics were terrible but it was like magic to my students.
Ann Steckel

YouTube - WHAT IS SECOND LIFE? by L1Aura Loire/Better version - 14 views

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    video
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    This is fantastic and this professor has many helpful videos posted on her YouTube site! I'll be using this when I am teaching this semester--thanks!
webExplorations

Rupert Murdoch - Education: The Last Frontier - 50 views

  • We must begin by exciting the imaginations of our young people.
  • my second point: more personalized learnin
  • Finally, with digital we can bring the world’s greatest thinkers to every student, anywhere in the world, at a very low cost.
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  • Outside the classroom, digital has already done this. Not so very long ago, you had to be rich to hear the best opera or symphony. Now you can now download the world’s best recording of your favourite Mozart concerto for about a dollar.
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    Well-presented examples of how we can break out of the "all the seats in a row" mentality using the tools available today.
Suzanne Nelson

Get the Most out of Online Quizzes « classroom2point0 - 156 views

  • Unfortunately, life is not multiple choice; it’s a story problem. If we want to prepare our students for the demands of college and the real world, we cannot afford to whittle away their knowledge to a, b, c, d, or e: all of the above. At the same time, our time as teachers is at a premium and very few of us can afford to spend hours grading essay tests.
  • Fortunately, the powers that be are aligning in the classroom teacher’s favor, and there are two great tools you can use to reduce your grading time.
  • So what does QuizStar have that other sites don’t? My favorite feature of QuizStar by far is the “choose all that apply” option. You can create a
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  • Edmodo has finally created a quiz application!
  • Edmodo’s quiz feature allows you to create a quiz that mixes multiple choice, short answer, true/false, and fill in the blank.
  • But like QuizStar, Edmodo also analyzes results for you.
  • Rules for ALL Online Quizzes 1.  Never, ever, EVER copy a question from a textbook or a quiz you found online. I can almost guarantee that some enterprising student somewhere has copied the question and placed an answer key online.
  • Getting the Most out of Formative Assessments 1.  Set a time limit that will simultaneously allow students enough time to an
  • Getting the Most out of Open Note Formal Assessments 1.  If you are going to permit students to use notes and worksheets from class, design your questions so that they must apply the information they have at their fingertips. I
  • Getting the Most out of Closed Note Formal Assessments 1.  If no notes are permitted, reduce the amount of time students have to take the test. For multiple choice at the high school level, 45 seconds per question is fairly standard.
  • Experimentation and Feedback As you play around with online quizzes, ask your students to give you feedback. They’ll let you know what’s working and what isn’t.
Cath Horan

RBA: Speech-The Economic Outlook - 8 views

  • world economy has continued its expansion
  • 2014 economic global growth is thought likely by major forecasters to be a bit higher than in 2013
  • growth is coming from the advanced countries
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  • United States continues its recovery led by private demand and over the second half of last year the economy expanded at an annualised rate of just over 3 per cent.
  • The euro area has resumed growth, albeit in a somewhat hesitant fashion and with noticeable differences in performance by country.
  • A few emerging economies have lately come under pressure,
  • In fact were the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to step up its current program of quantitative and qualitative easing, it would soon be adding more cash to the global financial system, in absolute terms, than the Federal Reserve.
  • China's economy grew close to, and in fact a little faster than, the government's target last year. Strong and about equal contributions to growth were made by household consumption and investment. Consumer price inflation continues to be stable.
  • Recent indicators have shown possible signs of slower growth in the early part of 2014: growth of industrial production slowed; retail sales and passenger vehicle sales moderated; and fixed asse
  • Australia certainly weathered the financial crisis well, and with a real GDP some 13 per cent larger than it was at the beginning of 2009, compares well with many other advanced countries. It is the case, though, that growth while positive, has been running at a pace a bit below its trend pace for about 18 months now. The rate of unemployment has increased by something like a percentage point over the same period.
  • strong conditions in the natural resources sector.
  • n the rest of the economy, households have spent most of the past five years behaving more conservatively, or rather more normally, than they did over a long period up to the mid 2000s when they had been in a very expansive mood. Both consumption and residential construction have been soft for a while.
  • esources sector's capital spending continues to fall, it
  • It is unlikely, though, that a pick-up in resources exports, as important as that will be, will be enough to keep overall growth on the right trac
  • Recent data shows stronger household consumption over the summer. The latest surve
  • bundant signs of confidence in the housing market
  • Measures of business confidence have improved over the past six months. Businesses seem, so far, to be taking a cautious approach to investment,
  • is important to stress that this outlook is, obviously, a balance between the large negative force of declining mining investment and, working the other way, the likely pick up in some other areas of demand helped by very low interest rates, improved confidence and so on, as well as higher resource shipments. The lower exchange rate since last April and the improved economic conditions overseas also help.
  • On inflation, our view is that it will be a little higher than we thought three months ago
Mr. Eason

Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenge... - 119 views

  • the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
  • Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been components of human progress throughout history
  • What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills
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  • Many reform efforts, from reducing class size to improving reading instruction, have devolved into fads or been implemented with weak fidelity to their core intent. The 21st century skills movement faces the same risk.
  • some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
  • First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills
  • Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained
  • inally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks
  • Skills and knowledge are not separate, however, but intertwined.
  • In some cases, knowledge helps us recognize the underlying structure of a problem.
  • At other times, we know that we have a particular thinking skill, but domain knowledge is necessary if we are to use it.
  • if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
  • The importance of content in the development of thinking creates several challenges
  • first is the temptation to emphasize advanced, conceptual thinking too early in training
  • Another curricular challenge is that we don't yet know how to teach self-direction, collaboration, creativity, and innovation the way we know how to teach long division.
  • But experience is not the same thing as practice. Experience means only that you use a skill; practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.
  • We must plan to teach skills in the context of particular content knowledge and to treat both as equally important.
  • education leaders must be realistic about which skills are teachable. If we deem that such skills as collaboration and self-direction are essential, we should launch a concerted effort to study how they can be taught effectively rather than blithely assume that mandating their teaching will result in students learning them.
  • teachers don't use them.
  • Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered method
  • these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers.
  • These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses.
  • constant juggling act
  • greater collaboration among teachers.
  • But where will schools find the release time for such collaboration?
  • professional development is a massive undertaking.
  • Unfortunately, there is a widespread belief that teachers already know how to do this if only we could unleash them from today's stifling standards and accountability metrics. This notion romanticizes student-centered methods, underestimates the challenge of implementing such methods, and ignores the lack of capacity in the field today.
  • The first challenge is the cost.
  • measures that encourage greater creativity, show how students arrived at answers, and even allow for collaboration.
  • When students first encounter new ideas, their knowledge is shallow and their understanding is bound to specific examples. They need exposure to varied examples before their understanding of a concept becomes more abstract and they can successfully apply that understanding to novel situations.
Caroline Kuhn

From Internet to Gutenberg 1996 - 30 views

  • remember books. Books challenge and improve memory
  • (The book will kill the cathedral, alphabet will kill images).
  • During the sixties, Marshall McLuhan wrote his The Gutenberg Galaxy, where he announced that the linear way of thinking instaured by the invention of the press, was on the verge of being substituted by a more global way of perceiving and understanding through the TV images or other kinds of electronic device
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  • the computer has become, first of all, an alphabetic instrument
  • These same teen-agers, if by chance they want to program their own home computer, must know, or learn, logical procedures and algorithms, and must type words and numbers on a keyboard, at a great speed. In this sense one can say that the computer made us to return to a Gutenberg Galaxy.
  • Today the concept of literacy comprises many media. An enlightened policy of literacy must take into account the possibilities of all of these media. Educational preoccupation must be extended to the whole of media.
  • Images have, so to speak, a sort of Platonic power: they transform individuals into general idea
  • who will receive pre-fabricated images and therefore prefabricated definitions of the world, without any power to critically choose the kind of information they receive, and those who know how to deal with the computer, who will be able to select and to elaborate information.
  • This will re-establish the cultural division which existed at the time of Claude Frollo, between those who were able to read manuscripts, and therefore to critically deal with religious, scientifical or philosophical matters, and those who were only educated by the images of the cathedral, selected and produced by their masters, the literate few.
  • With a hypertext, instead, I can navigate through the whole encyclopedia. I can connect an event registered at the beginning with a series of similar events disseminated all along the text, I can compare the beginning with the end, I can ask for the list of all the words beginning by A, I can ask for all the cases in which the name of Napoleon is linked with the one of Kant, I can compare the dates of their birth and death - in short, I can do my job in few seconds or few minutes.
  • Even if it were true that today visual communication overwhelms written communication, the problem is not to oppose written to visual communication. The problem is how to improve both.
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    Or the Elements of Euclid.
Martin Burrett

How to use Twitter Bookmarks... in 19 seconds - 22 views

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    A super quick YouTube video showing you how to use Twitter's new bookmarks.
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    I have been a Twitter die-hard for years and didn't know about this function. You have indeed changed my Twitter world today by sharing. Thanks so much!
meghankelly492

Mental skills for musicians: Managing music performance anxiety and enhancing performance. - 1 views

  • In asurvey of 2,212 classical musicians, 40% re-ported that anxiety interfered with their perfor-mances (Kirchner, Bloom, & Skutnick–Henley,
  • , see Kenny (2005) andMcGinnis and Milling (2005
  • Few studies have investigated whether a cog-nitive intervention can reduce anxiety and en-hance performance in musicians (Lehrer, 1987;Steptoe & Fidler, 1987)
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  • did notreturn any recent studies investigating the effec-tiveness of a purely cognitive intervention in thetreatment of MPA; consequently, research inthis particular area is needed
  • Past re-search has focused on combined interventions;however, often these programs run for over 6weeks and it is unknown which aspects of theintervention are most effective (e.g., Nagel,Himle, & Papsdorf, 1989)
  • State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).The STAI is widely used in anxiety researchand is considered to be a valid and reliable scale(Kenny, 2006).
  • The PAI (Nagel, Himle, & Papsdorf, 1981) isbased on the STAI and is a music inventoryassessing the three-systems model of anxiety
  • heart rate at 10 min, 5
  • Signs of anxiety included trem-bling knees, lifting shoulders, stiff back and/orneck, trembling hands, stiff arms, face deadpan,shaking head, moistening and/or biting lips, dis-tressed facial expressions, and sweating.
  • Nagel et al.reported that the average preintervention scorewas 55 and the average postintervention scorewas 38, with a score of 39 or less indicating a
  • person has few problems with performance anx-iety
  • Researchers have found that MPA af-fects instrumentalists and vocalists of all agesand abilities, including students, professionals,amateurs, and children (Brotons, 1994; Kenny,2006; Liston, Frost, & Mohr, 2003)
  • Few studies have investigated whether a cog-nitive intervention can reduce anxiety and en-hance performance in musicians (Lehrer, 1987;Steptoe & Fidler, 1987)
  • Few studies have investigated whether a cog-nitive intervention can reduce anxiety and en-hance performance in musicians (Lehrer, 1987;Steptoe & Fidler, 1987
  • The cognitive intervention had no significanteffect on anxiety levels. Sweeney and Horan’s(1982) study indicated that a cognitive restruc-turing program may be helpful in the treatmentof MPA; their program, featuring cognitive re-structuring, significantly reduced anxiety.
  • d it is unknown which aspects of theintervention are most effective (e.g., Nagel,Himle, & Papsdorf, 1989)
  • The STAI is widely used in anxiety researchand is considered to be a valid and reliable scale
  • Performance Anxiety Inventory (PAI)
  • cognitive, behavioral, and physiological fac
  • and has beenwidely used in treatment outcome research
  • Behavioral Anxiety Index (BAI)
  • igns of anxiety included trem-bling knees, lifting shoulders, stiff back and/orneck, trembling hands, stiff arms, face deadpan,shaking head, moistening and/or biting lips, dis-tressed facial expressions, and sweating
  • Participants were then taught howthoughts, behaviors, and feelings interact andinfluence performance
  • practical exercise, how people waste their en-ergy trying to control uncontrollable factors,thereby impairing performance
  • This exercise wasdesigned to demonstrate how thoughts cansometimes be irrational and can be changed inlight of new evidence
  • how to use self-talk effectively and how touse cues
  • Participants practiced how to identify negativethoughts, stop the thoughts, and use cues to helpthem overcome the negative thoughts.
  • Imagery is a mentalexercise that can help athletes maintain concen-tration, decrease anxiety, and improve confi-dence; thus, it may also be helpful for somemusicians (Gregg & Clark, 2007).
  • Participants in the wait-list controlgroup waited 3 weeks until their second perfor-mance, which was on the same night as theirfirst worksho
  • MPA is a pervasive problem affecting musi-cians of all ages and abilities. As compared withthe research on mental skills training in athletes,relatively little is known about the assessment,treatment, and theoretical underpinnings ofMPA
  • Kenny (2006) suggested that improving perfor-mance quality will have a positive, self-reinforcing effect on the musician and enhanceconfidence in future performances.
  • We predicted that anxiety levels would de-crease in the treatment group from pre- to post-test. This hypothesis was partially supported.Specifically, there was a significant reductionon the PAI in the treatment group. Although theparticipants improved after the intervention,they were still not within the optimal rangeaccording to Nagel et al. (1981
  • Although the decrease in anxiety was notas large in our study, our participants droppedfrom the high performance anxiety category tothe moderate performance anxiety category
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