Possible Postcard + QR to increase adoption rate for BodiMojo

Front of Postcard:

Sick of People Telling Us
What to Eat!

Back of Postcard:

http://ilnk.me/BodiMojo

Click with a Smart Phone or type in the url.

Get this video on your screen:

Time-keeping Brain Neurons Discovered

The point is that time and space are the deep fundamentals and time training is one of the most important things an education system does.

Time-keeping Brain Neurons Discovered:

"An MIT team led by Institute Professor Ann Graybiel has found groups of neurons in the primate brain that code time with extreme precision. 'All you do is time stamp everything, and then recalling events is easy: you go back and look through your time stamps until you see which ones are correlated with the event,' she says."

Open Source PD for High School Science

version 4 updated 9.08.09 6:00 amEDT

Instead of paying teachers to listen to someone else, what if teachers were paid to listen to each other.

The Paper
It could be a postcard, a letter or an ad in the school newspaper. But whatever it is, it appears in the teacher's mailbox or is handed to the teacher by an AP.

The focus this week is Evolution and BioDiversity, There will be a PD session next Tuesday to brainstorm how we might be able to use what's in the video for our classes.

Reader's note 1 "brainstorm how we might be able to use" is at the heart of the "development" part of "professional development." A combination of face to face plus on line mentoring is the heart of the "professional" part of "professional development." (see argument at the end of the post)

A Taste for Insects 57:53 minutes. is from the University of California's UCTV.
On the web at http://bit.ly/VpbXS

Reader's note 2 "http://bit.ly/VpbXS" is an easy-ish to remember and type URL. But it is just one path. The other path is using 2D- QR code that is printed on the paper. It might look like the one below. Pointing a cellphone or a web cam will automatically take one to the A Taste for Insects video. That's the experience I'm trying to point to with "clickable print."

"How did the passion for collecting and collections of Darwin, Wallace and others of their period force them to understand and explain biodiversity? What is the legacy of this period of adventure and species discovery and how is it a vital part of current and future evolutionary research? Join Kipling Will, Associate Director of the Essig Museum of Entomology, UC Berkeley for this exploration. (#16071)

The video

The argument
Any time taken away from teachers thinking about and working with their students is wasted time. Teacher time is the scarce resource in school systems. Wasting it increases costs without increasing learning.

My direct experience is in the New York City school systems. I've seen how much money and time is wasted in that context.

With the explosion of great content on the internet this no longer has to be the case. With asynchronous communication on wikis and nings, expert moderated discussions are practical.

With the simple use of a piece of paper and the open source resources on the internet, we can have the same experience we want to give to our students.

Babies Use Their Own Names To Help Learn Language

"Bortfeld's research, which appears in the upcoming April issue of 'Psychological Science,' shows that babies use familiar words such as their names as a sort of 'anchor' into the speech stream. A baby as young as six months can learn to recognize an individual word that follows its own name, even after hearing both words as part of whole sentences, says Bortfeld who worked with colleagues from Brown University and the University of Delaware."

Recognition drives segmentation of the speech stream, and segmentation is a critical step in learning a language," Bortfeld explains. "We know from previous research that babies are recognizing their names in fluent speech by the age of six months, so we hypothesized that they should be able to use that recognition to segment the speech stream and recognize new words.

Much in the same way a person might have difficulty understanding a foreign language because it's hard to tell where one word starts and another begins, babies face a similar challenge in learning language. Bortfeld's research shows babies can begin to discern the beginnings and endings of words that follow their names, meaning their names form a foundation for learning language.

In what can be described as a "popping out" pattern, Bortfeld explains, one familiar word can allow a baby to pick out another word, and that newly familiar word may allow a baby to learn words that follow it.

read more at Science Daily

Familiar And Newly Learned Words Are Processed By The Same Neural Networks In The Brain

"In one of the experiments conducted in the NEURO programme, participants learned the name and/or purpose of 150 ancient tools. They had never heard these words before. The subjects' brain function was measured by means of magnetoencelography during the naming of the tools, both before and after the learning period.

The results show that the brain uses the same neural networks to process both familiar and newly learned words.
. . .
In other words, it seems that the processing of meanings in the brain differs essentially from the processing of names. On the other hand, the performance results indicated that new definitions were learned even faster than new names.

read at Familiar And Newly Learned Words Are Processed By The Same Neural Networks In The Brain:

Employee’s Loyalty To Workplace Damaged By Unfair Treatment

Employee’s Loyalty To Workplace Damaged By Unfair Treatment:
"ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2009) — In organizational settings, managers as well as others in leadership roles should perhaps think twice before ridiculing subordinate employees on their choice of lunch, attire, or habits, or generally acting disrespectfully towards them. Recent research from the Journal of Management Studies shows that when an employee believes that he or she has been treated unfairly, the employee is not likely to forgive and forget."

Towards Malaria 'Vaccine': Discovery Opens The Door To Malaria-prevention Therapies

The point is that until the mechanism is defined, it's very hard to fix dysfunctional systems. As in health v disease, so it is in smart v stupid.

. . .
"Researchers at the RI-MUHC and McGill University, discovered that hemozoin, a crystal-like substance may be the missing link that explains why malaria leads to devastating inflammation and fever.

'Our results describe the mechanism by which the hemozoin activates the immune system, resulting in the production of inflammation mediators and in the high fever that we witness in malaria patients,' said study first-author Dr. Marina Tiemi Shio of the RI-MUHC.

Hemozoin is first ingested by 'cleaning' cells called macrophages, explained the researcher which leads to a chain reaction ending in the activation of the inflammasome: an important structure inside immune cells which lead to inflammation. Activation of the inflammasome produces the body's fever mediator, interleukin beta (IL-beta)."
read at Towards Malaria 'Vaccine': Discovery Opens The Door To Malaria-prevention Therapies:

Mystery and the Impossible in Math, Science and Beyond (Aug. 8, 2009) | Intent.com

The point is that scientists are working on the deep mysteries of life. To listen to 57 minutes of what that means click on Mystery and the Impossible in Math, Science and Beyond
(Aug. 8, 2009) | Intent.com:

"Deepak Chopra speaks with Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist and professor famous for his New York Times bestseller book Physics of the Impossible. Chopra also speaks to Amir Aczel, a lecturer in mathematics who wrote the book The Riddle of the Compass."

Revising English Part 4

The point is this series of posts by Jim Burke is best thinking/writing I've seen about the purpose of education.

After considering carefully the ideas of Jago and Scholes, Langer and Marshall, and a long list of others, I arrived at my own sense of what English is.

We need to do more than teach skills and knowledge: We need to cultivate within our students a range of personae, each of which is necessary if they are, as Jago says, “to make a living, make a life, and make a difference” (2009, 1).

Note that each of the following personae has two sides: one devoted to comprehending, interpreting, and analyzing the text or content created by others; the other side dedicated to communicating one’s own ideas and content through whichever means or media that person deems most appropriate to the task and occasion. In other words, each role involves both comprehension and composition. Here is a brief description of these eight personae English teachers attempt to develop in students—and ourselves . . .

Storyteller . . . more at the original post
Philosopher . . more at the original post
Historian . . . more at the original post
Anthropologist more at the original post
Reporter more at the original post
Critic more at the original post
Designer more at the original post
Traveler more at the original post

Tumor Mutations Can Predict Chemo Success

Tumor Mutations Can Predict Chemo Success:
"ScienceDaily (Aug. 8, 2009) — New work by MIT cancer biologists shows that the interplay between two key genes that are often defective in tumors determines how cancer cells respond to chemotherapy.

The findings should have an immediate impact on cancer treatment, say Michael Hemann and Michael Yaffe, the two MIT biology professors who led the study. The work could help doctors predict what types of chemotherapy will be effective in a particular tumor, which would help tailor treatments to each patient.

'This isn't something that's going to take five years to do,' says Yaffe, who, along with Hemann is a member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. 'You could begin doing this tomorrow.'"

14-year-old 'surgeon' to present findings today

The point is you never know what you can do until you try.

"A Jacksonville researcher has developed a way of sewing up patients after hysterectomies that stands to reduce the risk of complications and simplify the tricky procedure for less-seasoned surgeons. Oh, and he's 14 years old. Feel free to read that again. Tony Hansberry II is a ninth-grader who, as it happens, will be presenting his findings today before an auditorium filled with doctors just like any of his board-certified - and decades older - colleagues would. He would say he was following in the footsteps of 'Doogie Howser, M.D.' - if he weren't too young to have heard of the television show. Instead, he says that his remarkable accomplishments are merely steps toward his ultimate goal of becoming a University of Florida-trained neurosurgeon. 'I just want to help people and be respected, knowing that I can save lives,' said Tony, the son of a registered nurse mom and an African Methodist Episcopal church pastor dad. To be sure, he had some help along the way, but, then again, most researchers do. The seeds of his project were planted last summer during his internship at the University of Florida's Center for Simulation Education and Safety Research, based at Shands Jacksonville. To understand why a teenager would be a hospital intern, it's important to know that Tony is a student . . .

read the rest at 14-year-old 'surgeon' to present findings today | Jacksonville.com:

What do we mean by trust?

I think the point is learn how to judge who and what you can trust. The question is what might this mean for education.

Video 2 of 7


Video 3 of 7

Getting together through the generations

The point is this sounds plausible to me.

"Love and sex comprise the dark matter in our high schools. Dark matter is stuff out in the universe that is undetectable, matter whose existence can only be inferred from its gravitational effects on everything else. One couldn't ask for a better definition of love and sex.

I bring this up for two reasons. One, school doors are about to open for the autumn semester and two, schools are publicly concerned about their dropout rate. In Chicago, a good-looking hip-hop artist and recent Chicago Public Schools graduate named Jeremih Felton is encouraging students to remain in school. Calling himself simply Jeremih, the popular singer of the hit song 'Birthday Sex,' and the school district are hoping Jeremih's star power will influence other young people to remain in school. Good for him, although it seems a few people are concerned about some of his hit song's blatantly sexual lyrics. They think perhaps Jeremih is not an appropriate role model for high school students.
. . .
And when Paul Simon sings "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school it's a wonder I can think at all," I can only nod in agreement, and hope to never again see my own yearbook, a testament to bad taste and unfulfilled promise.

read the full column at Getting together through the generations -- chicagotribune.com:

The Paul Simon Song:

People With Lots Of Working Memory Are Not Easily Distracted:

A working hypothesis is that it's a signal v noise problem in learning. It's only secondarily about "content."

"'Our attention is the continual interplay between what our goals are and what the environment is trying to dictate to us,' Vogel said. 'Often, to be able to complete complex and important goal-directed behavior, we need to be able to ignore salient but irrelevant things, such as advertisements flashing around an article you are trying to read on a computer screen. We found that some people are really good at overriding attention capture, and other people have a difficult time unhooking from it and are really susceptible to irrelevant stimuli.'

Vogel theorizes that people who are good at staying on focus have a good gatekeeper, much like a bouncer or ticket-taker hired to allow only approved people into a nightclub or concert. Understanding how to improve the gatekeeper component, he said, could lead to therapies that help easily distracted people better process what information is allowed in initially, rather than attempting to teach people how to force more information into their memory banks."

Read more @People With Lots Of Working Memory Are Not Easily Distracted:

How to get Boys in High School "Motivated" to get that A

Being a grown up boy, I can only speak from experience for boys. But I'm pretty sure Video 2 works for everyone. Including teachers.

The point of video 1: ". . . maybe by being an A student baby, I could win your love for me."

The point for video 2: The more you know about how world works, the more you can enjoy the magic of being alive.

Video 1.


Video 2.

What's the Matter with Memory?

The point is how can you trust your memories?

The full program is over an hour. You can watch it at Fora.tv.

The quantum theory of reincarnation by Roger Ebert

The point is that this is food for thought.

If you thought Roger Ebert was only interested in movies, read "The quantum theory of reincarnation," the latest essay on his award-winning online journal. In it the renowned film critic offers both wide-eyed wonder and speculative rumination on the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, its possible implications, and the role of string theory and ether and of consciousness as "gravitational." A lively series of postings follows. Also featured on the page are a handful of YouTube videos, including the animated double-slit experiment featured in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know!?.

you can read more here

"The God Effect" by Brian Clegg

The point is that the leading edge of science is going in some very strange directions. You can see the 25 books that Clegg has written here. The other point is that he is trained in applying mathematics to warfare. Warfare is about making decisions that have predictable consequences. Some think it is life at its most clear and most dangerous.

Biography at Amazon

Brian has written a number of popular science books, including The Global Warming Survival Kit, The God Effect, on the most remarkable phenomenon of the quantum world (St Martins Press) and The Man Who Stopped Time on the motion picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge (Joseph Henry Press/NAS). Other titles include A Brief History of Infinity (Constable & Robinson) which was launched with a sell-out lecture at the Royal Institution in London, and reached #1 position on Amazon in the general Popular Science category and topped the Amazon popular maths list for over 10 weeks.

Along with further appearances at the RI he has spoken at venues from Oxford and Cambridge Universities to Cheltenham Festival of Science, has contributed to radio and TV programmes, and is a popular speaker at schools. Brian is also editor of the successful www.popularscience.co.uk book review site and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Brian has Masters degrees from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences and from Lancaster University in Operational Research, a discipline originally developed during the Second World War to apply the power of mathematics to warfare.

Sometimes you can't see what's happening, becuase it's happening too fast

If Mozart Increases Spatial Intelligence for some, What does Hip Hop do?

To be clear, there is no assertion that hip hop doesn't increase some kind of intelligence. The question is only what kind?

from Miller-McCune Online Magazine:
"Researchers from the University of London have tested a thesis that may explain why studies of this phenomenon have produced such inconsistent results. In a study just published in the journal Psychology of Music, they conclude that listening to Mozart can indeed spark a certain type of intelligence, but the effect is limited to non-musicians. The reason, it appears, has to do with the different ways musicians and non-musicians process music in the brain.

The term “Mozart effect” can be traced back to a 1993 study, in which a research team led by Frances Rauscher reported that a group of college students outperformed their peers on a test measuring a specific kind of spatial intelligence after listening to one of the Austrian composer’s works: The Sonata for Two Pianos, K. 448.

The test subjects were asked to mentally unfold a piece of paper that had been folded over several times and then cut. Those who listened to Mozart were able to identify the correct shape of the unfolded paper more quickly than those who had sat in silence for 10 minutes, or those who had listened to a tape of relaxing sounds.