Mindhacks

Here’s an awesome article I just read from staff-writer Kenn Rodriguez from the Valencia County News-Bulletin.

It’s really encouraging to hear about active visualization and mind-developing techniques in today’s classrooms!

Daydreaming? Creativity? It’s part of their math lesson

After being introduced by teacher Elizabeth Gomez, Holly Davis talks a bit to Gomez’ fifth-grade class at Raymond Gallegos Intermediate School.

“One of my favorite things to do in school was to daydream,” she admits to them. “Today we’re going to use our imaginations. Who’d like to be in my story?”

Asking students to use their imaginations and telling a story aren’t an unusual occurrence in most American classrooms.

Saying those things while teaching mathematics is.

Davis, who is the math coordinator for the Los Lunas Schools, has come this morning to model teaching techniques for Gomez - teaching techniques that are at the forefront of the district’s “numbers literacy” initiative.

“It’s a national trend,” said Davis after the class. “Ninety-three percent of the state is using some variation of the math approach. There are a couple of districts that aren’t quite there yet, but they’re going to have to be.

“Because the goal is to teach kids to think and process, the goal is not valuing the answer only.”

In the classroom, Davis tells a story about a girl named Alexis who has five coins. She says two of the coins are the same. The students are asked how many other coins Alexis has and what kind of coins they are. They enthusiastically answer.

Another exercise Davis goes through involves the number 678.

That’s the number of the day.

Using magnets representing numbers grouped in hundreds, tens and ones, she shows the students several ways of grouping them to understand and visualize the number.

It’s all part of the new approach, one that Gomez, who is in her fifth year with the Los Lunas Schools, said works on many levels.

“I’ve done some of this with the kids, done some using overheads,” she said. “A lot of the stuff up there is actually mine. So I’ve done this with the kids where they work out problems together. We’ve done the same thing with fraction bars and papers like this or the place value units. So they’ve done it before.”

Eventually the students pair up to work on problems. In the past, such a thing would be unthinkable for math teachers — but not with the new approach.

“They work together a lot because sometimes they can compare answers then, if they’re different, they can talk about them and figure it out,” Gomez explains.

Even with her experience teaching using these same math literacy methods, Gomez said she likes being able to see Davis model the lesson.

“She’s our coach so she’s elaborating on some of the stuff I’ve done here,” Gomez said. “So I’m actually learning from her and so are the kids. But it’s neat that they’re taking what I’ve taught them and applying it and kind of expanding it.”

Many times, Gomez said, she will have students teach part of a lesson, showing the other students how they came up with the answer.

“I’m always using things like this or actually having the kids be the teacher and present their problems,” she said. “It’s kind of fun for them, but I think it makes them more excited about it and be creative and know that there’s more than one way to get somewhere. I always tell them that.”

The new approach also incorporates a lot of writing and reading. The days of “reading, writing and ‘rithmatic” being separated are gone, Davis said.

“Now you see writing in math because there just aren’t enough hours in the day, and we have standards that we have to meet so you have to be artful in your planning to integrate them together. If you’re going to do art, you have to integrate it into some standard.”

After the class, Davis said her co-workers at the district offices were teasing her for being so happy that morning.

The office staff knew she was happy, she said, “because I got to go out and teach.” Davis said she’s also been happy with the new math initiatives.

“I feel so fortunate in this district because I really do feel like we have leaders at all levels that are instructional leaders,” she said. “They’re not just managers. They know how to do instruction. And they can go into a classroom and teach it, all the way up to the superintendent and even my boss.

“When you have a group like that, they’re valuing individuals. This district is lucky to be able to use a comprehensive literacy approach, which is the same thing. It’s not ‘Open up your textbook and we’re reading this story.’ It’s ‘I picked a book for you’ and in the teacher’s mind it’s up to their instructional level and meets their interest.”

David said she’s found a lot of support in the district for the new teaching methods, which also encompass all other subjects, not just math, she said.

“The feedback I get as math coordinator is that they like it, but I definitely know it is a process for the teachers to change too,” she said. “Change is a big deal, and teaching is hard.”

Gomez, who said she “loves math personally,” welcomes the new approach as a teacher.

“I always tell the kids there’s always earning and teaching. As a teacher, I learn every day, and that excites me. I’ve been real excited with the programs we’ve started, and the kids are more excited. I look at it as things that reel them into the joys of math rather than constant bookwork. Not higher level thinking.

“I think I love math, and I’m more excited that the kids are liking it and applying it so it’s like ‘Yes, they actually get it,’” Gomez said. “That’s been exciting for me.”

(source)

5 Reason you should ditch your keyboard and start hand-writing!

As information technology starts entering our everyday lives more and more, and as information workers like myself start working more and more on keyboards instead of writing on paper. Are there any benefits left to handwriting?

I decided to conduct an experiment, where I would spend some time handwriting on a notepad instead of the usual clattering hum of typing on the keyboard.

Now, keep in mind that I use my keyboard to do a majority of my writing and correspondences with my circle of colleagues, family, and friends. Everything from email to instant messaging - even sending a text message on my cellphone involves dealing with some form of digital input or another.

Has the keyboard taken over my main means of written communication? Has the pen gone extinct? Has the keyboard mightier than the sword?

Here are some observations:

1. The Right Method

Writing with a pen allowed me to do a lot (Thanks Guys :P) more than just write across a page in neat and ordered way. It allowed me to draw little diagrams and pictures to help get a point across. By using drawings and doodles, you can allow your mind to tap into your right-side of the brain. This is the side of your brain where creativity and conceptual thinking exists - by tapping into this side of the brain, it allowed me to doodle down some great ideas for several projects I was working on.

2. Unstoppable

Writing does not require electricity. Just a comfortable working location, some good lighting, and reference materials. Plenty of great writing has come about from anywhere from bedrooms to transatlantic flights. Notepads don’t suffer from computer viruses, crash, or irritating pop-up ads from websites. You can write anytime as well. No need to boot up a computer. Just make sure your pencils are sharp or your pens are full and you should be all good!

3. The Inner Editor

Writing by hand allows you to spend more time on your words. Unlike typing, which allows you to get it down before you forget it (which has it’s benefits), handwriting can be more concise and far more elegant with the right practice (no pun intended!)

4. Awareness

When I turned off my beloved Macbook and started this experiment, I noticed that the computer’s drone was inhibiting allot of subtle noises in the background. This was not only calming, but added some inspiration to my project as well! There was also no distractions from instant messages or new email notifications. It was just me, my notepad and pen, and my thoughts.

5. Personality

Writing by hand also adds a personal touch to your material. It’s a lovely feeling to receive a hand-written letter from a friend of a loved-one. Somehow, hand-writing’s effort seems to directly translate to the words on the page, and can be much more warm and appreciated than a dry email.

—

If your looking for more exercises for your right-side of the mind, check out Burt Goldman’s talk on how he learnt photography (and ended up in the International Photography Hall of Fame!)

Click here to read more!

Creativity Exercises - A Great Exercise That Will Dramatically Improve your Creativity

I want to let you in on a great creativity exercise that will get your creative juices flowing to the extreme. The secret I’ve just discovered is a creativity exercise called Image Streaming.

It comes courtesy of Win Wenger, Ph.D, and the effects on intellect and creativity are truly startling. You can see results in a few hours.

I’m sure you’re wondering . . .

Creativity Exercises: What is Image Streaming?

“Image Streaming is a technique that facilitates access to the deep subconscious by accessing the constantly arising stream of visual images that we have.” - source

 

Creativity Exercises: How to Image-Stream?

What you need is an external focus to describe your images to. A tape recorder with blank tape, or a simple Dictaphone like every office used to have, provides you a potential listener for that all-essential focus. Call in a friend, or phone to call up a friend and keep him or her on the line, and you have, even better, a live listener to serve as that external focus.

Of that half of you who did get an image, some found a strong, clear, definite image or set of images, while others just got a glimpse, a faint impression which you might think was hardly worth describing, or weren’t certain whether you were just making up the idea rather than seeing an image —

— Yet whatever you got, the key is to examine and describe it aloud, in as rich detail as possible even if you feel at first as if you are “forcing” it and “making up” some of it to fill your description to your external focus listener.

More, though, and more, will come as you describe — be alert to this happening, and describe the new impressions when they come. Your images will become rich and vivid and even their meanings — as Image-Stream contents are often symbolic or metaphoric — will start to become apparent.

That is Image-Streaming. Each full-flow Image-Streaming session should run from 10 to 30 minutes. Examine whatever images happen to be playing in your mind’s eye at the time, while describing them in rich detail to a live or potential listener (person or tape recorder).

Even minimum, trivial-seeming impressions or whatever: describe them in such richly textured detail as to force anyone listening to experience and see what you are describing. 10 to 20 minutes at a time, practice several hours of Image-Streaming and you will have mastered the basic skills needed to make other forms of visual thinking work for you. — And you will also have experienced some of the other benefits of Image-Streaming as well, including improved intellectual performance and creativity.

Even if your imagery is already clear and vivid, you will be astonished at how much more so it quickly becomes when you describe it in this way, while continuing to examine it.

Creativity Exercises: 3 Ways this improvement is even stronger!

1)You describe in as sensory-textured detail as possible.

The major part of your brain that we want to bring on line, works with sensory images even in profoundly intellectual matters. Explanation takes you away from that sensory immediacy. Instead of saying, “I’m at the beach” or “This is Virginia Beach,” detail instead the warmth of sand under your toes, the sound of surf, the smell of salt, the wheeling of the gulls above you in the almost-white sky, black and white of the gulls on that paler white far above you ….

2)Describe as rapidly as you can, to get more and more detail in.

Describe faster than you can stop to judge whether or not something is worth mentioning, just go ahead and flow it through (and see what comes with it). This is a kind of “brainstorm” only with description instead of ideas or answers, and has a similar rule to brainstorming’s “if it occurs to you, express it!” Really rapid-flow describing exerts almost a Venturi force or suction pulling other perceptions into focus.

3) All this is done most easily with eyes shut. . .

 so that your inner visual circuits aren’t distracted away from these initially subtler signals, and so they can operate at full sensitivity. In other words, please keep eyes closed during such processing, in order to see more freely.

Read more on the Image Streaming Creativity Exercise

Jose Silva also conducted creativity exercises with many of the kids in his hometown of Laredo. Why not read more on Enhancing Creativity through Gaining Inspiration From Within.

The Greatest Force in the Universe?

Creative Imagination has been declared by some of the greatest people throughout history as the most powerful tool that we have at our fingertips. Let’s take a look at some of the most influential sources we know about Creative Imagination.

Albert Einstein:

“Imagination is the greatest creative force in the universe.”

The Bible:

“As a man thinketh, so shall he become”

“Without vision we perish”

A creative imagination has been at the forefront of modern day visionaries such as Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Nelson Mandela, Napoleon Hill, BUT is it the most powerful force in the universe?

The Most Powerful Force in the Universe

By David Cameron

 Albert Einstein said that imagination is the greatest creative force in the universe. Why would such a great man say something that sounds so silly and trivial? Look at those words again: ‘greatest creative force’. Imagination? Not education? Nor money? Nor luck?

Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, said that imagination is the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world has ever known. Before you pass him away as a crackpot, know that Mr. Hill was an advisor to two U.S. presidents, was commissioned by the great and wealthy Andrew Carnegie to teach people about making their dreams come true, and has been thanked by many of the greatest people around the world for the success he helped them achieve.

People like F. W. Woolworth (founder of Woolworth’s), Woodrow Wilson (former U.S. President), George Eastman (founder of Kodak), W. M. Wrigley, JR. (Wrigley’s), and many others have used his teachings to manifest their dreams.

Imagination is the force that takes you to places you have never been.

Henry Ford relied on imagination and belief. Walt Disney said that had he not seen Disneyland in his mind, the rest of the world would not have seen it on earth. Bill Gates first imagines his products before they become actual software that we rely on. And it would serve you well to remember that many of the world’s greatest people started with nothing and built empires. They had a dream. And the universe conspired, as it always does, to let them experience their imagination.

The universe always lets you experience your imagination, whatever it may be.

The Bible says ‘As a man thinketh, so shall he become’. It also says ‘Without vision we perish’.

Your mind’s images are literally the blueprint from which your world is built.

Your mind is infinite. What are your limits? What are limits, except those that you say are so? Why else would two different people have different ‘limits’?

Life is images of the mind, expressed. What this means is that Life, The Source, uses your thoughts, your mental images, as the instructions by which to create your reality in the material world. Life expresses your mental images into physical reality.

To express is to make known, to state, articulate, communicate, convey. The force of Life makes known your thoughts to yourself and everyone else by forming them into experiences and objects that can be experienced, here in the physical world.

You experience your own thoughts first hand, your images of your mind, so that you may know which ones are suitable and which ones are not. That is how you know yourself, that is how you experience your self, and that is how you grow.

This is the supreme purpose of this physical world that we are now in. It is designed to enable you to experience your Self. It is designed to enable you to experience an idea and its effects and consequences.

Life does not select which ones of your images to express and which ones not to. How would it choose for you? It therefore expresses all of them to the extent that you have them and believe them. You have true free will.

This free will is truly free because of the fact that all of it is acted upon without filtering or favoring. Free will is truly free because of the fact that it actually gets results all the time, not just some of the time, and it gets them exactly.

Your ideas, visions and dreams, whatever they may be, are the prophecies of what you shall one day become and achieve. You can predict your outer life tomorrow by looking at your inner self today. You can change your tomorrow by changing your inner self today.

As you think, there do you find yourself. You attract the people that have something to teach you in line with your thoughts, people who have something to learn from you in line with your thoughts, and you repel those who have nothing more to learn from you and give you in line with your thoughts. The same goes for places and conditions, situations and environments.

Many things influence your imagination – past fears, desires, poor mental training, lack of awareness, sub-personalities, lack of goals – any much more. But anything that influences your imagination is under your control.

You can stop it simply by becoming aware of it and releasing it. And this is where awareness, consciousness, comes in as the key to clearing your mind of the debris that brings suffering to you and sabotages your success.

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Editor’s Note: one sciencist has revealed that belief in reincarnation has adverse effects on a person’s memory. On the flipside, believers generally have more creative minds.

 Recent tests have shown that there are big differences in memory between people who believe in reincarnation and people who don’t. The studies revealed that people who believe are more likely to have memory errors.

This article outlines the study and believes that the tests explain how people hang on to implausible reincarnation stories of past lives. It can also be argued that believers hang on to their stories for spiritual reasons. One plus point for believers that was revealed is that they are generally more creative than non-believers.

Belief in Reincarnation Tied to Memory Errors

Melinda Wenner

People who believe they have lived past lives as, say, Indian princesses or battlefield commanders are more likely to make certain types of memory errors, according to a new study.

The propensity to make these mistakes could, in part, explain why people cling to  implausible reincarnation claims in the first place.

Researchers recruited people who, after undergoing hypnotic therapy, had come to believe that they had past lives.

Subjects were asked to read aloud a list of 40 non-famous names, and then, after a two-hour wait, told that they were going to see a list consisting of three types of names: non-famous names they had already seen (from the earlier list), famous names, and names of non-famous people that they had not previously seen. Their task was to identify which names were famous.

The researchers found that, compared to control subjects who dismissed the idea of reincarnation, past-life believers were almost twice as likely to misidentify names. In particular, their tendency was to wrongly identify as famous the non-famous names they had seen in the first task. This kind of error, called a source-monitoring error, indicates that a person has difficulty recognizing where a memory came from.

Power of suggestion

People who are likely to make these kinds of errors might end up convincing themselves of things that aren’t true, said lead researcher Maarten Peters of Maastricht University in The Netherlands. When people who are prone to making these mistakes undergo hypnosis and are repeatedly asked to talk about a potential idea—like a past life—they might, as they grow more familiar with it, eventually convert the idea into a full-blown false memory.

This is because they can’t distinguish between things that have really happened and things that have been suggested to them, Peters told LiveScience.

Past life memories are not the only type of implausible memories that have been studied in this manner. Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, has found that self-proclaimed alien abductees are also twice as likely to commit source monitoring errors.

Creative minds

As for what might make people more prone to committing such errors to begin with, McNally says that it could be the byproduct of especially vivid imagery skills. He has found that people who commonly make source-monitoring errors respond to and imagine experiences more strongly than the average person, and they also tend to be more creative.

“It might be harder to discriminate between a vivid image that you’d generated yourself and the memory of a perception of something you actually saw,” McNally in a telephone interview.

Peters also found in his study, detailed in the March issue of Consciousness and Cognition, that people with implausible memories are also more likely to be depressed and to experience sleep problems, and this could also make them more prone to memory mistakes.

And once people make this kind of mistake, they might be inclined to stick to their guns for spiritual reasons, McNally said.

 ”It may be a variant expression of certain religious impulses. . . We suspect that this might be kind of a psychological buffering mechanism against the fear of death.”

original article >>

Editor’s Note: Creativity is such an amazing facet that we all possess as human beings; the untapped potential of the human mind is infinite. Following on from other themes I dug up this fascinating article that looks at different forms of creative thinking - we should move from ‘thinking out of the box’ to ‘no box thinking’

Learn to Tap the Genius Within

Sushma Mohan

Innovation is the key to competitiveness, said President APJ Abdul Kalam recently. And thinking creatively is just what Ay Thomas Louies teaches in his training programmes which are popular among corporate giants.

Connecting to the Infinite

Though world-renowned music composer Beethoven suffered from a hearing disorder, the music he created mesmerised people. How was it possible? “That was because he was connected to the infinite, and therefore he didn’t need his five senses to create his music,” says Ay Thomas Louies, founder of the Morpho Thinkers, a training academy that propounds human consciousness as the ultimate reality.

No Box Thinking

“Everyone is familiar with the idea of out-of-the-box thinking, which simply means a non-traditional way of solving a problem. But what we are stressing upon is the need for no-box thinking which lays in the hands of man the power of infinite possibilities, the power to do anything,” explains Thomas, whose other fields of interest cover palmistry, graphology, hypnosis, vastu, reiki, pranic healing and kriya yoga among others.

Elaborating the concept of no-box thinking, Thomas says:

“Every person in this world has a genius hidden in him. Every one is like a Pentium 10 processor that is yet to be invented, with a vast potential to do things even beyond one’s imagination. All one has to do is to…tap the higher intelligence that has the ability to make miracles happen.”

The methodology developed by Thomas to help one achieve this encompasses the mind, body and soul. “My technique enables one to establish a conscious connection with the higher intelligence and then choose the belief system to interpret what is received through that channel,” Thomas explains.

In his training session, Thomas teaches his students how to take the mind to that optimum level where there is no limit to what one can achieve. He uses active meditation and yoga to further increase the effectiveness of the training.

 Works With Corporate Giants

A qualified engineer with an MBA in marketing and finance from the Institute of Business Administration and Training, Bhubaneshwar, Thomas’ training package — Accessing Higher Intelligence — has already found demand among corporate giants like Godrej, Shell Castrol and ICICI Prudential, among others.

Thomas says, “Unlike earlier times when creativity was generally linked to what researchers, inventors, scientists and artists did, in the current competitive world, the need for creativity is greater in every field. Everyone now is looking for new solutions to old problems. This is possible through no-box thinking.”

Morpho Genetic Field

According to him, what sets one individual apart from the other is his/her ability to tap the universal intelligence. “You can call that higher intelligence the Brahma, God or the Collective Consciousness. The scientists have named it the Morpho Genetic Field — the space filled with intelligence. If you take any two atoms, the space proportional to the space between the two atoms is equal to the space proportional to the space between two galaxies.

This shows the immense potential hidden even in the minutest component of the universe, utilising which, what one can achieve is only limited by one’s power of imagination,” he adds.

In the workshops conducted by Thomas, the students are taught to reach the alpha state of mind (to access the infinite field of intelligence) through various techniques like Morpho Breathing, Art X and F Square.

Morpho Breathing requires the person to concentrate on the breathing cycle with focus on the third eye. With proper training and constant practice one can reach the alpha state.
The next technique, Art X enables one to reach the alpha state through auto-suggestion. Besides this, F Square (Focal Focus) dwells on synergising energy to reach the alpha state.

Thomas Alva Edison once said, “Ideas come from space. Most of my ideas have come to me through intuition.” This statement by one of the world’s greatest inventors says a lot about no-box thinking, feels Thomas.

Meditation Compared With No Box Thinking

Meditation is of immense help in developing one’s power of intuition and creativity. “But while with meditation you can improve your creative abilities by 25-30 per cent, the technique of no-box thinking helps you to take a 100 per cent leap as a creative individual,” claims Thomas.

The training package — Accessing Higher Intelligence — is available as either a session of two hours or for a whole day. Thomas conducts the workshops.

check out the article>>

An inspiring story based on the Wright Brothers. Armed with nothing more than a high school education, they rose above all obstacles and achieved the impossible.
Be inspired by this lesson about attaining success even if the odds are against you!

WINGS. . .

“If GOD had intended that man should fly, he would have given him wings”- George W Melville, Chief Engineer of the US Navy (1900)

Here’s Their Rollercoaster Ride

This is proof that nothing is impossible.

What Do You Think?

This is a truly gripping 20 minute speech which seeks to put all the wrong doings of education right by cultivating our children’s creativity rather than killing it.

Sir Ken Robinson, knighted by the Queen in 2003 for achievements in creativity, education and the arts, is an English gentleman with a charming wit and repartee that has an amazing vision to harvest creativity and create an amazing future for the world. He believes that CREATIVITY is as important as LITERACY and should be treated with the same status.

Ken Robinson, who lived in Stratford Upon Avon the home of Shakespeare for many years, begins by demonstrating the amazing creativity of children with numerous funny quips.

He shares a story of a 6 year old little girl who pays no attention in class except when she can draw. The Teacher asks what she is drawing and she claims to be drawing God:

The teacher asks: “BUT nobody knows what God looks like”

The girl replies “They will do in a minute”

This quip literally illustrates how children have no limits to their levels of creativity. Most kids are fearless and are never ever frightened to make mistakes. This leads to out of this world creativity. HOWEVER, our current education systems worldwide are making children lose this capacity to be creative.

You will literally be glued to the screen in this riveting 20 minute video

After you have viewed this clip I invite you to just imagine how much wonderful change we could bring to this world if we truly embraced these teachings!

I’m sure you’ll agree that Ken delivers a highly entertaining, and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.

Picasso once said:

All children are born artists, the problem is remaining an artist as we grow up.

This is the problem that Ken outlines quite brilliantly in his speech. We don’t grow into creativity, We grow out of it. In fact Ken argues we are educated out of creativity.

Comments? Share Your thoughts

Happy people are open to all sorts of ideas, some of which can be distracting

by JR Minkel

Despite those who romanticize depression as the wellspring of artistic genius, studies find that people are most creative when they are in a good mood, and now researchers may have explained why: For better or worse, happy people have a harder time focusing.

Pic Left:   People in a happy mood perform better than others on a task that requires them to be creative, but do worse when asked to cut through distractions and focus on one thing.

University of Toronto psychologists induced a happy, sad or neutral state in each of 24 participants by playing them specially chosen musical selections. To instill happiness, for example, they played a jazzy version of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. After each musical interlude, the researchers gave subjects two tests to assess their creativity and concentration.

In one test, participants in a happy mood were better able to come up with a word that unified three other seemingly disparate words, such as “mower,” “atomic” and “foreign.” Solving the puzzle required participants to think creatively, moving beyond the normal word associations–”lawn,” “bomb” and “currency”–to come up with the more remote answer: “power.”

Interestingly, induced happiness made the subjects worse at the second task, which required them to ignore distractions and focus on a single piece of information. Participants had to identify a letter flashed on a computer screen flanked by either the same letter, as in the string “N N N N N,” or a different letter, as in “H H N H H.” When the surrounding letters didn’t match, the happy participants were slower to recognize the target letter in the middle, indicating that the ringers distracted them.

The results suggest that an upbeat mood makes people more receptive to information of all kinds, says psychologist Adam Anderson, co-author of the study published online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. “With positive mood, you actually get more access to things you would normally ignore,” he says. “Instead of looking through a porthole, you have a landscape or panoramic view of the world.”

Researchers have long proposed that negative emotions give people a kind of tunnel vision or filter on their attention, Anderson says. Positive moods break down that filter, which enhances creativity but prevents laserlike focus, such as that needed to recognize target letters in the second task, he says.

As for the myth of the depressed but brilliant artist, Anderson speculates that creativity may be a form of self-medication, giving a gloomy artist the chance to adopt a cheerful disposition.

Article From Sciam.com >>