Gwen Mueller is an IT Professional, #dnd Gamer-girl, #coffee drinker, geek in Secondary Education, editor on tumblr #education, curating #science, and #tech resources to inspire lifelong learning with 1/4 cup of #fun.
New research suggest an aesthetic experience that reflects a person’s mood can help calm emotional turmoil. Thus, sad music or books may help someone get through heartbreak.
“Emotional experiences of aesthetic products are important to our happiness and well-being. Music, movies, paintings, or novels that are compatible with our current mood and feelings, akin to an empathic friend, are more appreciated when we experience broken or failing relationships,” write the study authors.
Coming Soon of the Day: Neil Degrasse Tyson Will Host the Sequel of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos
Though it’s been quietly in the works since 2011, Fox has officially confirmed that Carl Sagan’s monumental 1970 sci-ed miniseries Cosmos: A Personal Voyage will be getting an updated sequel next year, which will consist of 13 episodes produced by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane and hosted by one of the Internet’s most celebrated astrophysicists, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Fox is hoping the show will have as much as of cultural impact as Carl Sagan’s original series, which still remains one of the most watched PBS series in the world to this day.
A new research study investigates how an individual can manage the digital records of an ex, across multiple devices, applications, web-services, and platforms
“People are keeping huge collections of digital possessions,” said Dr. Steve Whittaker, a psychology professor at the University of California – Santa Cruz who specializes in human-computer interaction.
Research has revealed that multitasking impedes performance across a variety of tasks. Emergency room nurses that are interrupted multiple times while treating a patient can be more likely to make medication errors. Driving while speaking on a mobile phone significantly increases the probability of an automobile accident. At the same time, however, experienced golfers putt better when distracted than experienced golfers who are focusing on performance. Distractions resulting from the presence of other people can increase an individual’s performance, too.
Why..? Higher cognitive load can actually improve performance when the task can be best completed using a less demanding, similarity-based strategy that informs judgments by retrieving past instances from memory.
With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here’s Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World.
Huge thanks in the making of the video to the talented trio of Emm Gryner, Joe Corcoran and Andrew Tidby, plus Evan Hadfield and all at the CSA.
“[Many students don’t learn about climate change in any of their classes…] It’s a part of science and a part of education that is lacking in the curriculum right now. No one has changed the curriculum in far too many years.”
The Central High School freshmen — known in competition as Rocket Power — will be one of 100 teams in the finals of the Team America Rocketry Challenge this week, a contest sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Association of Rocketry for seventh to 12th-grade students across the country. Students from six other schools in the Washington region also are competing in the finals.
The girls, both 14 and Largo residents, are one of just eight female teams that qualified for the finals. They are the only squad of African American students to participate in the closing round.
How exactly does the technology we use to read change the way we read? How reading on screens differs from reading on paper is relevant not just to the youngest among us, but to just about everyone who reads—to anyone who routinely switches between working long hours in front of a computer at the office and leisurely reading paper magazines and books at home; to people who have embraced e-readers for their convenience and portability, but admit that for some reason they still prefer reading on paper; and to those who have already vowed to forgo tree pulp entirely. As digital texts and technologies become more prevalent, we gain new and more mobile ways of reading—but are we still reading as attentively and thoroughly? How do our brains respond differently to onscreen text than to words on paper? Should we be worried about dividing our attention between pixels and ink or is the validity of such concerns paper-thin?
Concern about young people’s use of technology is nothing new, of course. But Rosen’s study, published in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior, is part of a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitasking while learning. Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting in class has become common behavior among young people—so common that many of them rarely write a paper or complete a problem set any other way.
But evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. So detrimental is this practice that some researchers are proposing that a new prerequisite for academic and even professional success—the new marshmallow test of self-discipline—is the ability to resist a blinking inbox or a buzzing phone.
A group of students who saw that a backpack was attached to an avatar that they had created overestimated the heights of virtual hills, just as people in real life tend to overestimate heights and distances while carrying extra weight, according to Sangseok You, a doctoral student in the school of information, University of Michigan.
“You exert more of your agency through an avatar when you design it yourself,” said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Penn State, who worked with You. “Your identity mixes in with the identity of that avatar and, as a result, your visual perception of the virtual environment is colored by the physical resources of your avatar.”
Suppose you hear someone say, “The man gave the ice cream the child.” Does that sentence seem plausible? Or do you assume it is missing a word? Such as: “The man gave the ice cream to the child.”
A new study by MIT researchers indicates that when we process language, we often make these kinds of mental edits. Moreover, it suggests that we seem to use specific strategies for making sense of confusing information — the “noise” interfering with the signal conveyed in language, as researchers think of it.
The article calls this “proof-hearing” but I prefer to use MSTear (misty-ear).
Emerging research implies that fear of not keeping up with friends, and consequently missing some fun, motivates use of Facebook or Twitter.
Experts say the rise in social media, where we can keep up-to-date with each other’s every movements like never before, has led to the curse of “fear of missing out” (FoMO). And a new study develops a way to measure the concept of FoMO.
“I find Facebook rewarding to use, but how we are using social media is changing,” said Przybylski. “It is no longer something we have to sit at a computer and log into as we have access all the time on our phones. It is easier to get into the rhythm of other people’s lives that ever before as we get alerts and texts. We have to learn new skills to control our usage and enjoy social media in moderation. Until we do, it creates a double-edged sword aspect to social media.”
Newton informs the class that they must take measurements and record data on this new planet. To repair their ship and return to Earth, they need to solve math and science problems at each station on the planet Entramedon.
Concrete objects — such as toys, tiles and blocks — that students can touch and move around, called manipulatives, have been used to teach basic math skills since the 1980s. Use of manipulatives is based on the long-held belief that young children’s thinking is strictly concrete in nature, so concrete objects are assumed to help them learn math concepts.
“These findings suggest that it is easier for children to use objects in mathematical tasks when those objects have maximum ‘bling’ and minimum recognizability,” McNeil said.
High-res
