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What Do Emotions Have to Do with Learning?

What Do Emotions Have to Do with Learning?
Thinkstock When parents and teachers consider how children learn, it’s usually the intellectual aspects of the activity they have in mind. Sidney D’Mello would like to change that. The University of Notre Dame psychologist has been studying the role of feelings in learning for close to a decade, and he has concluded that complex learning is almost inevitably “an emotionally charged experience,” as he wrote in a paper published in the journal Learning and Instruction earlier this year. During the learning experiments described in his paper, he notes, the participating students reported being in a neutral state only about a quarter of the time. The rest of the time, they were were experiencing lots of feelings: surprise, delight, engagement, confusion, boredom, frustration. Another counter-intuitive contention made by D’Mello is that even negative emotions can play a productive role in learning. animated agents discussing scientific case studies. Related Related:  Emotional & social developmentLearning Modalities

Why Emotional Learning May Be As Important As The ABCs Thomas O’Donnell reads about Twiggle the Turtle to his kindergartners at Matthew Henson Elementary School in Baltimore. (Elissa Nadworny/NPR) By Maanvi Singh, NPR Thomas O’Donnell’s kindergarten kids are all hopped up to read about Twiggle the anthropomorphic Turtle. “Who can tell me why Twiggle here is sad,” O’Donnell asks his class at Matthew Henson Elementary School in Baltimore. “Because he doesn’t have no friends,” a student pipes up. And how do people look when they’re sad? “They look down!” Yeah, Twiggle is lonely. These are crucial skills we all need to learn, even in preschool and kindergarten. So shouldn’t schools teach kids about emotions and conflict negotiation in the same way they teach math and reading? Emotional Intelligence 101 Twiggle is part of a program called Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies, or PATHS. Matthew Henson Elementary is one of about 1,500 schools around the country using this program, which was first developed in the 1980s. “Sorry!” The Long Game Related

Top 10 Free Online Tutoring Tools for 2012 The Internet provides a wealth of resources for teachers, tutors, and students to go well beyond classroom learning. Whether you’re a teacher preparing for tomorrow’s lecture, a professional tutor working with one or two students, or you just want to help your cousin in Alabama with some trig homework, these free tools will help you interact with your student(s) sans the confines of the classroom. Skype with Idroo Idroo is an online educational whiteboard used in combination with Skype. Gchat Anyone with a gmail account can access Gchat . WizIQ Teachers, students and organizations can create free accounts on WizIQ , another online education portal. Scribblar Scribblar is another real time, multi-user online whiteboard ideal for online tutoring. Google Docs Google Docs is another super-nifty aspect of gmail as it provides the opportunity for students and teachers to create original documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, drawings, and tables, then share them with each other at will.

Effortless Learning Press Release 11-257 Vision Scientists Demonstrate Innovative Learning Method New research suggests it may be possible to learn high-performance tasks with little or no conscious effort December 8, 2011 View a video showing researchers explaining Decoded Neurofeedback. New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks. Researchers studied the early visual areas for their ability to cause improvements in visual performance and learning. Get News Updates by Email

Shared Mindfulness: Building Supportive Relationships in the Classroom No matter what subject we teach, all teachers share a common desire for more cohesiveness in the classroom. We know that when our students feel a sense of safety and belonging, trust their classmates, and know how to manage stress, learning is amplified. How can we help foster grounded confidence in our students among all of the many other tasks and responsibilities on our agendas? One way is by giving students opportunities to connect mindfully with each other. The profundity of peer partnering is well known and extends far beyond the academic implications into the realm of social and emotional learning. Establishing Contact This two-part activity first asks students to sit back to back with a peer while engaging in mindful listening and breathing. The idea of asking students to sit with their backs touching may initially strike some teachers as precarious. To begin, have students sit back to back with a partner. First, attend to the physical components of students' posture.

me How to Tell the Difference Between Real Education and Propaganda The other day I ran across a passage from That Hideous Strength which seems oddly applicable to our time. A dystopian novel written by C. S. Lewis at the close of World War II, That Hideous Strength finds one of its main characters, Mark Studdock, working for N.I.C.E., an organization which pulls the strings in a controlling, totalitarian society. Studdock is assigned to write propaganda articles for N.I.C.E., an assignment which he objects to when he receives it from his boss, Miss Hardcastle. ‘That shows you’re still in the nursery, lovey,’ said Miss Hardcastle. ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. Reading this, I couldn’t help but ponder how much of the American public thinks like Studdock. But what if that education is, as Miss Hardcastle implies in the passage above, the very thing blinding the eyes of the general public? You see, there is a difference between what we call education and what actually comprises true education.

8 Ways to Spot Emotional Manipulation.. and Free Ourselves From It By Paul Lenda Guest Writer for Wake Up World We as human beings have a very strong self-centered aspect (even if it may not be truly ‘real’) of our beings called the ego, and many problems arise when this aspect of the human experience goes uncontrolled. Manipulation has always been a favored tool of the ego in order to get what it wants. This manipulation can come in either a physical form or it can be seen to work on the emotional level in order to break the psyche into meeting the manipulator’s desires. Properly identifying the ways in which people emotionally manipulate others can save us much suffering in the future when identified early enough. By protecting ourselves from being manipulated on the emotional level, we are able to free ourselves once and for all from the violation of our universal right of free will. Identifying Emotional Manipulation You make a statement that is turned around to be used against you in a negative way. They put you in a guilt trip. They are indirect.

soundofserra : Goodmorning cute #owl:)loves... Improving Long-term Learning Through Spacing Of Lessons -- ScienceDaily Combine the aphorisms that "practice makes perfect" and "timing is everything" into one and you might get something resembling findings published in this month's issue of Psychological Science. Proper spacing of lessons, the researchers report, can dramatically enhance learning. And larger gaps between study sessions result in better recall of facts. Conversely: Cramming – whether it's math for a midterm or a foreign language in anticipation of a trip abroad – is not effective in the long haul. Led by Hal Pashler and John Wixted, professors of psychology at UC San Diego, the study has implications for education. In light of the study, the coauthors write, "it appears no longer premature for psychologists to offer some rough practical guidelines to those who wish to use study time in the most efficient way possible to promote long-term retention." More than 1,000 subjects participated in three sessions.

Failure: Seeds of Innovation | TryEngineering Lesson Focus Lesson focuses on how failure is part of the engineering process. Students work in teams and learn about many inventions and advances in engineering were brought about after a mistake or failure. Students research an example of such an innovation and develop a presentation related to how the tenacity of the engineer allowed him or her to move past a failure and into the realm of innovation. Students reflect on the value of moving on after a failure or setback, present the results of their research to the class, and provide examples of how the innovation they researched has impacted society -- only because the engineer didn't give up. Age Levels: Objectives Learn how engineering can help solve society's challenges.Learn about teamwork.Learn about problem solving. Anticipated Learner Outcomes As a result of this activity, students should develop an understanding of:innovationengineeringteamwork Lesson Activities Alignment to Curriculum Frameworks

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