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Why We Cry: The Science of Sobbing and Emotional Tearing

Why We Cry: The Science of Sobbing and Emotional Tearing
by Maria Popova Why it’s easier to prevent a crying spell than to stop one already underway. The human body is an extraordinary machine, and our behavior an incessant source of fascination. In Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond (public library), psychology and neuroscience professor Robert R. Provine undertakes an “analysis and celebration of undervalued, informative, and sometimes disreputable human behavior” by applying the lens of anthropologically-inspired, observational “Small Science” — “small because it does not require fancy equipment and a big budget, not because it’s trivial” — to a wealth of clinical research into the biology, physiology, and neuropsychology of our bodily behaviors. Take, for instance, the science of what we call “crying,” a uniquely human capacity — a grab-bag term that consists of “vocal crying,” or sobbing, and “emotional tearing,” our quiet waterworks. Photograph via Flickr Commons Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr

What we learned from designing an academic certificates system on the blockchain — MIT MEDIA LAB What we learned from designing an academic certificates system on the blockchain By Juliana Nazaré (@ju1es_), Kim Hamilton Duffy (@kimdhamilton), J. Philipp Schmidt (@schmidtphi) Over the past year, we have been working on a set of tools to issue, display, and verify digital credentials using the Bitcoin blockchain and the Mozilla Open Badges specification. You can find links to our source code, documentation, and discussion on our project homepage: The overall design of the certification architecture is fairly simple. Working on this project, we have not only learned a lot about the blockchain, but also about the way that technology can shape socioeconomic practices around the concept of credentials. Many of the most interesting challenges we encountered were not technical in nature, but they cannot easily be separated from the technology because small design decisions can fundamentally shape behavior. Issuer, Viewer, Schema (Beyond the) Hype Privacy

Makey Makey | Buy Direct (Official Site) Teacher's Quick Guide to Google Best Services I got you another poster that you will definitely love. I am adding it to the list of posters I have created before and I am also preparing another list of awesome posters that you hang on your classroom wall.Yes, I am determined to help you make your classroom look completely different this school year. Below is a great infographic from GCF Learn Free that sumps up the services Google offers us. Check out and tell us what you think

Learning to use My Blocks This tutorial explains how to use the "My Block" feature of the NXT-G programming system by working through several examples. What is a My Block? Why Use My Blocks? Making your First My Block Creating a My Block Viewing and Editing the Contents of a My Block Inserting a My Block into a Program Creating My Blocks with Input Parameters What are Input Parameters? Variables, Wiring, and Editing within a My Block Using Variables to Send Data to a My Block Defining Variables in a My Block Rewriting the Contents of a My Block Sharing Wires in a Tabbed Switch Using My Block Variables from the Main Program Making a Modified Copy of a My Block Copying a My Block Changing the Icon for a My Block Organizing and Sharing My Blocks Copying, Renaming, and Deleting My Blocks Broken Blocks Sharing Programs with Pack and Go Making a Sub-Menu on the Custom Palette What is a My Block? Figure 1: My Blocks are blue in color, and they appear in the Custom palette in NXT-G. Why Use My Blocks? Making your First My Block

52 Tips And Tricks For Google Docs In The Classroom Google Docs is such an incredible tool for college students, offering collaboration, portability, ease of use, and widespread acceptance – a must for students in online colleges for online marketing, for instance. But there are so many options, both hidden and obvious, that there’s a good chance you’re not using Google Docs to its fullest capability. We’ve discovered 52 great tips for getting the most out of Google Docs as a student, with awesome ideas and tricks for collaboration, sharing, and staying productive. 52 Tips And Tricks For Google Docs In The Classroom Access your documents from anywhere: Whether you’re in your dorm room or the school library, you can access your Google Docs. This is a cross-post from onlinecolleges.net

How To Create A Google Drive Classroom How To Create A Google Drive Classroom by TeachThought Staff Using the cloud in the classroom can be a powerful thing. One of the most common uses of the cloud in today’s classroom is word processing, and one of the most common cloud-based word processing platforms is Google Drive. We’ve talked about offering voice feedback to documents. Since he clearly has experience in the classroom, this video is immediately better than the vast majority of universal Google Drive tutorials you’ll find. Update: A reader reminded us that Google Apps For Education is launching Google Classroom in September, a tool that “weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease.” In addition to other helpful tips, Behrendt includes information on: -Creating a class -Creating assignments -Sharing documents -Filtering results -Turning in digital work -Creating student portfolios -Naming files

8 Awesome Husband and Wife Love Notes The loving husband who listed all the reasons he loves his wife who is battling depression Tim Murphy, a Los Angeles-based engineer, surprised his new wife Molly with a beautiful love note. Molly, who suffers from depression, had just returned from a trip to San Francisco and was feeling particularly blue. When she flopped down on her bed, she noticed Tim has written a 15 point love note, “Reasons I Love My Wife" on their bedroom mirror: 1. The husband who left an awful note to his wife — until she found the second piece "Dear Stefanie,Dinner tasted awful... so I'm leaving you.Goodbye." It's hardly the love letter a wife expects to find from her new husband. Romanticism apart, this was one hell of a creative note. The man who asked his wife what was on her mind and got this drawn response A professor in college once said in class that the biggest challenge for a woman was to answer “nothing” when her boyfriend asks what was she thinking. The short answer? This is how she describes it:

The Best Tools for Visualization Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data. Visualize Social Networks Last.Forward: Thanks to Last.fm's new widget gallery, you can now explore a wide selection of extras to extend your Last.fm experience. Last Forward Friends Sociomap: Friends Sociomap is another Last.fm tools that generates a map of the music compatibility between you and your Last.fm friends. Fidg't: Fidg't is a desktop application that gives you a way to view your networks tagging habits. Fidg't The Digg Tools: One more: Digg Radar. YouTube: You can discover related videos using YouTube's visualizations. Visualize Music Amazon

From sexual liberation to liberation from sex Young people are forever shocking their elders, and elders, however shocking they themselves may have been to their own elders once upon a time, never fail to play their generation’s perennial role of shocked onlookers to shocking youthful behavior of one sort or another. Not very long ago, well within living memory, parents found their children’s sexual behavior shocking. Sex was so open, so free, so ubiquitous, so uninhibitedly taken for granted. No hiding, no guilt, no confining it against nature within institutional straitjackets like marriage. Half a century later, kids are still shocking and elders still shocked, but for shockingly different reasons. The Asahi Shimbun has lately been running a series of reports on what it’s like to be 18 in a country no longer young. The first two may go some way toward explaining the third. Parents. But they have met. Take bathing. What’s wrong with it? A separate article in the Asahi series looks at another aspect of parent-child intimacy.

Sensory Systems that Make up the Learning Hierarchy of a Strong Academic Foundation - Integrated Learning Strategies This article contains information regarding important sensory systems and the learning hierarchy that comes from developing each one. Affiliate links are included for your convenience. Whether a child is using his or her hands to write, ears to listen, eyes to read, or their entire body to play sports, they can execute and learn best when they are active and using all of their senses to the fullest. To build a strong foundation for learning, we must ensure our child’s sensory systems are developing properly for cognitive development and sensory integration. The Hierarchy of Learning The hierarchy of learning that impacts all five sensory systems used for developing a strong educational foundation are as follows: Vestibular SystemTactile SystemProprioceptive SystemVisual SystemAuditory System There are three systems that develop before further neurological building. Vestibular System When children tend to be sedentary, the vestibular system does not get a chance to properly develop.

The Difference Between Being In Love And Just Being Attached Is it love, or is it just attachment? We all have those friends who jump from relationship to relationship, and each time, they are “totally and completely in love.” For those of us who have been single longer than two of their relationships combined, we can't help but wonder how someone can possibly be “in love” with all these people. I mean, come on. It's not love. It's fear of being alone. Yes. But what if your feeling is wrong? You know those relationships you got out of, and after a few months, you couldn't believe you ever said those three beautiful words to someone you wouldn't want to be seen with today? Well, it's usually because it wasn't love. I have no real insight in knowing if your love is real or if it's just insecurity masked in AXE body spray, but I can give you some general pointers. Because you don't want to attend a wedding where the only thing the bride has to say about the groom is that “he's always there.” Love is passionate; attachment is apathetic

A Map of Learning Theory Concepts, Theorists, Paradigms and Disciplines Learning theory is complex, and while the graphic below may initially seem to reinforce that idea, it actually makes a complicated topic very digestible. Richard Millwood is an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin, and he also runs Core Education, a nonprofit that helps schools use technology for better learning outcomes. As part of his work for the HoTEL Project (Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning), Millwood created this guide to learning theories. On his blog, Millwood describes his motivation to collect information and resources about learning theories featured in the map: Learning theory has been a contested scientific field for most of its history, with conflicting contributions from many scientific disciplines, practice and policy positions. Check out the graphic below, and click here for the interactive version.

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