Man Makes Music Out of an Old Game Boy Here’s a use for your old Game Boy that might not have occurred to you. A German Game Boy fan named Sebastian Bender has released a music video on YouTube that is made up of clicks, spring-twiddling and button-pressing on the device. With 200,000 views since April 6, it’s catching on. It’s a unique use for the game player, for sure, but maybe not as unique as you think. Last year, another fan netted more than 1 million views for an all-Game Boy rendition of Michael Jackson’s "Beat It." The latest generation of Nintendo handheld devices, the 3DS, was released March 27.
How to Train Your Brain to Stay Focused As an entrepreneur, you have a lot on your plate. Staying focused can be tough with a constant stream of employees, clients, emails, and phone calls demanding your attention. Amid the noise, understanding your brain’s limitations and working around them can improve your focus and increase your productivity. Our brains are finely attuned to distraction, so today's digital environment makes it especially hard to focus. Related: 8 Tips for Finding Focus and Nixing Distractions While multitasking is an important skill, it also has a downside. To make matters worse, distraction feels great. Related: The Truth About Multitasking: How Your Brain Processes Information Ultimately, the goal is not constant focus, but a short period of distraction-free time every day. Try these three tips to help you become more focused and productive: 1. In order to focus effectively, reverse the order. 2. Related: 4 Ways to Disconnect and Get More Done Without Unplugging Completely 3.
Lessons in Well Drilling Spill into the Classroom A project to bring clean water to residents of Namawanga, Kenya, serves as an example in lesson plans for middle-school students. Update Nov. 12, 2012: Curricula videos now on YouTube, see belowSince 2006, student engineers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have teamed with residents of Namawanga, Kenya, to clean the town's drinking water – and teach U.S. students in more than 100 middle and high schools math, science, and social studies. Pastures flank the town's streams and tests detected e.coli in the water. To solve the problem, the residents and students in Engineers Without Borders at UMass are drilling a well and building spring boxes around the water source to protect it from contamination. At the same time, the UMass project is meshed with a multi-disciplinary curriculum for middle and high schools. The students learn about waterborne disease and well drilling, but they also discover that lasting solutions are more than just technical. They get their hands dirty, too.
Study links emotional and neural responses to musical performance It is well known that music arouses emotions. But why do some musical performances move us, while others leave us flat? Why do musicians spend years perfecting the subtle nuances that bring us to tears? The study, titled "Dynamic Emotional and Neural Responses to Music Depend on Performance Expression and Listener Experience," published in the December 16 issue of PLoS One, was conducted at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences (CCSBS) in FAU's Charles E. The researchers first recorded an expert musician's performance of Frédéric Chopin's Étude in E- Major, Op. 10, No. 3 on a computerized piano (the "expressive" performance), then they synthesized a version of the same piece using a computer, without the human performance nuances (the "mechanical" performance). They combined behavioral analysis with fMRI neuroimaging, a specialized MRI scan which measures change in blood flow related to neural activity in the brain, as participants listened to both performances. Video
Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives “If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve,” Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: “Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…” Far from Pollyanna platitude, this advice actually reflects what modern psychology knows about how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) — an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality.
Indian schools adopt tablets. Will they improve education? Richard Mahapatra, a 42-year-old journalist, recently attended a parent-teacher meeting at his daughter’s private school in Delhi. During the meeting, he said, teachers encouraged him to buy a tablet. The school was selling several tablets made by HCL, a leading Indian technology company, for about 6,000 rupees, or $120. Some parents, Mahapatra said, bought the tablets. “For a father like me, it’s not a cultural change but almost like a genetic jump,” he said, recalling that he began his education with chalk and slate at a small tribal school in the state of Orissa on the eastern coast of India. Over the last 15 years, a growing number of Indian schools have been upgrading their technology to include state-of the-art computers accessible to all students. But school-owned technology available to all the students is one thing -- asking students to buy their own tablets is another. The Indian government envisions all the country’s children, rich and poor, studying from tablets. Prasanto K.
Nudge Select 1 of 8 different Sound Patterns from the small Matrixes icons on the right. Use your mouse to draw notes on each 16 Step Matrix. Adjust the volume of the iNudge. Click MORE for advanced adjustment abilities. For each Pattern, adjust Volume, Mute, Clear, or set Audio Pan from Left to Right. Click on the Tempo numbers and click up or down to change the overall Tempo. <div class="block"><div class="full"><div class="content info"><h3>Important information! 8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating “Music helps me concentrate,” Mike said to me glancing briefly over his shoulder. Mike was in his room writing a paper for his U.S. History class. On his desk next to his computer sat crunched Red Bulls, empty Gatorade bottles, some extra pocket change and scattered pieces of paper. Mike made a shift about every thirty seconds between all of the above. Do you know a person like this? The Science Behind Concentration In the above account, Mike’s obviously stuck in a routine that many of us may have found ourselves in, yet in the moment we feel it’s almost an impossible routine to get out of. When we constantly multitask to get things done, we’re not multitasking, we’re rapidly shifting our attention. Phase 1: Blood Rush Alert When Mike decides to start writing his History essay, blood rushes to his anterior prefrontal cortex. Phase 2: Find and Execute Phase 3: Disengagement While in this state, Mike then hears an email notification. The process repeats itself sequentially. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Innovation in Education Introduction Education is the crucible in which Innovations are forged. Promoting creativity and incentivizing innovations through our educational institutions is a first step towards broadening and deepening the impact of innovations in our society and economy. In large scale education systems such as ours, catering to a vast population with relatively limited resources, this is a major challenge. At the same time, with rapid advances in new technologies, changing needs of the economy, and the very presence of the challenges identified above, the sector itself presents a fertile ground for pioneering innovations. (a) Creation of a separate scholarship stream of National Innovation Scholarships analogous to the National Talent Search Scheme. (b) Setting up an Innovation Centre in each DIET (District Institute of Education and Training) to enhance teacher training and enable them to become facilitators of creativity and innovative thinking.