What simple technique did both Salvador Dali and Thomas Edison use to boost their creativity? The good news is you can do it as well, all you need is a few marbles or a key. The answer is sleep, but it’s a little more complicated. Edison would sit upright in his chair with a hand full of marbles. He’d think about a problem, concentrate on it, and then let himself fall asleep. The marbles would drop, wake him up, and he’d write down what was in his mind. Another time, another place, and Salvador Dali used his version of the same technique. You can read Dali’s own account of what he called ‘Slumber with a key’ here. It involved sitting in a bony armchair, ‘preferably of Spanish style’ while holding a heavy key hanging over an upside down plate to make a suitably loud ‘clang’ when it dropped. Other people that are said to have used such techniques range from Einstein to Beethoven (though I’m yet to find exact evidence for either). Why does it work?  "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while" — Steve Jobs The Dali-Einstein napping approach is a powerful way of finding and consolidating the connections that Steve Jobs refers to (could I name drop any more in a sentence if I tried?). In her brilliant book, A Mind for Numbers, Barbara Oakley identifies the technique behind this as bouncing between ‘focused’ and ‘diffuse’ thinking. According to Oakley, focused thought involves using our well trodden neural pathways. It’s what happens when we concentrate, relying on established links in our prefrontal cortex. In contrast, diffuse thought is when we relax our attention and create a fluidity of thought and association across multiple parts of our brain. It’s where our minds make unpredictable, sometimes weird links, and takes in the big picture. Specifically, Edison and Dali cashed in on what is known as the hypnagogia state — those moments between consciousness and sleep — to access diffuse thought, but it’s not the only way. Think back to a breakthrough you’ve had. A time when you’ve solved a problem by coming at it from a totally different perspective. It’s very likely that it happened when you pulled focus…  when you left your desk and were walking, taking a shower, or just having a nap. For best results, you do have to concentrate first. Absorb a problem with focused attention and hold it in your mind… then let go using any number of techniques, including a micro nap. The key is to use both styles of thinking - focus & diffuse.

How to Syndicate / Republish an RSS Feed Through Your Blog or Website http://t.co/R2IJMUNqIJ Source: www.freetech4teachers.com See on Scoop.it - Educational News and Web Tools

Work smarter and make learning stick with these eight simple techniques. Each one has well documented evidence based results behind them and are easy to implement.

As 2014 draws to a close, let’s take a look at the state of blogging this year. Blogging has been around for over 20 years, and it shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, it’s more popular than ev… Source: newstex.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

What’s your learning style?  Perhaps it’s based on your senses (auditory, tactile, visual); or how you engage with content (hands on, conceptual or reflective); or even how you relate to others (collaborative, competitive). It’s a hard choice, especially since according to one comprehensive study there are over 71 learning styles from a range of different models. The good news is that there is a powerful secret behind your learning style.. It’s so powerful that it could transform how you approach learning. The secret is… that learning styles don’t matter.  At least, there’s a distinct lack of evidence that learning styles make any difference to learning… and yet the myth persists. There are lots of explanations for this myth, some of which were recently outlined in Dr Tesia’s TED Talk (See below), but I think one of the most compelling reasons is that ‘learning preferences’ are real. I know that I prefer to read content and see high level diagrams/ images. That doesn’t mean that my learning from them is more compared to someone who prefers audio. So where’s the ‘power’ behind the secret? The power lies in focusing on what counts. To see our brains as more flexible and open than our preferences (and biases) would suggest. For learning professionals it presents even more opportunities. As well as understanding learning techniques that actually work, it allows us to use communication mediums that are based on content. Want to understand atomic structures? Use a model which leverages tactile learning. Want to learn bollywood dancing? Focus on visual. Customer service calls? Try auditory. For most things, a combination of mediums will work best with one proviso… it’s all to easy to overload our relatively limited working memory so we have to reduce our cognitive load (much more on this later). For now I’ll leave you with Dr Tesia’s excellent chat about Learning Style Myths:

One of my main takeaways from a recent presentation by Charles ’70:20:10′ Jennings was a performance boosting technique used by Rafael Nadal. I’m not into sport, but Nadal’s technique can be used by anybody in almost any field. Nadal is renowned for religiously working through a routine between every point and every game. Many assume he’s OCD and he’s on one of the top tennis players with the most eccentric rituals. But what’s behind his ritual? According to Jennings, Nadal uses these rituals to engage in a process of continual improvement. His ‘time wasting’ between points is used to reflect on what just happened, and what he can do next time to improve. While many sports people will slide down an inevitable slump at some point in their career, Jennings describes Nadal’s constant circle of reflection and correction as a way to arrest those slumps before they can take grip. In the busyness of life, how often do you reflect on what you’re doing. Is it every few minutes like Nadal? Or is it when things blow up in your face and there’s no choice but to do a post mortem? Jennings suggestion to incorporate this into our approach was to simply ask three questions (which I’m paraphrasing somewhat): What have I done in the last period? (successes/ challenges/ obstacles) If I had the opportunity to do it again, what would I do differently? What is the key learning I’ve gained from this?        

I am pretty sure as you introduce the idea to your students everyone will want to have a say in their next e-magazine. There is nothing much more rewarding to students then to have a proof of their hard work recognized in a publication of some sort.   Most of the tools cited here are easy to use and have user friendly interface and they will let you create your own e-magazine or newspaper in few simple steps. Yet I would recommend your discretion as you use them with your students.   Read more: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/11/9-tools-to-create-e-magazines-and.html   Source: www.educatorstechnology.com See on Scoop.it - Educational News and Web Tools

To paraphrase Einstein, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough - and neither will your audience. Einstein would have been a fan of the explainer video, which is a video that explains a concept, process, product or service, all in a minute or two.

In 1996 a simple experiment using chocolate & radishes created a new understanding about willpower. Roy Baumeister and his colleagues gave participants a plate full of chocolate and radishes. They were then split into three groups, each with different instructions: Group one were told to eat radishes only Group two were told to eat chocolate only Group three were told to eat whatever they like Next they were given an unsolvable problem. The radish only group gave up after 8 minutes, while the other two groups persisted for around 20 minutes. No, it wasn’t because chocolate gave the other groups a power boost. Many follow up experiments confirmed that the key issue was the use of forced self-control or ‘will power’ in group one. It led to an understanding that our ability to make decisions and apply cognitive thought in general deteriorates after long sessions of decision making. Baumeister called this phenomona ‘decision fatigue’, and we now know that decisions draw from the same bucket of mental energy we use for emotions and problem solving. Research by Todd Heatherton has since identified that part of this bucket of energy comes in the form of glucose. Although a point of dispute in some circles, his and other similar studies have indicated that high cognitive activity literally burns through glucose and changes the way we think. Low glucose weakens the control of our pre-frontal cortex (involved in executive and long term thinking) and hands power to the more primitive subcortical areas (which focus on reward and emotion). An alarming example of this was revealed by Jonathan Levav who analysed the decisions of judges on a parole board. His team revealed that their rate of favourable decisions went up to 65% right after one of their two meal breaks, and down to nearly 0% right before the meal when their glucose was at its lowest. So how can we improve our will power and decision making? Several studies have indicated that regulating blood sugar levels and avoiding fluctuations in glucose contribute to treating impulse disorders and support better complex decision making. But others, such as Carol Dweck from Stanford, argue that will power and learning in general is as much about mindset. In one recent study she and her team argued that the success of will power relies largely on how much will power people believe that they have. Beyond that, some other ways to better manage your will power include: During times of pressure rely more on habit than will power, so designing your routine and environment to, as much as possible, avoid any unnecessary decision points When you’re not under pressure, you can take the opportunity to improve your brain’s capacity for will power by making counter intuitive decisions. Taking different routes to work, eating with your left hand rather than right, all force decisions and build future capacity to do more Sleep and exercise are always huge in terms of replenishing your brain and giving your prefrontal cortex the best chance to stay in control Meditate and practice stress control techniques Take a break to recover from decision fatigue and come back when you are ready The key thing is to keep in mind that decision making, will power, problem solving and emotional energy are all linked. If you’ve invested a lot in one area, the other areas are likely to suffer unless you can give yourself a chance to recover.      

" I’ve avoided responding to an email from a school district leader asking for resources on digital citizenship that he can give a principal to work on developing. I could have shot him back a list o…" Source: michellergreen.com See on Scoop.it - FootprintDigital