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The Future - John Nicholson - 14-11-2008
Originally Posted by John Nicholson
THE FUTURE
All we shall ever have are words.
All we shall ever possess of any value throughout our entire lives is contained within words, so let us look closely at them.
What are words.
Every human word is an individual idea, ideas that we combine to create or explain what we know or what we think.
Ideas that may be simple or complicated, ordinary or bizarre useful or harmful. All human knowledge is contained within words, numbers though they may be precise are no more then words, our best explanations are possible with the correct use of words.
Our subconscious mind stores and delivers those words at will in order to give explanation or make inquiry throughout our lives.
Only by the use of written words can we store the precise meaning of the ideas we individually consider, every thing that happens to us or others takes place somewhere at sometime, where and when individually whether we recognise it or not we are all on a personal voyage of discovery.
The importance of words within the human condition can never be overstated. Reading from the prologue of Captain Cook by Tony Horwitz, he quotes from the journal of Captain James Cook
`(Ambition leads me further then any other man as been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for any man to go)`
Proud as I am to be from the same county and country and world as captain cook I am stirred by both his words and deeds.
My thoughts on the human condition are influenced from where we are, after a century described by Isaiah Berlin as the must horrific in the history of humanity, a century where he lived from nine years after its inception until three years before its close giving him both the time and the perception to write an explanation of philosophy and humanity concurrent with his century.
(The goal of philosophy is always the same, to assist men to understand themselves and thus operate in the open and not wildly in the dark.)
(Injustice, poverty, slavery, these may be cured by reform or revolution, but men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.)
At sixty five years of age there is no time to look at the past only time to prepare for the future, my mistakes the worlds mistakes are history we do not have to repeat history only learn from it, individually we have in a modern world to absorb vast amounts of inconsequential knowledge, we need tools to deal with that knowledge, not only inconsequential knowledge which is peripheral to our existence but vital knowledge that enables individuals and societies to live in peaceful co-existence.
We learn naturally about everything we do from speaking to the highest achievements that humans are capable of, our personal potential in good health is virtually unlimited, only time and personal experience limit what we can achieve individually.
In combination with each other working with modern technology we are capable of building a fair world providing sufficient food and adequate housing as is necessary.
We need to exploit the natural resources that are available to us utilising the world’s non-renewable resources with respect.
The worlds greatest and most valuable resource is renewable, the human mind, by mans ingenuity every possible idea can be explored and utilised we are still in the educational Stone Age with provision and application of universal education.
Political will is lacking
I remain with James Cook and Isaiah Berlin on a journey of exploration we can longer leave education in the hands of past experience, that is not experiential every child needs to read and speak if it is to develop normally, symbol recognition in a multi dimensional manner is essential the first official part of the
One percent of vital knowledge we have to be taught early in our lives.
It is as natural for a human to learn as it is to breath, provided we arrange learning alongside practical demonstration, at an advanced stage something’s may be considered, just as you are considering this statement without reflection, without experience and without intellectual curiosity, obviously there is a better way of doing everything, but with human behavior standard practice is simple it requires no intellectual application.
Education in its present manifestation is sadly lacking, it is failing the human race, most of us live in poverty, many of us waste half our lives learning, the cost of public education is difficult for countries with little resources to sustain in its present mode.
Time taken to teach children that have become disenchanted with education not only slows down their potential development in practical experience but it takes up others time and resources that would be better used else ware
If new models of education are not to be thought through, and developed as concepts in future education on these pages where are they to be considered?
The Future - John Nicholson - 14-11-2008
--- On Wed, 3/9/08, Office of Graham Stuart <beverleyandholderness@googlemail.com> wrote:
From: Office of Graham Stuart <beverleyandholderness@googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: you can count on me ABACUS MAN
To: "JOHN NICHOLSON06" <johnnicholson06@btinternet.com>
Date: Wednesday, 3 September, 2008, 9:47 AM
Dear Mr Nicholson, Many thanks for your email. Graham would be happy to meet with you. Could you possibly make the morning of Monday 15th September at the Beverley Arms for a 30-minute meeting? Kind regards, Niki Roberts
2008/9/1 JOHN NICHOLSON06 <johnnicholson06@btinternet.com>
Rose Cottage
The Green
Bishop Burton
Beverley
East Yorkshire
HU178QF
1st sept 08
Graham Stuart
Dear Mr Stuart
Following on from our Saturday conversation, I have considered what you had to say, thinking about our problem why we are able to think so quickly and give written explanation so slowly, I use a voice recognition system in order to speed up this situation. Our minds are like butterflies they flit from idea to idea.
Meeting you was useful for me.
Give me an instant explanation you asked me time and time again.
Okay I will try to.
Abacus one guarantees a level of mathematical competence to any child in any circumstances whatsoever that the child may find itself in.
Why. Our natural learning facility is to copy, first of all we copy sound, and so we learn our natural language.
When. From the very moment we are born we learn to copy sound, speaking ability starts usually in the second year of life, children very quickly learn to speak, a good generalization would be between two or three years of age.
How. Mirror Neurons, we naturally copy the actions of those around us. Abacus one allows every child to visually conceive the physical manner of arithmetic. It can be used alongside the two hands to demonstrate quantity. Allowing the child to conceive the physical property of five and ten by using its own hands and a simple series of exercises
" A SUM A SECOND" which develops high speed realisations in additions of numbers up to ten.
the child is able to conceive that the middle column of the abacus represents the two hands together,
it sees in the right-hand column of the abacus that each counter represents a finger.
Explaining the teens is an addition exercise after mastering the count to Twenty, Abacus One gives a visual interpretation of quantity where they can be expressed quite easily using only ten symbols in a pattern.
These 10 numbers are universal in application, they have been universal in less then 1,000 years out of the 50,000 years that our modern brains have been utilized
For something so essential, now universal in concept, a foolproof teaching system worthy of its common usage, may be late in arriving but will be better late than never.
Thanking you again for sparing the time to engage in a conversation, none of the three of us particularly enjoyed, but it served a useful purpose, it introduced myself to yourself, and yourself to the abacus.
I would imagine neither of these experiences was a pleasure to you, but highly amusing to me in retrospect.
I am at present reading Adam Nicolson's book on Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar,
he uses within it an old-fashioned word, "ZEAL" it describes my energy and enthusiasm for early and easy learning, and the urgent need for it to become international.
Hopefully you will take no offence, I have collected the necessary websites for you to quickly understand my work, if you take a look around them, I am sure that half an hour of your time will not be wasted with me afterwards.
Yours sincerely
John Nicholson
THIS IS A VITAL YOUTUBE LECTURE FOR EVERY THINKING ADULT
UCSD Cognitive scientist Joan Stiles reveals the latest understandings about the intricate relationship between biology and external influences in the development of the brain. Series: "Grey M...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FugrcVhi2tg&NR=1
Chinese children guided me to the realisation that the abacus was the best natural maths teacher. I am at the present time working in conjunction with Emeritus Professor of theoretical physics, Winston Hagston. We are developing a world standard mathematics teaching program that can be adopted for teaching by parents or older children, so ensuring the possibilities of equality in education. Once any child is perfect in mathematics, and can read its own language well, with the use of a computer and internet, and provided with an older mentor or teacher, it can educate itself to any level its natural ability and determination strive for.My thinking is for the future, our children and Grand children.The problems we all face are democracy, world food supplies, energy sources, and education.
" THE POSSABILITY OF EQUALITY FOR EVERY CHILD NOW TODAY WITHIN EDUCATION "
we (man) will not survive without the concept of equality
it begins with education
I want to explain to the world that we can begin to create equality this morning.
John Nicholson
http://abacusone.net/
http://www.abacusandalphabet.com/abacus.htm
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums/showthread.php?t=597 this is a list of things in order
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=23
http://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=26
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcb8nT0QC6o
my THREE DEMONSTRATIONS ARE UNDER THIS YOUTUBE
The Future - John Nicholson - 19-11-2008
[SIZE="5"]Our subconscious mind stores and delivers words at will in order to give explanation or make inquiry throughout our lives.
This is a piece, from my previous view of the future, written over two years ago, i have not changed my mind on this ability, but I see now where this instantaneous ability comes from, there is no notable awareness of this construction taking place, it happens as if by magic, words are delivered at will.
Our consciousness’ I now see as a platform for reason, something where we can consider any subject that comes to mind either in associated conversation with others or the consideration of our own ideas, it is within the consideration of our own ideas where my personal concept of the human mind comes from.
In an effort to convince others in the accelerated teaching value of the abacus in the early rapid appreciation of mathematics, also by providing every child on earth with an abacus therefore a clear understanding early arithmetic, that I have read widely to this end, for thirteen years, still I only have limited evidence written in English, mostly of American research that agrees with my own thinking, also the major part of my reading has been the published papers and books on brain research, the French researcher an ex mathematician STANISLAS DEHEANE who is now
Cognitive Neuropsychology Researcher, Institut National de la Santé, Paris; Author, The Number Sense.
He has written extensively, specifically on numeric research, his personal mathematic grasp most likely puts him ahead of our own numeric researcher Brian Butterworth, neither of them are specifically aware of just what a difference direct reguler abacus use in early arithmetic would make to every child at three to four years of age.
In every Childs life, I am clear that the visual memory is most important, the memory of process, in India my most exiting experience was a child just turned three by a few weeks only. He watched me counting to ten and exchanging ten for older children and his parents, I was speaking in English which the parents understood, the boy grabbed the abacus and counted to ten, (putting up counters) in his Indian language and then exchanged ten.
Any child of four can use an abacus and some children can do it much earlier.
I see early arithmetic as a precursor of reading, continuing at the same time as a child is fixing permanent memory of the twenty six symbols we use for the alphabet and the multitude of differing sounds they are able to create.
Our ten symbols in mathematics are assisted greatly by the systematic pattern for producing numbers, our understanding of meaning as regards numbers is easily acquired and just as easily utilised in language before regular reading ability is fluent,
My brain research from both reading and self examination now bring me to some early conclusions. I think that every thing we see is naturally stored in our brains from birth to death when we are in normal heath.
So our main memory storage is near perfect as visual memory, mostly we remember what we have seen, but the exiting valuable memories are retrieved at the speed of light, it is a subconscious natural memory ability, we all poses with normal vision.
Our ability with speech, "instantantanious speech creation", happens "IS CREATED" within the same subconscious level of our minds.
As our conscious mind draws on visual memory to provide image in action, part and parcel of our reasoning conscious mind working on evaluation of ideas, at a speed where we are able to compare ideas, not only by creating memory some from real experience, but utilising our powers of imagination to explore concepts we have no personal experience in, except we may have explored them consciously and then retained, them as subconscious visual memories.
Consistent regular reading is the most efficient way we can store ideas other then visual experience from TV film computer
OR IN REAL TIME
It is most likely that a concept is stored in a more readily available form, from the images in action taken from the imagination during the reading process, then many of the visual memories stored in real time, I see the length of time the concept is under consideration and the number of times it is under consideration as having a major bearing on it,
Copying process, will always lead to the most concentrated awareness of the particular process under consideration, that can ever be achieved by a human being.
Reading for the first time the humanoid ability to follow process, by mirror neurons was a eureka moment for me, a perfect demonstration of value in teaching with an Abacus.
Just as the sound of a regular heard voice, becomes a perfect natural memory, so does the regular seen vision of any human process also become a perfectly natural memory.
Association and assimilation. ASSOCIATION AND ASSIMILATION[/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 24-11-2008
IN 1953 a physician named Louis Sokoloff laid a 20-year-old college student onto a gurney, attached electrodes to his scalp and inserted a syringe into his jugular vein.
For 60 minutes the volunteer lay there and solved arithmetic problems. All the while, Sokoloff monitored his brainwaves and checked the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in his blood.
Sokoloff, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was trying to find out how much energy the brain consumes during vigorous thought. He expected his volunteer's brain to guzzle more oxygen as it crunched the problems, but what he saw surprised him: his subject's brain consumed no more oxygen while doing arithmetic than it did while he was resting with his eyes closed.
People have long envisaged the brain as being like a computer on standby, lying dormant until called upon to do a task, such as solving a Sudoku, reading a newspaper, or looking for a face in a crowd. Sokoloff's experiment provided the first glimpse of a different truth: that the brain enjoys a rich private life. This amazing organ, which accounts for only 2 per cent of our body mass but devours 20 per cent of the calories we eat, fritters away much of that energy doing, as far as we can tell, absolutely nothing.
"There is a huge amount of activity in the [resting] brain that has been largely unaccounted for," says Marcus Raichle, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St Louis. "The brain is a very expensive organ, but nobody had asked deeply what this cost is all about."
Raichle and a handful of others are finally tackling this fundamental question - what exactly is the idling brain up to, anyway? Their work has led to the discovery of a major system within the brain, an organ within an organ, that hid for decades right before our eyes. Some call it the neural dynamo of daydreaming. Others assign it a more mysterious role, possibly selecting memories and knitting them seamlessly into a personal narrative. Whatever it does, it fires up whenever the brain is otherwise unoccupied and burns white hot, guzzling more oxygen, gram for gram, than your beating heart.
"It's a very important thing," says Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "It's not very frequent that a new functional system is identified in the brain, in fact it hasn't happened for I don't know how many years. It's like finding a new continent."
The discovery was slow in coming. Sokoloff's experiment 55 years ago drew little attention. It wasn't until the 1980s that it started to dawn on researchers that the brain may be doing important things while apparently stuck in neutral.
Eavesdropping on the mind
In those days a novel brain scanning technique called PET was all the rage. By injecting radioactive glucose and measuring where it accumulated, researchers were able to eavesdrop on the brain's inner workings. In a typical experiment they would scan a volunteer lying down with their eyes closed and again while doing a mentally demanding task, then subtract one scan from the other to find the brain areas that lit up.
Raichle was using PET to find brain areas associated with words when he noticed something odd: some brain areas seemed to go at full tilt during rest, but quietened down as soon as the person started an exercise. Most people shrugged off these oddities as random noise. But in 1997 Raichle's colleague Gordon Shulman found otherwise.
Shulman sifted through a stack of brain scans from 134 people. Regardless of the task, whether it involved reading or watching shapes on a screen, the same constellation of brain areas always dimmed as soon as the subject started concentrating. "I was surprised by the level of consistency," says Shulman. Suddenly it looked a lot less like random noise. "There was this neural network that had not previously been described."
Raichle and Shulman published a paper in 2001 suggesting that they had stumbled onto a previously unrecognised "default mode" - a sort of internal game of solitaire which the brain turns to when unoccupied and sets aside when called on to do something else. This brain activity occurred largely in a cluster of regions arching through the midline of the brain, from front to back, which Raichle and Shulman dubbed the default network (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 98, p 676).
The brain areas in the network were known and previously studied by researchers. What they hadn't known before was that they chattered non-stop to one another when the person was unoccupied but quietened down as soon as a task requiring focused attention came along. Measurements of metabolic activity showed that some parts of this network devoured 30 per cent more calories, gram for gram, than nearly any other area of the brain.
All of this poses the question - what exactly is the brain up to when we are not doing anything? When Raichle and Shulman outlined the default network, they saw clues to its purpose based on what was already known about the brain areas concerned.
One of the core components is the medial prefrontal cortex (see diagram), which is known to evaluate things from a highly self-centred perspective of whether they're likely to be good, bad, or indifferent. Parts of this region also light up when people are asked to study lists of adjectives and choose ones that apply to themselves but not to, say, Britney Spears. People who suffer damage to their medial prefrontal cortex become listless and uncommunicative. One woman who recovered from a stroke in that area recalled inhabiting an empty mind, devoid of the wandering, stream-of-consciousness thoughts that most of us take for granted.
Parts of the default network also have strong connections to the hippocampus, which records and recalls autobiographical memories such as yesterday's breakfast or your first day of kindergarten.
To Raichle and his colleague Debra Gusnard, this all pointed to one thing: daydreaming. Through the hippocampus, the default network could tap into memories - the raw material of daydreams. The medial prefrontal cortex could then evaluate those memories from an introspective viewpoint. Raichle and Gusnard speculated that the default network might provide the brain with an "inner rehearsal" for considering future actions and choices.
Randy Buckner, a former colleague of Raichle's now at Harvard, agrees. To him the evidence paints a picture of a brain system involved in the quintessential acts of daydreaming: mulling over past experiences and speculating about the future (New Scientist, 24 March 2007, p 36). "We're very good at imagining possible worlds and thinking about them," says Bucker. "This may be the brain network that helps us to do that."
There is now direct evidence to support this idea. Last year, Malia Mason of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, reported that the activity of the default network correlates with daydreaming. Using the brain imaging technique fMRI, Mason found that people reported daydreaming when their default network was active, but not when it dimmed down. Volunteers with more active default networks reported more wandering thoughts overall (Science, vol 315, p 393).
Daydreaming may sound like a mental luxury, but its purpose is deadly serious: Buckner and his Harvard colleague Daniel Gilbert see it as the ultimate tool for incorporating lessons learned in the past into our plans for the future. So important is this exercise, it seems, that the brain engages in it whenever possible, breaking off only when it has to divert its limited supply of blood, oxygen and glucose to a more urgent task.
Daydreaming may sound like a mental luxury but its purpose is deadly serious
But people are starting to suspect that the default network does more than just daydream. It started in 2003 when Michael Greicius of Stanford University in California studied the default network in a new way. He got his subjects to lie quietly in an fMRI scanner and simply watched their brains in action. This led him to find what are called resting state fluctuations in the default network - slow waves of neural activity that ripple through in a coordinated fashion, linking its constellation of brain areas into a coherent unit. The waves lasted 10 to 20 seconds from crest to crest, up to 100 times slower than typical EEG brain waves recorded by electrodes on the scalp.
[SIZE="4"][/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 24-11-2008
Until then scientists had studied the default network in the old-fashioned way, subtracting resting scans from task scans to measure changes in brain activity. But Greicius's work showed that you could eavesdrop on the network by simply scanning people as they lay around doing nothing. This allowed scientists to study the network in people who weren't even conscious, revealing something unexpected.
Raichle reported last year that the network's resting waves continued in heavily anaesthetised monkeys as though they were awake (Nature, vol 447, p 83). More recently, Greicius reported a similar phenomenon in sedated humans, and other researchers have found the default network active and synchronised in early sleep (Human Brain Mapping, vol 29, p 839 and p 671).
It threw a monkey wrench into the assumption that the default network is all about daydreaming. "I was surprised," admits Greicius. "I've had to revamp my understanding of what we're looking at."
Given that the default network is active in early sleep it's tempting to link it with real dreaming, but Raichle suspects its nocturnal activity has another purpose - sorting and preserving memories. Each day we soak up a mountain of short-term memories but only a few are actually worth adding to the personal narrative that guides our lives.
Raichle now believes that the default network is involved, selectively storing and updating memories based on their importance from a personal perspective - whether they're good, threatening, emotionally painful, and so on. To prevent a backlog of unstored memories building up, the network returns to its duties whenever it can.
In support of this idea, Raichle points out that the default network constantly chatters with the hippocampus. It also devours huge amounts of glucose, way out of proportion to the amount of oxygen it uses. Raichle believes that rather than burning this extra glucose for energy it uses it as a raw material for making the amino acids and neurotransmitters it needs to build and maintain synapses, the very stuff of memory. "It's in those connections where most of the cost of running the brain is," says Raichle.
With such a central role, it shouldn't be surprising that the default network is implicated in some familiar brain diseases. In 2004, Buckner saw a presentation by William Klunk of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Klunk presented 3D maps showing harmful protein clumps in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. Until then people had only looked at these clumps in one brain location at a time, by dissecting the brains of deceased patients. So when Klunk projected his whole-brain map on the screen, it was the first time many people had seen the complete picture. "It was quite surprising," says Buckner. "It looked just like the default network."
Raichle, Greicius and Buckner have since found that the default network's pattern of activity is disrupted in patients with Alzheimer's disease. They have also begun to monitor default network activity in people with mild memory problems to see if they can learn to predict who will go on to develop Alzheimer's. Half of people with memory problems go on to develop the disease, but which half? "Can we use what we've learned to provide insight into who's at risk for Alzheimer's?" says Buckner.
The default network also turns out to be disrupted in other maladies including depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism and schizophrenia. It also plays a mysterious role in victims of brain injury or stroke who hover in the grey netherworld between consciousness and brain death known as a minimally conscious or vegetative state. Steven Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, has used fMRI to look at patterns of activity in the default networks of people in this state. "You can really see how this network breaks down as coma deepens," he says. He is now looking for a link between default network activity and whether patients will regain consciousness after, say, 12 months. "We're hoping to show that it will have prognostic value," he says.
All of this has been a long time coming since Sokoloff's surprising observation 55 years ago. Watching the brain at rest, rather than constantly prodding it to do tricks, is now revealing the rich inner world of our private moments. So the next time you're mooching around doing nothing much, take a moment to remind yourself that your brain is still beavering away - if you can tear yourself away from your daydreams, that is.
The meditating mind
WHEN Zen Buddhists meditate, they may be deliberately switching off their default network, a recently discovered system within the brain that has been strongly linked with daydreaming (see main story).The goal of Zen meditation is to clear the mind of wandering, stream-of-consciousness thoughts by focusing attention on posture and breathing. Giuseppe Pagnoni, a neuroscientist at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy, wondered whether this meant they had learned to suppress the activity of their default network.He recruited a group of volunteers trained in Zen meditation and put them in an fMRI scanner. He presented them with random strings of letters and asked them to determine whether each was an English-language word or just gibberish. Each time a subject saw a real word, their default network would light up for a few seconds - evidence of meandering thoughts triggered by the word, such as apple... apple pie... cinnamon.Zen meditators performed just as well as non-meditators on word recognition, but they were much quicker to rein in their daydreaming engines afterwards, doing so within about 10 seconds, versus 15 for non-meditators (PLoS ONE, vol 3, p e3083).
Douglas Fox is a freelance science writer based in San Francisco
The Future - John Nicholson - 24-11-2008
[SIZE="5"]Meaningful Differences in Everyday Experience of Young American Children
Betty Hart, PhD and Todd Risley, PhD – The University of Kansas
Paul H Brookes Publishing Company, Baltimore, 1995
The Social World of Children Learning to Talk
Betty Hart, PhD – University of Kansas
Todd Risley, PhD - University of Alaska at Anchorage & University of Kansas
Paul H Brookes Publishing Company, Baltimore, 1999
Handbook of Reading Research
Edited by: P David Pearson, University of California at Berkeley
Section Editors: Rebecca Barr, Michael L Kamil, Peter B Mosenthal
Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, New Jersey, 2001
Download an electronic copy
Evidence Base for Literacy Promotion in Primary Care
Effectiveness of a Primary Care Intervention to Support Reading Aloud: A Multicenter Evaluation
Needlman R, Toker KH, Dreyer BP, Klass P, Mendelsohn AL. Ambul Pediatr. 2005
Jul-Aug;5(4):209-15
Efficacy of Pediatric Office-Based Interventions to Support Literacy Development
Reach Out and Read
From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development
Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development
Jack P Shonkoff and Deborah A Phillips, Editors
Board on Children, Youth, and Families,
National Research Council and Institute of Medicine
National Academy Press; Washington, DC
Literacy Promotion in Primary Care Pediatrics: Can We Make a Difference?
High PC, LaGasse L, Becker S, Ahlgren I, Gardner A. Pediatrics. 2000 Apr;105(4 Pt 2): 927-34
Literacy Promotion for Hispanic Families in a Primary Care Setting: A Randomized, Controlled Trial
Golova N, Alario AJ, Vivier PM, Rodriguez M, High PC. Pediatrics. 1999;103:993-997.
Prescribing Books for Immigrant Children: A Pilot Study to Promote Emergent Literacy Among the Children of Hispanic Immigrants
Sanders LM, Gershon, TD, Huffman LC, Mendoza FS. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2000;154:771-777
Medical Provider Developmental Code Card
Reach out and Read
School Readiness
High PC; American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care and Council on School Health. Pediatrics. 2008 Apr;121(4):e1008-15
Selecting Appropriate Toys for Young Children: The Pediatrician's Role
Glassy D, Romano J; Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care. American Academy of Pediatrics. Pediatrics. 2003 Apr;111(4 Pt 1):911-3[/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 25-11-2008
[SIZE="4"]THE POWER OF TALKING
1 Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Betty Hart, Ph.D., and Todd R. Risley, Ph.D. (1995). Baltimore: Brookes Publishing Co.
2 The First Three Years: A Governor’s Guide to Early Childhood. National Governor’s Association. (1997). Washington, D.C.; Caring for Your Baby and Child, Birth to Age 5. The
American Academy of Pediatrics, S.P. Shelov (Ed.). (1998). New York: Bantam Books; Rethinking the Brain: New Insights Into Early Development. Rima Shore. (1997). New
York: Families and Work Institute.
3 Because of differences in measurement technique, 30,000 words in the Hart and Risley study is equivalent to about 21,000 words in the LENA Adult Words report.
Hart and Risley recorded one hour at a peak talking time and extrapolated this number of words to a 14-hour day. LENA percentiles and word counts are based on 12
consecutive hours of recording during an actual day, with no extrapolation.
Count the difference:
CHILD Low language environment
average 79 IQ
Average language environment
average 107 IQ
Enhanced language environment
average 117 IQ
NOTE: Children who were
exposed to an enhanced
language environment had IQ
scores of up to 149.
The study and several subsequent studies
confirmed that parents and caregivers who speak 25
million words to their child from birth to four were
more academically successful. That’s 17,000 words
every day
. After the first four years, it is virtually impossible to
close the gap between with children whose parents
have provided this advantage and children of par-
ents who have not.
The quantity of talk a child experiences is directly
correlated with the child’s IQ and vocabulary size.
No other variable, including parents’ education
or socioeconomic status, predicted a child’s IQ or
vocabulary more so than the quantity of talk and
interactions that parents had with their child.
[/SIZE]
}
The Future - John Nicholson - 16-12-2008
[SIZE="6"]A layman’s view of our human mind and where it fits into our human brain.
Written by a neurological layman for the benefit of his own understanding and that of parents and others concerned with vital early education.
I am writing this from a neuro/philosophical stand point.
Just like every one else, I have a limited knowledge of just how the human mind works, I am writing from my own standpoint about how I consider my personal mind works, within the context of our human brain. Obviously our individual mind can never be replicated, so as far as our mind is concerned it is an individual item, an intangible concept for each individual, based on their experience within their individual life, through childhood education and adult life.
So we must consider the view that “the mind” is a concept rather then a fact, our minds are nothing more or less then an individual concept within the physical reality of our brain.
The mind, our conscious reality, is clearly divided into two areas, the conscious working platform where we are actively aware of our reasoning and the ideas under consideration.
AND
The subconscious mind that is unseen and works at the speed of light, if we burn our hand, our mind removes our hand from the flame, the movement is just as fast as is physically possible, but the mental instruction is instantaneous.
Our subconscious mind is the physical servant of the concept of mind, something provided as is our conscious mind by the properties of the brain, our brains clearly work on two levels, the level we are aware of where decisions are made in light of our personal knowledge, with the unrealised high speed ability of our subconscious mind to deliver ideas at the speed of light into the conscious arena.
For instance, ideas are stored visually throughout our lives. When we need them, our subconscious mind converts them into speech or an active concept I describe as “image in action” and delivers them instantaneously either into our thinking areas for consideration or into speech for joint consideration.
The finest example of our subconscious mental ability, is the ability of the subconscious mind to convert words into images or visa versa as we read or listen.
[COLOR="Red"][SIZE="7"]HIGH SPEED THINKING IS VISUAL
THE SUBCONCIOUS MIND CONVERTS THOUGHT INTO SPEECH AND SPEECH INTO VISUAL MEMORY
MEMORY HAS A VISUAL STARTING POINT
THIS INSTANTANEOUS ABILITY ALOWS US TO SHARE OUR EXPERIENCES[/SIZE][/COLOR]
The importance of counting and reading being established early, is clearly in the advantages of the increased ability, it gives to the individual childs mental structure.
Learning and memory are both completely natural. Every child copies sound and association in order to develop language, every child copies any physical process that it has contact with in order to live alongside its family.
Modern mathematics have been moulded over the last three centuries in order to enhance calculation ability, writing has been developed in order to store and explore ideas and facts at will.
Children that are brought up without an active parent or guardian in early years are most generally regarded as less able then children brought up with an active parent or guardian.
Only active parents or guardians can start to teach children arithmetic and reading at the most appropriate time, the most appropriate time being just as soon as one can. In practical terms, this means when the child develops its speaking ability sufficiently, around three to four years of age, but the earlier the better.
My own research identifies advantages in permanent memory ability, when only vital things are taught and reinforced until perfected, before moving on, for instance knowing left from right is vital for every ones safety. Much more securely established without choice.
It is every Childs first lesson as they establish Mr five and Mr six as the names of the two prominent fingers (thumbs up), which are in reading order not a choice of two.
My teaching program can be adapted to teaching either one to one, or teaching in hundreds, as it involves a certain amount of singing /chanting to establish permanent easily acquired memories, which are immediately being reinforced by visual understanding, just as quickly as they can be.
[/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 16-12-2008
[COLOR="Black"][SIZE="4"]This is a clear explanation, by a scientist of the difficulties he finds in giving explanation as to his work within Neuroscience.
To bind together his thinking in his individual journey on his own particular research, he has no other choice but to resort to language, which we can only describe as neurophilosophy Neurophilosophy a word so new that Microsoft can not even spell check it.
Of course we all realise just what it means, we are familiar with the two concepts that make up the word, but we unused to having to resort to give explanation to science by means of philosophy.
This neurophilasophical stance has been my only means of trying to break into what is one of our greatest mysteries,
“JUST HOW DOES OUR OWN HUMAN MIND WORK “
To give a sense of clarity, we have to develop a standard understanding of the difference between the concept of mind and the reality of the human brain.
The individual mind can only ever be a concept, an individual concept of our personal reality, within our universally similar brains.
In order to improve our individual life and those of others around us we need to be able to improve our brain function just as far and as widely as we can.
After an instantaneous realisation, that using an Abacus improved out of all believable benefit, the mathematic concepts of every child using it, my practical mind has engaged the areas of human mental possibilities daily.
Completely without arrogance, neurophilosophy Neurophilosophy is my chosen area of individual research, there is no other way of ever coming near just what is possible for any individual mind, without coming towards it from a neurophilasophical stand point.
My own realisations have come as much from reading the thinking of our great history of philosophy, simply by interpretation of the verbal concepts fresh from the lips of our outstanding thinkers, then it has from reading the realisations of scientific papers, valuable insights of scientific thought, only conceivable through thinking, were ideas are built into building a most probable truth manner or mode. [/SIZE][/COLOR]
[SIZE="7"]Neuroscience has the potential to improve our ways of teaching and learning, [/SIZE]
[SIZE="5"][COLOR="RoyalBlue"]but that this potential can only be realized by 'humanizing' the highly technical language of brain science. For example, through neuroscience, we are beginning to understand why many of our students perform poorly on exams when we are fairly certain that they 'know' the material. Findings from neuroscience indicate that this results from our students 'downshifting' as their brain physiology responds to stress. That is, under the stress of test-taking, their cerebrum, the most advanced part of their brain, is slowed in the formation of neural networks while their less-advanced brainstem becomes dominant. This is a very effective explanation of the physiological dimension of our learners. What remains is to translate this explanation into a format useful for classroom teachers.
Neuroscience does not help us understand the human factors that determine why some students interpret a test as threatening (and therefore 'downshift'), while others interpret the same testing environment as challenging (and are able to excel). Although physiological explanations from neuroscience help us understand the mechanisms of the brain, they fall short of explaining the socio-cultural and phenomenological factors which initiate a stressful versus challenging interpretation of experience. Thus, dehumanized explanations of neuroscience findings seem less than useful to classroom teachers and similarly remain outside the understanding of most people.
Bridging Empirical and Spiritual Languages
If we are to understand, not just pull apart our mind-brains, the materialistic language of neuroscience research needs the interpretive lens offered by philosophical and spiritual languages. Interpreted through these languages, brain science can become more widely accessible to both lay persons and classroom teachers.
As explained above, the predominance of empirical analysis makes the translation of neuroscience findings into the human dimensions of teaching and learning very difficult. A neuroscience informed by human concerns could pursue useful explanations of educational experience outside of the laboratory, and lead to more applicable results for classroom teachers. A major obstacle in developing such a "humanized" neuroscience is the gap between empirical interpretations and spiritual/philosophical interpretations of neuroscience research.Most authors in the field have attempted to address physiological questions, for example: "How does the brain work?", "How are neural networks formed?", or, as in our example, "What happens in a brain under stress?" These are what Kosslyn and Koenig (1992) refer to as the "easy questions." Meanwhile, these researchers have deftly avoided difficult spiritual and philosophical questions such as: "What is the relationship between a neural network and the thought associated with that network?", "What is the relationship between body and mind?", or, as in our example, "Why, given the same environment, does one student feel stress while another thrives upon challenge?"
Thus, there has been a tendency to either present neuroscience research in the reductionistic terms of the purely physiological and observable, or dismiss neuroscience and pursue more humanistic interpretations of educational experience. In this way, a chasm has formed between the laboratory and the classroom. Classroom teachers, who should benefit greatly from neuroscience research, are often left with the impression that these discoveries do not have practical implications for their own classroom behaviors and practices. Indeed, most teacher education courses and textbooks make no mention of neuroscience. My research seeks to bridge the gap between the language of neuroscience (which tends to be very technical), and the languages of philosophy and human spirituality (which tend to be more open-ended), in order to make neuroscience accessible to the classroom teacher.[/COLOR][/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 16-12-2008
[SIZE="5"][COLOR="Green"]During my work, I deliberately adopted the term "mind-brain" in order to avoid materialistic reductionism on one hand, and immaterial ungroundedness on the other. I was surprised by the reaction I received from my audience. It seemed that the room was divided in half. One group of the listeners took issue with what they perceived as a reductionistic bias, while the other half opposed what they saw as overly philosophical or spiritual. Thus, in mutually contradictory fashion, I was accused of being both too ethereal and too materialistic. It seemed that some reduced the term "mind-brain" to mean only "mind," while others misconstrued the term to mean exclusively "brain." I left the presentation determined to understand this division in the audience. I realize now that my shift in terminology away from the common language, dualistic separation of "brain" and "mind" to the unity of "mind-brain" requires elaboration.
For this reason, an objective of this paper is to explore new metaphors from quantum physics which allow incorporation of both the physiological aspects of brain, as well as the philosophical/spiritual implications of mind. In this way, we can move toward a humanized neuroscience of the unified mind-brain. I hope to work toward a language that allows us to avoid the "either-or" separations of common language. I believe that metaphors from quantum physics can help overcome false separations and mistaken dualisms.
Metaphors for the Mind-Brain Unity
The common language of brain and mind is hampered by Cartesian dualism. The separation of mind versus body and brain is an essential premise of seventeenth-century Cartesian thought. Drew Leder (1990) states the case, "Cartesian categories of mind and body [brain] merely reify and segregate classes of experience that stand in ceaseless interchange." (p. 149) An integrated experience and understanding of mind-brain can generate new interpretations of our worlds which overcome separations of object and subject.
There are postmodern, alternative, non-objectified positions which challenge Cartesian dualism and its misunderstanding of the human mind and brain. For example: biogenetic structuralism. This view "holds that 'mind' and 'brain' are two views of the same reality—mind is how brain experiences its own functioning, and brain provides the structure of mind." This position is significant in the field of neurophilosophy. My use of the term mind-brain, based in biogenetic structuralism, allows me to explore and supersede the culturally-imposed line between objectivity and subjectivity, matter and spirit, physiology and metaphysicality. Thus, biogenetic structuralism provides one possible bridge over Cartesian dualism. However, this bridge is difficult to sustain, as study tends to concentrate either on the physiological or the spiritual.
Other possible metaphorical bridges are found in metaphors drawn from quantum physics. I believe these bridges are sustained over the long term. My choice of quantum metaphors is not arbitrary. Traditionally, we adopt metaphors from our most complicated discoveries and inventions to describe the functioning of our mind-brain. In previous centuries, we compared our brains to complicated machinery, such as clocks and automobiles. Presently, we adopt metaphors from computer technology, such as parallel processing and programming.
Although these metaphors have been useful, they perpetuate the false separations of brain and mind. Metaphors from quantum physics, another highly advanced field, can help us move beyond Cartesian dualism. Twentieth-century quantum physics has changed and enriched the metaphors for human existence. Furthermore, quantum physics has shown that the metaphors we employ to explain and understand our mind-brains are especially important to the creation of our worlds. The metaphors from quantum physics that I seek to draw from are the participant-observer, fuzziness and exchange and wave-particle unity.
The Metaphor of Quantum Participant-Observer
According to quantum theory, we participate in the creation of our realities through our status as participant-observers. Thus, a look at the metaphors we use to describe our selves is significant. As Deepak Chopra notes:
No matter where you look, the visible universe is fundamentally a set of signals. Yet these signals all hold together, turning totally meaningless vibrations into full-blown experiences that have human meaning. The human act of using metaphors to attribute significance and value to these "meaningless vibrations" generates the world as we know it. This means that the use of metaphors and models creates our reality. In this way, the traditional understanding that we create models to explain what we observe in the world gives way to a quantum mechanical understanding that we create models as part of our participation in the creation and explanation of our worlds.
Also, the model of quantum physics informs us that the choice to measure certain properties actualizes those properties. All possibilities exist until we choose to measure or actualize a particular one. The models and metaphors which our understanding of the subatomic level generates allows the creation of new metaphors to explain and create new ways of being. This metaphor of the participant-observer can allow us to envision a bridge between matter and spirit facilitating a more integrated understanding of our worlds. For example, our metaphors regarding the human body can be revised based upon these new metaphors generated by quantum physics. Rather than continuing to use outmoded Cartesian metaphors, we can metaphorize our worlds and bodies in quantum terms. Thus, the term mind-brain can take on a more significant and integrated meaning.[/COLOR][/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 16-12-2008
[SIZE="4"][COLOR="Blue"]The shift from traditional classical mechanical metaphors of experience to quantum mechanical metaphors results in understanding the mind-brain as a participant-observer. Through this metaphor, the brain is no longer a separate entity owned by the Self and mind. Instead, the mind and brain are understood as mind-brain, with integrated physical and metaphysical dimensions. The traditional split between subject and object is overcome through the participant-observer model. This metaphor allows the body to be experienced as presence. No longer a thing to be owned or observed, the body is understood as a complex part of the participant-observer unity which serves to actualize the world.
The participant-observer metaphor breaks down boundaries and encourages a view of the world in which discrete objects no longer exist. Instead, the emphasis shifts from the borders to a recognition of the constant exchange taking place everywhere and all of the time. For example, the transformation of food into thought by the mind-body demonstrates physicality transforming into metaphysicality.
The Metaphor of Quantum Fuzziness and Constant Exchange
The shift to quantum explanations and metaphors allows new understandings of the constant exchange of molecules and matter in and through the mind-brain. An emphasis on the changing conditions of the body and the brain, as well as the continual exchange between body and world, makes exclusive ownership of a singular body or brain impossible. If one were to "own one's body" within quantum metaphors, "one's body" or one's brain would have to include everything. Chopra describes the body and brain using the metaphor of a quantum experience and process:
If you could see your body as it really is, you would never see it the same way twice. Ninety-eight percent of the atoms in your body were not there a year ago. The skeleton that seems so solid was not there three months ago...The skin is new every month. You have a new stomach lining every four days, with the actual surface cells that contact food being renewed every five minutes...It is as if you lived in a building whose bricks were systematically taken out and replaced every year. If you keep the same blueprint, the it will still look like the same building. But it won't be the same in actuality. The human body also stands there looking much the same from day to day, but through the processes of digestion, elimination, and so forth, it is constantly and ever in exchange with the rest of the world. Each system of the human body, including the brain, functions both separately and in union with the whole. Similarly, each of these particles and molecules, although involved in continual exchange, is also part of a synchronous and unified universe. The "fuzzy" boundaries and continual exchange recognized by and through quantum physics is also coupled with a connectedness between particles through which, "particles seem to know instantaneously what decisions are made elsewhere." (Zukav, 1979, p. 72) The universe has traditionally been described as a series of linear, cause and effect type interactions. Now, however, we can borrow the metaphors of quantum physics and begin to think in terms of possibilities and non-linear exchanges which are constantly taking place. These metaphors can free us from the constraints of linear, cause and effect thinking. We can begin to recognize the continual, multiplicity of reactions, possibilities and relationships that are formed and re-formed through simultaneous exchange.
An example of this constant exchange experienced in the world takes place in the breath. The body, if it is full of life, is always in motion—if only the motion of breathing. We are involved in a constant exchange of material and information between ourselves, our bodies and our environments. Thus, in fact, the demarcation that we usually take for granted as separating the body from the environment is arbitrary.
The breath provides a relatively easy place from which to begin to integrate a quantum physical understanding into our way of thinking, and thereby broadening the metaphors within which we create and interpret our worlds. The activity of breathing creates a bridge transcending the physical and metaphysical. Where indeed do I begin and end in this process? What marks the boundaries of my world? What is it that gives and sustains my life? How does the breath, a physical transfer of molecules, accomplish the sustenance of life? These questions raise a dilemma for those caught within the Cartesian paradigm, and sustain the impulse to move beyond this limiting interpretation of the world.
Classical physical metaphors of breathing generate a visualization of breathing in which air is taken in to the body and released. The very real processes of transformation are obscured in this account. A quantum mechanical explanation, however, draws our attention to the simultaneous responses of molecule to molecule. When metaphorized through quantum physics, the focus is drawn to the constant exchange of matter. The process of transformation from in-coming to out-going air becomes the center of attention. The life-giving integration and transfer of information takes on greater importance.
Considering the breath in quantum physical terms generates an enhanced understanding of the tension which exists between the physical and the metaphysical. While the physical dimensions of the process of breathing are understood in detail by practitioners of modern medicine, the metaphysical dimension remains elusive. The metaphors and models of quantum physics makes possible a new understanding of the transforming nature of breathing in a living body. One of the reasons that we have particular difficulty distinguishing mind and brain lies in this fact of exchange. As noted earlier, this constant exchange between self and environment proceeds largely unnoticed, yet it occurs at a remarkable rate. The metaphors generated through quantum physics makes it easier for us to imagine this constant exchange and overcome the Cartesian categorical divide.[/COLOR][/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 16-12-2008
[SIZE="5"]Thus, understanding in great detail the physiology of brain function will not reveal the secrets of the mind. Instead, we must elaborate quantum metaphors of mind-brain in which 'mind' is not reduced to the material functioning of the 'brain.' Neither can 'brain' be properly studied alone. We must accept that the physiology we study is intimately related to—indeed inseparable from mind. The terms mind and brain are misleading and encourage the perpetuation of outmoded Cartesian dualism. The single term mind-brain will help us comprehend the inter-relationship of mind-brain.
[COLOR="Purple"]The Metaphor of Wave-Particle Unity
Another metaphor from quantum physics supports this position. The firm lines of demarcation between "here" and "there," "me" and "not me" have not been substantiated in the subatomic realm. Neils Bohr's principle of complementarity provides a pertinent example. The principle of complementarity postulates that, "what we experience is not external reality, but our interaction with it". (Zukav, 1979, p. 116) Bohr hypothesizes multiple "pictures" whose views are complementary and contradictory. In order to make sense of our observations, Bohr maintains that we need to consider pairs of pictures or metaphors, neither of which is complete on its own.
Discoveries related to light epitomize the complementary relationship Bohr was exploring. In 1803 Thomas Young, using the phenomenon of interference, 'proved' that light is wavelike. Just over one hundred years later, in 1905, Albert Einstein, using the photoelectric effect, 'proved' that light is particle-like. (Zukav, 1979; Gibbins, 1987) Thus, scientific evidence supported two contradictory conclusions regarding the nature of light.
Bohr's complementarity principle is an attempt to reconcile these two "truths." By postulating that we understand light in terms of pairs of "pictures" or metaphors, Bohr was able to reconcile these two positions into a mutually supporting paradigm. Bohr maintained that in order to understand the nature of light, one must utilize the findings related to both observations, otherwise the account would be incomplete. Instead of insisting that light be understood in terms of either waves or particles, this principle of complementarity recognized that light is neither wave nor particle, but both wave and particle (wave-particle). The "pictures" of waves and particles help us metaphorize and therefore better understand the behavior of the "more complex" entity, light, in terms of "less complex" observables, waves and particles.
As this example makes clear, light must be accepted, studied and metaphorized as wave-particle. Seemingly contradictory explanations and metaphors must be held simultaneously. Quantum physics shows the either/or position of classical Cartesian explanations are invalid.
The same is true of our mind-brain. Neuroscientists and educators alike continue to seek explanations of brain functioning without taking into account the seemingly contradictory information regarding mind. To continue to study the brain alone would be as misguided as treating light as either wave or particle. Just as light must be studied and metaphorized in complementary terms so that it may be understood, the inseparable concept of mind-brain must be accepted in order to avoid misguided theories and partial understandings of our selves.
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[COLOR="Red"]Conclusion
I have discussed these three metaphors from quantum physics in order to develop parallels between the nondualistic understandings of quantum physics and those of neurophilosophy. The convergence between these areas of inquiry supports an emerging alternative to dualistic interpretations. The separations between matter and spirit, which were taken for granted by Descartes and many others following him have come under serious attack in our century.
Quantum physics, the science of explaining the universe at its smallest, substantiates the elimination of dualistic interpretations of experience. The metaphors of quantum physics corroborate a more holistic interpretation of experience. The traditional dichotomies of objective and subjective, material and spiritual are challenged through these recent observations and discoveries. Similarly, with regards to the neurophilosophy of the mind-brain, the different languages of materialism and spirituality unnaturally divide us into different camps. One group focuses strictly on understanding physiology, while the other focuses exclusively on understanding our "selves" apart from the physiological basis. Splitting ourselves into these disciplines enables only partial interpretations and analyses of the data available to us. The conclusions I have reached indicate that in order to generate a coherent analysis, which takes into account the wholeness of our human being, we must overcome the tendency to break down our communication. Utilizing the metaphors of quantum physics to sustain our bridge between matter and spirit, we must recognize the complementary interdependence of mind-brain.[/SIZE][/COLOR]
The Future - John Nicholson - 19-12-2008
[SIZE="7"][COLOR="red"]
Universal Education
Firstly from a philosophical viewpoint and secondly from a neurophylosphical viewpoint.
[/COLOR][/SIZE]Firstly from a philosophical viewpoint and secondly from a neurophylosphical viewpoint.
[SIZE="5"]Every child has a natural right to the very best education, proven researched and developed by the world at large.
Every parent should be informed, as to what is possible in respect to teaching basic skills to their own children before they start their national schools programme.
The universal ability to be taught early mathematics and reading their own language, is clearly the final responsibility of both state and parent.
The higher the national standard of education is, the more likely the level of democracy is raised for public benefit.
The higher the international standard of education is, the more likely we are to become able to provide an adequate standard of living for all, through sustainable technological
production of food and housing.
In short without universal basic skills education becoming established rapidly, we shall fail to provide the basic human rights to food and housing, that is vital, if we are to sustain a peaceful future for humanity.
[SIZE="7"]Universal Education
A neurophylosphical viewpoint.
What do we know already? [/SIZE]
A neurophylosphical viewpoint.
What do we know already? [/SIZE]
All healthy children teach themselves their own natural language by simple association and assimilation, in the main to an adequate starting point, by the time they are five years of age. The generally accepted age of international state education provision.
No healthy child can teach itself an adequate counting strategy or read adequately before five years of age without intensive one to one assistance. Where they receive vital early training in mathematic procedure, any child is capable of excelling in early arithmetic, progressing quite naturally in all mathematics subjects throughout its life.
Mental arithmetic is a natural part of our conscious mind, when we have been taught properly.
With rapid natural pattern recognition associated with the two hands which we all possess, every child in the world can be taught the name of its two thumbs at the earliest point of speaking, Mr Five and Mr Six is a natural starting point in numeracy, very quickly each finger can then be identified by name, One and ten are obvious, then the longest fingers provide a visual realisation where two hands are held flat touching the edge of a cupboard or wall. Very few of us know those two numbers, Check out your own.
With six fingers having quickly become a physical fact, the four remaining numbers are soon part of the permanent physical representation of my beloved ten.
The most usefull realisation for a child is however not ten but five, we can immediately see five simply because we point with five fingers, but two hands make ten, the central column of Abacus One, or the second to right hand column of any number with only the aid of a friendly Zero. O how easy it is.
Children need to perfect an understanding of only twenty, in order to understand every number they will ever encounter, this realisation is a language and physical memory for every child using any Abacus. A long time before five years of age.
WHEN THEIR PARENTS SHOW THEM HOW
My development of the abacus, combines the physical pattern of numbers with the words to understand those patterns. For over three thousand years in Europe and ten thousand (the earliest Written Language Form we are aware of) in China we have taught our children to count by chanting
Chanting is the natural conscious method of understanding, the vital language we need, assimilated just as quickly as that permanent memory of chanted numbers is established.
We can chant all times tables and visually prove as the chant proceeds.
Learning a European language is just as easy but takes longer. Chant the alphabet , chant and prove the link with every low case letter. With numbers we teach our conscious mind, we write them down in easily remembered visual patterns, one simple symbol creates a conscious meaning.
With words we create visual meaning entirely from sound. The massive ability to learn ones natural language plays the major part in reading acquisition, just as we learn language subconsciously through our vast natural ability, to associate sound and meaning as a visual picture, we are able to build those same words from only twenty six symbols.
The younger the child starts to recognise those symbols the better, a picture memory of simple words soon build into visual sound creation ability, one, two, three and four letter words soon build into multitudes of syllables that we can manipulate into the sounds of words, as they are linked in our language. We point and prove a low case alphabet, then by imposing small easily recognised three dimensional objects over the letters, we use our vast subconscious gifts.
OUR SUBCONCIOUS SPEED OF LIGHT ABILITY
Every child can create quite naturally the alternative memory of the sounds, in the letter combinations it needs to read with. Once a child can read every number to one hundred it will be well on its way to unassisted reading.
COUNT ON READING TO DEVELOP ALL CHILDREN
Reading ability starts with a and progresses just as long as your desire to read exists,
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The Future - John Nicholson - 08-01-2009
[SIZE="4"]PSI
Parents Showing Initiative
Building ability and IQ
Six tricks for six
Maths Reading & the Skeleton of Geography
Chess Piano & Table Tennis (start with hands)
These activities need starting around four years of age, but I take on the point as regards kumin the older they are when they start the faster they will learn.
These six activities between 4 & 6 should be the basis of all early education should it be the child educated at home in a bush school provision with young volunteer teachers, or as we are trying to achieve: the basis of our common sense assistance to our own children within the standard UK primary education.
This is a new format for presenting our
“Showing Is Knowingâ€
The natural way we teach and learn.
IE Starting point “Show me†a capital L, Show me your left arm, show me your left eye shut, show me how you turn to the left. After one week of this combined procedure under the “Show me your left hand†command the combined routine would become a permanent memory fixed for life at four years old.
On to show me Mr Five Show me Mr Six
Show me ten show me eight show me four
Every thing can become a series of Show me routines.
The physical routines build the permanent memories, which provide the child with automatic ability.
I think you can make a start, and then we could be both be recognised for creating this easy learning routine which will obviously become international standard practice.
LEFT TO RIGHT IS THE WAY WE READ
REMEMBER THIS ONLY TO SUCEED
In all initial internal memos it is best to include every original ideas for mutual consideration, as the above two lines and below.
We could imprint left by insisting every child only put up its left hand in primary schools, for an odd week ok.
Always, Murder, to regimented I think.
But on the basis of good Habits?
WHAT IS A PRIMARY SHOOL
It is by far the most important school any child will ever attend
Its practical purpose is that of software installation.
The major part of that installation is being committed quite naturally, daily mental realisations are being absorbed continually throughout our primary school life.
The human mind is like an iceberg, two thirds of it is invisible and during the five years in primary schools the major part of our software ability is being laid down quite naturally.
The visible software is in providing the child with the essential working tools for teaching itself everything that has to be committed to the human mind during a life time.
The two major parts of brain processing are, mathematics for the basis of calculation and reading/writing for the means of information exchange, a geography skeleton can be easily acquired by familiarisation with the world map, where every child can acquire a good working knowledge of the position of every one of the two hundred or so independent countries in our world.
Once the world skeleton is in place, committing the awareness of physical features, the rivers mountains and seas, alongside the cities towns and land usage, is assisted greatly by the practical reality of having committed the structure of our land and sea mass early in our education.
The second line of our showing tricks, chess piano playing and table tennis are all parts and parcel of improving our neural structure, essential in building instantaneous natural thinking ability and keeping those thinking abilities at their highest possible level throughout our lives.
How do we teach these three essential skills to very young children?
They are best taught by means of physically showing as we expand this essential, early and easy learning system, detailed instruction information will no doubt become ever more available.
What do we know about teaching chess? We already have a realisation that the very young learner/student copies exactly the movements of the master, during this process the showing of practical moves are being laid down as permanent memory.
[/SIZE]
Parents Showing Initiative
Building ability and IQ
Six tricks for six
Maths Reading & the Skeleton of Geography
Chess Piano & Table Tennis (start with hands)
These activities need starting around four years of age, but I take on the point as regards kumin the older they are when they start the faster they will learn.
These six activities between 4 & 6 should be the basis of all early education should it be the child educated at home in a bush school provision with young volunteer teachers, or as we are trying to achieve: the basis of our common sense assistance to our own children within the standard UK primary education.
This is a new format for presenting our
“Showing Is Knowingâ€
The natural way we teach and learn.
IE Starting point “Show me†a capital L, Show me your left arm, show me your left eye shut, show me how you turn to the left. After one week of this combined procedure under the “Show me your left hand†command the combined routine would become a permanent memory fixed for life at four years old.
On to show me Mr Five Show me Mr Six
Show me ten show me eight show me four
Every thing can become a series of Show me routines.
The physical routines build the permanent memories, which provide the child with automatic ability.
I think you can make a start, and then we could be both be recognised for creating this easy learning routine which will obviously become international standard practice.
LEFT TO RIGHT IS THE WAY WE READ
REMEMBER THIS ONLY TO SUCEED
In all initial internal memos it is best to include every original ideas for mutual consideration, as the above two lines and below.
We could imprint left by insisting every child only put up its left hand in primary schools, for an odd week ok.
Always, Murder, to regimented I think.
But on the basis of good Habits?
WHAT IS A PRIMARY SHOOL
It is by far the most important school any child will ever attend
Its practical purpose is that of software installation.
The major part of that installation is being committed quite naturally, daily mental realisations are being absorbed continually throughout our primary school life.
The human mind is like an iceberg, two thirds of it is invisible and during the five years in primary schools the major part of our software ability is being laid down quite naturally.
The visible software is in providing the child with the essential working tools for teaching itself everything that has to be committed to the human mind during a life time.
The two major parts of brain processing are, mathematics for the basis of calculation and reading/writing for the means of information exchange, a geography skeleton can be easily acquired by familiarisation with the world map, where every child can acquire a good working knowledge of the position of every one of the two hundred or so independent countries in our world.
Once the world skeleton is in place, committing the awareness of physical features, the rivers mountains and seas, alongside the cities towns and land usage, is assisted greatly by the practical reality of having committed the structure of our land and sea mass early in our education.
The second line of our showing tricks, chess piano playing and table tennis are all parts and parcel of improving our neural structure, essential in building instantaneous natural thinking ability and keeping those thinking abilities at their highest possible level throughout our lives.
How do we teach these three essential skills to very young children?
They are best taught by means of physically showing as we expand this essential, early and easy learning system, detailed instruction information will no doubt become ever more available.
What do we know about teaching chess? We already have a realisation that the very young learner/student copies exactly the movements of the master, during this process the showing of practical moves are being laid down as permanent memory.
[/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 26-01-2009
Category: Brain • Neuroscience
Posted on: January 21, 2009 2:00 PM, by Ed Yong
[SIZE="4"]The blood that flows into our heads is obviously important for it provides nutrients and oxygen to that most energetically demanding of organs - the brain. But for neuroscientists, blood flow in the brain has a special significance; many have used it to measure brain activity using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.
This scanning technology has become a common feature of modern neuroscience studies, where it's used to follow firing neurons and to identify parts of the brain that are active during common mental tasks. Its use rests on the assumption that the flow of blood ("haemodynamics" to those in the know) is a decent enough stand-in for the firing of neurons - the latter creates a shortage of nutrients and oxygen that is corrected by the former.
But Yevgeniy Sirotin and Aniruddha Das from Columbia University have found that this assumption might not be entirely valid. They used a new technique to independently measure and compare nerve activity and blood flow in the brains of live monkeys. Sure enough, they found a blood flow pattern that reliably matched the activity of the animals' neurons.
But they also spotted something that no one has seen before - a second haemodynamic signal, of equal strength to the first, that didn't correspond to any local brain activity. This second signal was not a sign of parts of the brain that are active, but those that may need to be active in the near future. It seems that if the brain expects a task in the future, it can anticipate which of its regions will be needed and flush them with blood in preparation.
Sirotin and Das worked with two rhesus monkeys that had transparent windows in their skulls just over their visual cortex, a part of the brain involved in processing images. With a camera pointed through this pane, the duo could literally watched the blood pumping through the monkeys' brains. Using two different wavelengths of light - one red and one green - they could work out how much blood was flowing through a specific blood vessel, and how much oxygen it carried. And with tiny electrodes, they could simultaneously record the electrical signals from nearby neurons.
The monkeys were oblivious to all this fuss - they were out to get a sip of juice. To do that, they had been trained to look at a small spot on a computer screen - when it shone in one colour, the monkeys had to focus their attention on it and when it switched to a second colour, they had to relax their eyes. They sat through a continuous series of these trials and soon picked up the recurring fixate-and-relax pattern.
It was during this task that Sirotin and Das noticed the strange second signal, so they tried to isolate it. They put their monkeys through the same exercise, but this time in almost total darkness. The tiny dot they had to look at was very faint and as it swapped between the "fixate" and "relax" colours, it would have looked like a "single, twinkling star in an otherwise black sky".
In this nigh-pitch blackness, the monkeys' nerves were silent. But their haemodynamic signals spoke volumes - they were still rising and falling in a steady rhythm even though there wasn't any nerve activity in the same area. The monkeys' pupils dilated in time with this signal, their arteries narrowed and widened, and their heart rate kept pace too. Their nerves? Nothing, save a steady background hum.
What was behind this mystery signal? It certainly kept the same timing as the alternating dot and sceptics might point out that there was some light, albeit very little. But different parts of the visual cortex respond to different parts of a monkey's field of view. And with the dot appearing only in the centre of their vision, Sirotin and Das could point their cameras at an area that they knew wouldn't respond to it. And indeed, the local nerves showed no sign of activity above their background levels.
Perhaps the signal was the result of some internal cycle? Unlikely - when Sirontin and Das changed the timing of the flickering dot, they found that the signal followed suit. As the length of each trial increased from six seconds to thirty, so the rhythm of the signal stretched to match it.
It's tempting to think that the signal represented the monkey's shifting attention, with every peak signifying blood flowing to the area during fixation and every trough corresponding to relaxation. But the signal's timing said otherwise - it showed that blood was starting to flow into the area before the start of each trial period, while the monkey was meant to be relaxing its gaze.
This new signal seemed to be pre-empting the monkey's actions. To confirm that, Sirontin and Das changed the timing of the trials after 10-20 cycles, when the monkeys had got into a rhythm. The animals quickly noticed the new pace and immediately picked it up. But the strange second signal was slower - it took a couple of rounds to adjust to the new tempo. It was still "anticipating" the previous timing, even though the animal itself had moved on.
Based on all of these observations, Sirontin and Das suggest that some higher part of the brain anticipates the demands of other regions and sends advance supplies of fresh blood to fuel the neural activity that it foresees. The exact mechanism still needs to be discovered.
For now, the study has an immediate and serious impact on the way that neuroscientists interpret the results of fMRI scans. It's a technique that is already facing a fair amount of controversy, from its technical limitations, to the way its results are analysed, to its popular facade as a mind-reading technology. These new results will surely only inflame the debate further.
Interpretations of fMRI experiments hinge on the idea that haemodynamic signals can predict the activity of neurons in specific parts of the brain. This new study shows that this is true to an extent. But it also reveals the existence of another group of signals that is just as strong and has absolutely nothing to do with local neurons.
Recent reports have suggested that the link between blood flow and neural activity is far from straightforward, but even allowing for that Sirontin and Das's results are something else. They're sure to cause a hefty amount of neural activity in the brains of the world's neuroscientists.
On a tangential and amusing note: The authors made me chuckle. When I googled Sirontin, the fourth link is this amusing video. And the paper makes it seem that Das is a member of every research department at Columbia (and some outside of it).
Reference: Yevgeniy B. Sirotin, Aniruddha Das (2009). Anticipatory haemodynamic signals in sensory cortex not predicted by local neuronal activity Nature, 457 (7228), 475-479 DOI: 10.1038/nature07664
More fMRI studies:
I have always had reservations about the value of mri studies in creating advances in educational practice, after reading this latest research i have more.[/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 02-02-2009
[SIZE="4"]CONCLUSIONS AND IMPRESSIONS
IN the "Children's Houses," the old-time teacher, who wore herself out maintaining discipline of immobility, and who wasted her breath in loud and continual discourse, has disappeared.
For this teacher we have substituted the didactic material, which contains within itself the control of errors and which makes auto-education possible to each child. The teacher has thus become a director of the spontaneous work of the children. She is not a passive force, a silent presence.
The children are occupied each one in a different way, and the directress, watching them, can make psychological observations which, if collected in an orderly way and according to scientific standards, should do much toward the reconstruction of child psychology and the development of experimental psychology. I believe that I have by my method established the conditions necessary to the development of scientific pedagogy; and whoever adopts this method opens, in doing so, a laboratory of experimental pedagogy.
From such work, we must await the positive solution of all those pedagogical problems of which we talk to-day. For through such work there has already come the solution of some of these very questions: that of the liberty of the pupils; auto-education; the establishment of har- [Page 372] mony between the work and activities of home life and school tasks, making both work together for the education of the child.
From the practical side of the school, we have with our methods the advantage of being able to teach in one room, children of very different ages. In our "Children's Houses" we have little ones of two years and a half, who cannot as yet make use of the most simple of the sense exercises, and children of five and a half who because of their development might easily pass into the third elementary. Each one of them perfects himself through his own powers, and goes forward guided by that inner force which distinguishes him as an individual.
One great advantage of such a method is that it will make instruction in the rural schools easier, and will be [Page 375] of great advantage in the schools in the small provincial towns where there are few children, yet where all the various grades are represented. Such schools are not able to employ more than one teacher. Our experience shows that one directress may guide a group of children varying in development from little ones of three years old to the third elementary. Another great advantage lies in the extreme facility with which written language may be taught, making it possible to combat illiteracy and to cultivate the national tongue.
As to the teacher, she may remain for the whole day among children in the most varying stages of development, just as the mother remains in the house with children of all ages, without becoming tired.
The children work by themselves, and, in doing so, make a conquest of active discipline, and independence in all the acts of daily life, just as through daily conquests they progress in intellectual development. Directed by an intelligent teacher, who watches over their physical development as well as over their intellectual and moral progress, children are able with our methods to arrive at a splendid physical development, and, in addition to this, there unfolds within them, in all its perfection, the soul, which distinguishes the human being.
We have been mistaken in thinking that the natural education of children should be purely physical; the soul, too, has its nature, which it was intended to perfect in the spiritual life,–the dominating power of human existence throughout all time. Our methods take into consideration the spontaneous psychic development of the child, and help this in ways that observation and experience have shown us to be wise.
If physical care leads the child to take pleasure in [Page 376] bodily health, intellectual and moral care make possible for him the highest spiritual joy, and send him forward into a world where continual surprises and discoveries await him; not only in the external environment, but in the intimate recesses of his own soul.
It is through such pleasures as these that the ideal man grows, and only such pleasures are worthy of a place in the education of the infancy of humanity.
Our children are noticeably different from those others who have grown up within the grey walls of the common schools. Our little pupils have the serene and happy aspect and the frank and open friendliness of the person who feels himself to be master of his own actions. When they run to gather about our visitors, speaking to them with sweet frankness, extending their little hands with gentle gravity and well-bred cordiality, when they thank these visitors for the courtesy they have paid us in coming, the bright eyes and the happy voices make us feel that they are, indeed, unusual little men. When they display their work and their ability, in a confidential and simple way, it is almost as if they called for a maternal approbation from all those who watch them. Often, a little one will seat himself on the floor beside some visitor silently writing his name, and adding a gentle word of thanks. It is as if they wished to make the visitor feel the affectionate gratitude which is in their hearts.
When we see all these things and when, above all, we pass with these children from the busy activity of the schoolroom at work, into the absolute and profound silence which they have learned to enjoy so deeply, we are moved in spite of ourselves and feel that we have come in touch with the very souls of these little pupils.
The "Children's House" seems to exert a spiritual in- [Page 377] fluence upon everyone. I have seen here, men of affairs, great politicians preoccupied with problems of trade and of state, cast off like an uncomfortable garment the burden of the world, and fall into a simple forgetfulness of self. They are affected by this vision of the human soul growing in its true nature, and I believe that this is what they mean when they call our little ones, wonderful children, happy children–the infancy of humanity in a higher stage of evolution than our own. I understand how the great English poet Wordsworth, enamoured as he was of nature, demanded the secret of all her peace and beauty. It was at last revealed to him–the secret of all nature lies in the soul of a little child. He holds there the true meaning of that life which exists throughout humanity. But this beauty which "lies about us in our infancy" becomes obscured; "shades of the prison house, begin to close about the growing boy . . . at last the man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day."
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The Future - John Nicholson - 01-03-2009
[SIZE="5"]Dyslexia Studies Catch Neuroplasticity at Work
By Tom Valeo
About Tom Valeo
November 01, 2008
[COLOR="Red"]Researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, have detected which parts of the brain become stronger as children with dyslexia develop their ability to read. As reported in the journal Neuropsychologia, follow-up scans one year after the children received 100 hours of remedial reading from teachers showed that this increase in activation continued, reaching normal levels in the left parietal lobe.
These fMRI scans reveal the vigor of neuroplasticity, the process by which neurons create new connections among themselves.
“What we demonstrate is that we can change the way the brain works,†says Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon, who conducted the research. “The study shows that we can make a brain area more active through remedial training.â€
New connections among neurons preserve memories and make learning possible, but they also fortify brain functions. Research has shown that a pianist, for example, through practice, develops neural pathways in the motor cortex that make subtle finger movements possible. Blind people who read Braille actually expand the region of the somatosensory cortex devoted to processing input from their reading finger.
And children with dyslexia, according to Just’s findings, can strengthen connections in parts of the brain that enhance their ability to read. Teachers have long recognized that children with dyslexia can improve their reading ability, but imaging is just beginning to provide evidence of the changes in the brain that make this possible.[/COLOR]Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, along with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, performed fMRI scans on 22 children with dyslexia and 23 normal readers, all about 10 years old, while they listened to typical speech sounds. She found that normal readers showed activation in the frontal lobe in response to rapid changes of sound, while children with dyslexia did not.
“We are currently using fMRI to look for neural pre-markers for reading,†Gaab says. “We hope we will be able to identify these markers prior to the onset of reading in order to identify children at risk.â€
[COLOR="Blue"]Gaab’s findings support research conducted by Paula Tallal, who, more than 35 years ago, identified dyslexia as a problem involving the processing of speech sounds.
“When you start to read, you have to learn how to go inside of a word and recognize smaller, faster units of sound,†says Tallal, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at Rutgers University.[/COLOR]Sally Shaywitz, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention, has used fMRI to compare brain activity in dyslexic children and in normal readers while they sound out nonsense words such as “jeat†and “lete.†The large differences she found constitute what she calls a “neurological signature†for dyslexia.
For example, she found that normal readers displayed greater activity on the left side of the brain, especially the parieto-temporal region—the same region that got stronger in the students Just studied after they worked with remedial reading teachers.
But dyslexia is not a problem confined to a single area of the brain, and explanations of the disorder implicate several brain functions.
In the 19th century, dyslexia was known as “word blindness,†a phrase that suggests visual difficulties as the cause. A small percentage of children with dyslexia do have problems seeing words. Deaf children with the disorder, for example, cannot hear phonemes—the one-syllable sounds that make up spoken words—which are believed to confuse dyslexic children with normal hearing, so their reading difficulties must be visual. And in 1982 physiologist John Stein of Oxford found that some children with dyslexia have trouble focusing on words and scanning text smoothly. Some researchers also suspect problems in the cerebellum, which might help explain the balance and coordination difficulties of some children with dyslexia.
But a rapidly growing body of research suggests that the vast majority of children with dyslexia have trouble distinguishing among phonemes. They may have trouble hearing the difference between “ba†and “pa,†for example, or “mif†and “tif.†While they can say “cat,†they may have trouble distinguishing the three phonemes that make up the word: “kuh,†“aah,†and “tuh.â€
As a result, children with dyslexia have trouble with the fundamental task of reading, which involves translating letters on the page into phonemes and then building those phonemes into words.
Tallal has applied this hypothesis to develop effective, computer-based remedial reading programs. She also would like to see neuroplasticity used to improve memory, attention, processing speed and sequencing skills, which are vital to all learning.
“In our schools we’ve focused on improving the curriculum, the teachers and the medications we give children, but we’ve never focused on improving the brain the child brings to the classroom,†Tallal says. “That brain can be modified.â€
And those modifications are not limited to children.
Ways of Changing the Brain
Not so long ago, scientists viewed the brain as a form of concrete—soft and easily shaped in youth, but gradually hardening over the years into a rigid organ highly resistant to change.
A child’s brain certainly displays vigorous neuroplasticity. For example, children can absorb a foreign language far more easily than adults, and they can speak it without an accent if they start speaking it before their late teens.
But scientists now recognize that the brain remains surprisingly plastic and resilient throughout life, which creates opportunities for adults to make positive changes in their neural connections through focused attention and practice.
“Neurology, psychology, speech therapy, education, sports, music—all of these domains will be improved as we apply the laws of neuroplasticity,†says Norman Doidge, a faculty member at Columbia University’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry, and author of The Brain That Changes Itself.
Doidge presents many examples in his book of how neuroplasticity can change brain function dramatically. He interviews Edward Taub, for example, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Alabama who developed constraint-induced movement therapy to help stroke patients regain the use of a paralyzed arm. In the late 1970s Taub noticed that monkeys who lost sensation in one arm would stop using it unless their other arm was constrained. Then they would start using the numb arm again. The same technique, when applied to stroke patients, spurs their brains to “rewire†themselves and restore at least some function to the paralyzed arm.
Doidge also tells of a woman whose sense of balance was destroyed by an antibiotic, making it almost impossible for her to walk. She regained her balance, however, with the help of the late University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita, who devised a helmet that sent signals about the orientation of her head to a device on her tongue. By learning to keep the signals centered on her tongue, the woman trained her brain to recognize when her head was upright.
Until now, the evidence attributing such dramatic changes to neuroplasticity has been largely circumstantial, but fMRI is producing vivid images that show neuroplasticity in action. In 2005, for example, Swedish investigators used diffusion tensor imaging—a variation of fMRI done with the same equipment—to demonstrate distinct brain changes caused by extensive piano practice.
And Just plans to investigate further the type of brain changes he observed in the dyslexic children he studied. He believes fMRI evidence of neuroplasticity can be used to diagnose dyslexia and other brain problems, and to test proposed therapies.
“We can use fMRI to evaluate educational approaches and see which ones are getting us to the desired brain end state,†says Just. “There were these endless phonics wars, for example. It was like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Now, with fMRI, you can see which methods work best. Plus you can see what kinds of problems with reading children are having, which would provide a better idea of how to remediate.â€[/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 01-03-2009
[SIZE="4"][SIZE="4"][/SIZE]GR8 news for worried parents: frequent use of text abbreviations does not harm children's literacy - and may even improve it.
Concerns have been raised that an explosion in the use of "textisms" like "CUL8R" and "wot u doin 2nite?" could be damaging children's reading and spelling ability. To investigate, Beverly Plester and her colleagues at Coventry University in the UK asked 88 children aged 10 to 12 to write text messages describing 10 different scenarios. When they compared the number of textisms used to a separate study of the children's reading ability, they found that those who used more textisms were better readers (British Journal of Developmental Psychology, DOI: 10.1348/026151008X320507).
But do textisms improve literacy, or do better readers use more textisms? The preliminary results of a follow-up study seem to suggest the former, Plester says. She believes that this is because textisms are phonetically based: "Phonological awareness has long been associated with good reading skills." Exposure to the written word in any form is also linked to improved literacy. "These kids are engaging with more written language and they're doing it for fun."[/SIZE]
The Future - rajagiri - 03-06-2009
thanks for your info
The Future - John Nicholson - 19-09-2009
[SIZE="5"]FARMERS BRAIN COnt
First let me apologise to any one I may have appeared to be rude to, already done or in the future, I have no wish to waste any time with any one arguing about which direction to harrow the field. I am only concerned with harrowing the field.
Before all else I consider my self to be a farmer without a farm, a business man without a business, a futurist without much of a future, time is precious to me, I am concerned only with ideas and the widespread sharing of useful knowledge, so spelin is the last thing I want waste time on, or pedantic argument about anything.
RULES I CONSIDER TO BE only something for an idiot to follow, the human race is drowning, it has to regain its common sense and unity of purpose, from the research paper directly above this or Basil we can see the creation of oxygen itself was an accident, just like everything else that has happened to us poor sods walking on two legs from disaster to disaster.
Ok I believe we all share a powerful brain honed by time to insure or ensure our human future. Farmers are at the cutting edge of human future, British farmers are at the cutting edge of Britain’s future, I believe that in combination they have the right to chose their own leader, and not a leader chosen by select committee chaired by Charlie boy, or any one else for that matter, we the British have fought our way out of half the countries in the world, proud as we all are of our past and our traditions including our useful bonnie prince, we have to abide by some manner of democracy in the choice of our leaders both nationally and agriculturally.
Common sense tells me that the man that captured any idea within words has a natural right to it and once published he or she is only too happy to see his or her ideas disseminated to the widest possible audience.
I see a much stronger argument to human ideas, they are only in the main extensions of other human ideas the continuing evolution of human thought the property of every one.
At this point I shall be precise, every child born has the human right to be taught as quickly as possible to read write and count , in the reverse order to that for practical reasons, mathematics being a universal well simplified by human effort nonborn with ability we can acquire quite easily from our parents when they fully understand the importance of it, and also share those common abilities,
[SIZE="7"]
[COLOR="DarkRed"]Which they will never do until the thick
b-------s
concerned with British Education get the message loud and clear.[/COLOR]
[/SIZE]b-------s
concerned with British Education get the message loud and clear.[/COLOR]
Now you know the problem please help me to redress it.[/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 19-09-2009
A HISTORY LESSON AND AN ASSUMPTION.
[SIZE="5"]Humans might not be walking the face of the Earth were it not for the ancient fusing of two prokaryotes — tiny life forms that do not have a cellular nucleus. UCLA molecular biologist James A. Lake reports important new insights about prokaryotes and the evolution of life in the Aug. 20 advance online edition of the journal Nature.
Endosymbiosis refers to a cell living within another cell. If the cells live together long enough, they will exchange genes; they merge but often keep their own cell membranes and sometimes their own genomes.
Lake has discovered the first exclusively prokaryote endosymbiosis. All other known endosymbioses have involved a eukaryote — a cell that contains a nucleus. Eukaryotes are found in all multicellular forms of life, including humans, animals and plants.
"This relationship resulted in a totally different type of life on Earth," said Lake, a UCLA distinguished professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology and of human genetics. "We thought eukaryotes always needed to be present to do it, but we were wrong."
In the Nature paper, Lake reports that two groups of prokaryotes — actinobacteria and clostridia — came together and produced "double-membrane" prokaryotes.
"Higher life would not have happened without this event," Lake said. "These are very important organisms. At the time these two early prokaryotes were evolving, there was no oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Humans could not live. No oxygen-breathing organisms could live."
The oxygen on the Earth is the result of a subgroup of these double-membrane prokaryotes, Lake said. This subgroup, the cyanobacteria, used the sun's energy to produce oxygen through photosynthesis. They have been tremendously productive, pumping oxygen into the atmosphere; we could not breathe without them. In addition, the double-membrane prokaryotic fusion supplied the mitochondria that are present in every human cell, he said.
"This work is a major advance in our understanding of how a group of organisms came to be that learned to harness the sun and then effected the greatest environmental change the Earth has ever seen, in this case with beneficial results," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., which co-funded the study with the National Science Foundation.
"Along came these organisms — the double-membrane prokaryotes — that could use sunlight," Lake said. "They captured this vast energy resource. They were so successful that they have more genetic diversity in them than all other prokaryotes.
"We have a flow of genes from two different organisms, clostridia and actinobacteria, together," he said. "Because the group into which they are flowing has two membranes, we hypothesize that that was an endosymbiosis that resulted in a double membrane. It looks as if a single-membrane organism has engulfed another. The genomes are telling us that the double-membrane prokaryotes combine sets of genes from the two different organisms."
For this study, Lake has looked back more than 2.5 billion years. He conducted an analysis of the genomics of the five groups of prokaryotes.
Lake is interested in learning how every organism is related.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
[COLOR="Red"][SIZE="6"]A VITAL PASSAGE
"WE ALL ARE INTERESTED IN OUR ANCESTORS," HE SAID. "A FRIEND AT UC BERKELEY, ALAN WILSON, WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO COLLECT DNA FROM LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD. HE SHOWED THAT WE ARE ALL RELATED TO A WOMAN WHO LIVED IN AFRICA 200,000 YEARS AGO. SOME IN THE MEDIA CALLED HER EVE. HE CALLED HER THE LUCKY MOTHER, THE MOTHER OF US ALL. [/SIZE][/COLOR]_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"In our field, we have enormous amounts of data but cannot make sense of it all. Endosymbiosis allows us to start to understanding things; it tells us that many genes are exchanged.
"We have been overlooking how important cooperation is," Lake said. "If two prokaryotes get together, they can change the world. They restructured the atmosphere of the Earth. It's a message that evolution is giving us: Cooperation is a way to get ahead."
Actinobacteria have an unusual DNA composition, with a very high amount of "G" and "C" nucleotides — chemicals whose patterns carry the data required for constructing proteins. Nucleotides are designated by the letters G (guanine), C (cytosine), A (adenine) and T (thymine); the sequence of nucleotides serves as a chemical code.
Some actinobacteria are pathogens, including ones that cause tuberculosis and leprosy. Some clostridia can photosynthesize, which no other single-membrane prokaryote does. Photosynthesis may have been developed in clostridia.
Double-membrane prokaryotes include the pathogens that cause ulcers, as well as the organisms that led to the creation of the chloroplasts that are in all green plants and which make plant growth possible.
[SIZE="5"][COLOR="red"]{CONSIDER THAT WE MUST HAVE AN AVERAGE OF FIVE GENERATIONS EVERY HUNDRED YEARS (NO BIRTH CONTROL) TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS TIMES FIVE GIVES US ONE MILLION GENERATIONS. I READ THAT, AS RESULTING IN EVERY HUMAN CHILD BORN IN NORMAL HEALTH AS HAVING OUR SPECIES POWERFUL HUMAN BRAIN.
WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT EVERY ONE OF US, APART FROM THE OBVIOUS PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES HAS TO BE OUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. GIVEN THAT WE ARE CAPABLE OF DOING EVERYTHING WE SEE OTHERS DOING, SHOULD WE HAVE THEIR DETERMINATION AND EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND WHAT LIMITS HAVE WE ON WHAT WE CAN ACHIEVE.
MY BELIEF IS THAT GIVEN A BROAD CONCENTRATED EARLY EDUCATION STARTING WITH COUNTING AND READING PERFECTION, BEING TAUGHT TO PLAY CHESS, TABLE TENNIS, PLAYING THE PIANO, LEARNING TO TYPE, TAUGHT TO DRAW AND PAINT AND WRITE WELL, WE CAN LOOK FORWARDS TO BEING TAUGHT CONSISTENTLY THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES WITHOUT SPENDING YEARS IN SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES SIMPLY BY LEARNING THE PRACTICAL SKILLS WE ALL NEED TO SURVIVE WITH. GROWING AND COOKING OUR OWN FOOD, DESIGNING AND BUILDING OUR OWN HOUSES, DOING EVER PRACTICAL THING WE CAN DO FOR OURSELVES. LEARNING SIMPLY BY DOING SOMETHING, SITUATIONS SIMILAR TO HOW EVERY PRACTICAL FARMER FINALLY LEARNS HIS OR HER TRADE. JN }[/COLOR][/SIZE] [/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 22-10-2009
[SIZE="5"]In Frames of Mind, Howard Gardner presents the theory that there is no general "intelligence" of the kind purported to be measured by IQ tests. Instead, the human mind is organized around several distinct functional capacities, which he calls "intelligences." Using an elaborate set of criteria, he identifies the seven intelligences listed in Table 1. Though these intelligences overlap with the two-brain theory that distinguishes the functions of left and right hemispheres, Gardner sets aside the two-brain model in order to investigate thinking at a deeper level of complexity. Each intelligence combines elements that may have evolved separately. Though certain functions are highly localized in the brain and can be eliminated by brain damage to that site, the intelligences are surprisingly flexible and can make use of various senses, parts of the brain, and chance opportunities. (Even the blind can develop spatial intelligence.) The intelligences follow characteristic patterns of development in childhood, yet those patterns are diverse enough to prohibit one from prescribing a set pathway by which children should develop. While these intelligences appear in cultures all over the world, different cultures value them differently. Each of the seven intelligences is relatively independent of the others, but they do not often appear separate, because they usually work together and may be understood as separate only after observing many instances of their combined effort.
Gardner suggests how several different intelligences might work together in a concert violinist. In addition to the obvious musicial ability, she will display kinesthetic skills in fingering and bow movement; interpersonal intelligence in communicating with an audience; intrapersonal intelligence in feeling the emotions of the music; logical-mathetmatical skills in analyzing musical structure, planning performances, and making a profit; and so on (xii).
Table 2 summarizes this paper by extrapolating the seven intelligences to suggest how they might manifest in a writer. The framework sketched in Table 2 also suggests a new way to consider a piece of writing or a student writer: Where are the writer's strengths and weaknesses in terms of this model? Research questions arise: Can the stimulation of one intelligence, such as kinesthetic awareness, produce predictable changes in writing style? Will the stimulation of one modality of one intelligence (such as the visual aspect of the spatial intelligence) stimulate other modalities of the same intelligence (the metaphoric aspect of the spatial intelligence)? Flower and Hayes' model of writing suggests how complex the interactions may be between mental functions. What are the interrelationships between the different intelligences during writing--say, between verbal and spatial thought?
Gardner's model is not a unified field theory of mind. It does not attempt to account for some important factors --such as motivation, attention, creativity, inspiration, practical intelligence, and persistence. But Frames of Mind is one of the central texts in the nature of human diversity. It is an intellectual adventure--wide-ranging, deeply thought, and dazzlingly speculative. While conveying a tightly-defined core of concepts, it radiates out into the forefront of many fields of knowledge. Self, others, symbol, brain, and culture blend with a remarkable harmony in this theory. It is a view that honors "innate intellectual proclivities," individual differences, the crucial role of tools and symbol systems, the social nature of knowledge, and the way cultures shape the minds that shape culture.
The lesson of Gardner's book (and of this article) is that people are smart in many different and often surprising ways, and that some of those ways are rarely recognized in our system of schooling. The framework presented by the theory of multiple intelligences can bring new ideas to the writing classroom, and it can add theoretical depth to some existing pedagogical practices. Conversely, a writing classroom can be used as a forum in which students discover multiple intelligences at work in themselves and in others. [SIZE="6"]With a theory such as Gardner's, we might be more able to see beyond the limits of current theories of human ability to find other forms of intelligence permeating all human activities.[/[/SIZE]SIZE]
[SIZE="5"][SIZE="5"][COLOR="DarkRed"]I WILL WRITE MY OWN OBSERVATIONS IN CAPITALS AND OTHER RELEVANT ARTICLES IN OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVES.
PREVIOUSLY I HAVE USED THESE PAGES TO DEVELOP MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF THE HUMAN MIND
BUT MY TIME IS SHORTER NOW I AM NEARLY SEVENTY AND I HAVE LEARNT ALL I NEED TO ARGUE EFFECTIVELY FOR CHANGES IN EARLY EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE.
I WILL NEVER CEASE TRYING TO DEVELOP MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF THE HUMAN MIND.
BUT THE TIME FOR ME SPEAK ABOUT THE OBVIOUS USE OF COMMON SENSE HAS ARRIVED AND FROM NOW ON
I SHALL RELY MORE ON THE WORDS OF THE WORLD’S PHILOSOPHERS THAN ANYTHING ELSE.
John Nicholson[/COLOR][/SIZE][/SIZE]
The Future - John Nicholson - 27-11-2009
[SIZE="6"]THE NATURAL HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE
There is an acceptance of Howard Gardner’s seven separate concepts in intelligence, but I want to explore the links within these seven intelligences, considering the effects of natural development on those seven concepts on each other, and of course the possibilities of critical enhancement, when we intervene by teaching, especially when we create that education, to best enhance these natural human concepts.
“Once this broader and more pragmatic perspective was taken, the concept of intelligence began to lose its mystique and became a functional concept that could be seen working in people's lives in a variety of ways. Gardner grouped these capabilities into seven comprehensive categories or "intelligences":
• Linguistic Intelligence: The capacity to use words effectively, whether orally (e.g., as a storyteller, orator, or politician) or in writing (e.g., as a poet, playwright, editor, or journalist).
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: The capacity to use numbers effectively (e.g., as a mathematician, tax accountant, or statistician) and to reason well (e.g., as a scientist, computer programmer, or logician).
• Spatial Intelligence: The ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately (e.g., as a hunter, scout, or guide) and to perform transformations upon those perceptions (e.g., as an interior decorator, architect, artist, or inventor).
• Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence: Expertise in using one's whole body to express ideas and feelings (e.g., as an actor, a mime, an athlete, or a dancer) and facility in using one's hands to produce or transform things (e.g., as a craftsperson, sculptor, mechanic, or surgeon).
• Musical Intelligence: The capacity to perceive (e.g., as a music aficionado), discriminate (e.g., as a music critic), transform (e.g., as a composer), and express (e.g., as a performer) musical forms.
• Interpersonal Intelligence: The ability to perceive and make distinctions in the moods, intentions, motivations, and feelings of other people.
• Intrapersonal Intelligence: Self-knowledge and the ability to act adaptively on the basis of that knowledge.
When Howard Gardner wrote Frames of Mind in 1983, he deliberately limited his examination of human capacities to seven intelligences. Are there more? Yes. In fact, after this book was published Gardner added an eighth intelligence to the list. The Naturalist Intelligence is the ability to recognize plant or animal species in one's environment. As an example why do we recognize plant and animal species in our own environment, a ten year old child would be able to name large numbers of plants and animals without ever having a formal lesson regarding them, it is a natural part of normal human intelligence, to be aware of everything in ones environment part and parcel of the ninety nine % of what we learn naturally.
SO LET US EXAMINE NATURAL INTELIGENCE
• Linguistic Intelligence: The capacity to use words effectively, whether orally (e.g., as a storyteller, orator, or politician) or in writing (e.g., as a poet, playwright, editor, or journalist).
Looking at each intelligence on an individual basis, exploring the natural effect on other intelligences and what can be our most effective human intervention (teaching) to enhance the concept itself, and even more important the effect of that enhancement on the six other concepts.
First of all we look at how language develops naturally, we adopt the language of those around us, proven easily by our individual language and the local accent we use, individual family and schools may enhance our childhood language, the type of job we take will have a natural effect on our language development. Every child in every country copies the sound it hears in its daily life quite naturally, no formal teaching is required in order teach a child to speak.
These are the natural effects on language, what can education provide to enhance language ability, first of all effective reading ability at an early age will develop our contact with words, expanding our vocabulary and our ability to read widely, developing our understanding everything we read.
“I consider fast logical teaching of reading our first education priorityâ€
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: The capacity to use numbers effectively (e.g., as a mathematician, tax accountant, or statistician) and to reason well (e.g., as a scientist, computer programmer, or logician).
What part has our linguistic intelligence to play in mathematics, obviously without the ability to use and understand words understanding the process’s in mathematics is impossible.
Conversely what part as mathematics to play on linguistics, my personal view is that early mathematics is the most vital intervention within teaching, essential as a starting point for reading, early mathematical awareness builds neural pathways essential in reading development . Once the child understands every aspect of ten, which is quickly achieved in spatial terms by using an abacus. (natural spatial memory) ( ten single marks have thirty three separate patterns.)
Spatial Intelligence: The ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately (e.g., as a hunter, scout, or guide) and to perform transformations upon those perceptions (e.g., as an interior decorator, architect, artist, or inventor). Natural spatial awareness combined with the knowledge of the columns we use in numeric symbol arrangements provide us with the easily understood concepts in describing numbers in words.
The simple arrangement of numeric patterns are easily converted into meaning by use of only thirty words, the brain can understand the meaning of any number by language; it is therefore inherent that language development is interrelated with logical numeric awareness.
Where Asian and abacus educated Europeans are using language to describe and think numerically, spatial control areas of the brain are fired up, clearly visible in research on brain activity experiments, as opposed to Europeans with none spatial understand of numbers who consider numbers within the normal brain activity areas utilized for the usual word decoding, in normal reading thinking and conversation.
HOW WE TEACH THE BRAIN
Howard Gardner has identified seven natural concepts in human intelligence, Reading and Mathematics are unnatural skills, essential in further intelligence development of the natural combinations of these differing aspects in human intelligence, which we combine naturally in considering anything and everything.
Firstly we have to be aware of these natural human intelligences, and then we have to understand how they interlink in natural thought.
We human beings, are empowered with the most incredible working tool the human brain, millions of years of evolution have perfected our human potential. My personal belief is that the concept of measuring that potential is impossible, I believe that the normal human mind is very rarely stretched but without a basic concept of numbers established perfectly at the earliest possible time in every Childs life, we are inhibiting their potential, it is easily achieved and vital in building neural pathways in reading development.
Visual understanding is our greatest gift it allows us to keep ourselves safe in the most part quite naturally.
Reading however, gives us the most potential to develop the human mind in understanding every human activity we can consider.
Why? Simply because it mimics human communication, LANGUAGE
The value of individual Knowledge.
Collective intelligence carried out in a democratic manner may save the Human Race, nothing else is worth considering. Our evolutionary characteristics leave us with nationalism as our strongest instinct, working to protect the Tribe has kept us safe in the past, but the concept of the tribe has to be expanded to include all Nations.
It is simply the human race against Natural Adversity.[/SIZE]