Fan Vids

If you look at youtube you will find fanvids music videos on a theme. Just about every fandom has them. I just made my own. If you would like to see it it is located hereMy Fanvid

1 yes comments would be appreciated

2. what are your thoughts on fan vids in general.

I won

For those of you here present I won a Stargate fan-fiction contest. I don't get anything out of it but I feel fairly special!!!

DFor those of you who want to know more; a link will be posted later (when laptop's battery isn't dying.)

Real-life Examples May Not Be Best For Teaching Math

Real-life examples may not be best for teaching maths

You may think the sign of a good teacher lies in their ability to provide engaging real life examples for abstract concepts. But a new study by Jennifer Kaminski and colleagues at Ohio State University, suggests that when it comes to maths, it's probably best to keep things abstract.

Students were taught the rules governing mathematical relations between three items in a group. All students were able to learn these, but crucially only those taught using abstract symbols were able to transfer what they'd learned to a novel, real-life situation. Students taught with the metaphorical aid of water jugs, slices of pizza or tennis balls in a container, were unable to transfer what they'd learned.

Another experiment compared the effectiveness of a purely abstract teaching approach with an approach that provided concrete examples first, followed by an abstract illustration. Students in the purely abstract condition outperformed their peers who were given the concrete/abstract mix.

Kaminski's team said that although concrete examples might be more engaging, it seems they may also constrain students' ability to transfer relevant knowledge to a different situation.

The researchers concluded: "If a goal of teaching mathematics is to produce knowledge that students can apply to multiple situations, then presenting mathematical concepts through generic instantiations, such as traditional symbolic notation, may be more effective than a series of 'good examples'."
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Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchKaminski, J.A., Sloutsky, V.M., Heckler, A.F. (2008). LEARNING THEORY: The Advantage of Abstract Examples in Learning Math. Science, 320(5875), 454-455. DOI: 10.1126/science.1154659

The Boy Who Thought 9/11 Was His Fault

The boy who thought 9/11 was his fault

Researchers in London have documented the case of a ten-year-old boy with Tourette's syndrome and obsessive compulsive symptoms, who believed the terror attacks of 9/11 occurred because he had failed to complete one of his daily rituals.

Mary Robertson and Andrea Cavanna claim this is the first ever case reported in the literature of a person believing they were responsible for causing a major disaster of the proportion experienced in America in 2001.

The boy - described as "extremely pleasant and likeable" and with good school grades - was first referred for consultation a year before 9/11 took place. As is characteristic of people with Tourette's syndrome, the boy displayed several forms of uncontrollable tics, including excessive blinking and vocal outbursts, and he also showed obsessive tendencies and attentional problems.

Robertson next saw the boy two weeks after 9/11, at which point he was in a terrible state - "tortured", as he put it, by his tics, and wracked with guilt, believing that 9/11 occurred because he had failed to walk on a particular white mark on a road.

This was just one of the many rituals the boy had developed during the course of the year. Others included so-called "dangerous touching" rituals, including the need to feel the blade of knives to check their sharpness, and to put his hand in the steam of a kettle to check its heat.

Importantly, the researchers said the boy's beliefs about 9/11 were distinct from the kind of delusions expressed by people with psychosis, and instead reflected an extreme form of the anxiety that people with obsessive compulsive disorder often experience when they fail to complete their rituals.

Fortunately, a mixture of drug treatments and reassurance (including explaining to the boy that his missed ritual actually occurred after 9/11, given the time difference between the USA and UK), led to him realising that he was not responsible for the attacks.

Robertson and Cavanna said this case study brings attention to the way our modern media - "immediate, realistic, and evocative" - can lead to terrorist attacks and other disasters having harmful effects on vulnerable people miles away from the immediate environment of what happened. "Only time will reveal the many further psychosocial sequelae of 9/11, as well as the Madrid and London terrorist bombings," they said.
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Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchRobertson, M., Cavanna, A. (2008). The Disaster was my Fault!. Neurocase DOI: 10.1080/13554790802001395

What Did You Want To Be?

Well what did you want to be as a child?

AND

What did you become, if you can't give the title you hold, just the loose feild you work in.

As a child I wanted to be a...

Singer
Actress
Singer
Astronaut
writer

What did I become

a semi perpetual student ... so it feels. But I am working on the writing!

Next!