Is Technology Producing A Decline In Critical Thinking And Analysis?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128092341.htm

816 discussion

ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2009) —

12 Surprising And Productive Brain Exercises - The Huffington Post

12 interesting exercises from writer/editor Dorothea Brande, who also wrote a book called "Wake Up and Live."

devthought

Which one are you? I'm probably a 3

A look at some of the flawed thinking that prompts people who believe in certain non-scientific concepts to advise others who don't to be more open-minded. music © QualiaSoup Category: Education Tags: open-mindedness pseudoscience paranormal supernatural contradiction anecdotal evidence prejudice close-mindedness fallacious thinking

A look at some of the flawed thinking that prompts people who believe in certain non-scientific concepts to advise others who don't to be more open-minded.

you matter

Kevin Marks, 14 Aug 2009. Flow, faces, phatic, following, publics, mutual media, small-world networks. "The subtlety is that the publics are semi-overlapping ... we are the synapses in the global brain of the web of thought and conversation."

It is said that an economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders whether it works in theory. Twitter clearly works in practice - and if you want practical advice, watch Laura Fitton's Tech talk at Google, or read her Twitter for Dummies. I've learned a lot from talking to her and others about this phenomenon, and I wanted to write about some theories that help me understand it.

It is said that an economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders whether it works in theory. "Twitter clearly works in practice - and if you want practical advice, watch Laura Fitton's Tech talk at Google, or read her Twitter for Dummies. I've learned a lot from talking to her and others about this phenomenon, and I wanted to write about some theories that help me understand it."

At its heart Twitter is a flow - it doesn't present an unread count of messages, just a list of recent ones, so you don't have email's inbox problem - the implicit pressure to turn bold things plain and get that unread number down. Instead, you can dip in and out of it, when you have time, and what you see is notes from people you care about.

It is said that an economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders whether it works in theory. "Twitter clearly works in practice - and if you want practical advice, watch Laura Fitton's Tech talk at Google, or read her Twitter for Dummies. I've learned a lot from talking to her and others about this phenomenon, and I wanted to write about some theories that help me understand it."

Unfortunately, this isn’t a great model. Mostly because it’s based on the idea that there is a small group of people in authority, who will tell you what to do and what you need to know, and you must follow this obediently, like robots. And you must not think for yourself, or try to do what you want to do. This will be met with severe punishment.

"Time taken to process an n-word sentence is proportional to n^3, or more." :)

How to improve writing, thinking and learning.

Una presentación en PDF para organizar mejor el texto escrito y a partir de ahí optimizar las ideas y los modelos de aprendizaje. En inglés.

Seneca, a Spanish-born philosopher of Rome who lived in the first century A.D., was one of the prominent sages of the Stoic school. He's chiefly remembered today for his Moral Essays, a collection of twelve articles on various ethical themes. "On The Shortness Of Life" is an essay addressed to a friend, and it is excerpted and condensed here from Moses Hadas' fine work, The Stoic Philosophy Of Seneca.

True.

"...I decided to ask some of today’s most exciting artists and creators what they do when the ideas aren’t flowing. I left the question fairly open ended and asked, What do you do to inspire your creativity when you find yourself in a rut? As expected, I was presented with an array of strategies, ranging from listening to Boards of Canada in a forest alone, to cooking up a storm (recipe provided) and waiting for the mind to clear."

Should journalists learn to code?

What’s really important is to not understand how to do magical things with code, but to learn what magical things are possible, what the necessary inputs for that magic are, and who to ask to do it. Identify the repetitive tasks that computers are good at. Yes, they’re good at find-and-replace, but tools like regular expressions are even handier, and I’m amazed how few people understand that find-and-replace is the beginning, not the end, of text processing. (And yes, I’m aware that regex are a quick way to give yourself two problems.)

Useful advise to anyone looking to work with online tools. I can't write a computer program but my understanding of the fundamentals has helped me no end.

"It requires you to learn to translate intent into code, to know what’s possible, to know what’s easy and what’s hard, and to know what to do when third-party things you’re glueing together don’t work." "Computers are really good at processing regular data, and they are really, really good at repetitive tasks. Every time I watched someone in an office doing a repetitive, regular task I despaired, because that’s exactly the kind of thing we have computers for." "…nowadays, computers are a sort of primary source too. You’ve got to learn to interrogate them effectively - and quote them meaningfully - too." A sibling suggestion would be ‘Learn to explore inquisitively’. One of the reasons only 20% of an application’s functionality is used by the majority of users is that their major motivation when they start using an application is ‘How do I do [x] in [y]?’, as opposed ‘What [x]s can [y] do for me?’

What’s really important is to not understand how to do magical things with code, but to learn what magical things are possible, what the necessary inputs for that magic are, and who to ask to do it.

The more I talk to academics, the more I echo the following sentiment: "I remain convinced there’s an interesting book on “doing smart stuff with computers that isn’t quite programming but isn’t far off”, because let’s face it, most people deal with data all the time now, and have the ideal tool for working with it on their desks."

How to Define a Problem http://www.wikihow.com/Define-a-Problem – proyectoweb (proyectoweb) http://twitter.com/proyectoweb/statuses/7716955899

brief guide to problem solving (Polya based)

SuperThinkers is a fun and challenging site targeted for learners in grades 5 through 8, but also fun for learners of all levels. Our mission is to inspire creative problem solving, critical thinking, deductive reasoning, and logic. We call this kind of deeper thinking - "SuperThinking."

Has a feature game regularly to get kids thinking

FOR CLASS (KEN's). Downloadable school template stuff, alphabet letters and graphics/geography things/etc

A wonderful site for free tools for teachers, librarians, and administrators.

ひとつひとつのピースは決まった形ではない無機物と捉えて、以下のように改めて定義しなおします 各ピースをつなげる前に、 そのピースの裏の面、 良い面と悪い面、 360度回転させて見たり、 遠くから第3者、第4者になったつもりで見たり、 ときにはそのピースからさらにマインドマップを細分化派生させます。

「アイデアというのは 　複数の問題を一気に解決するものである」

自分なりの理解でまとめると、点と点から面と面で捉えられるかだと思う。一つしか解決できないってのら点でしか捉えられてないんだ。

Sleeping on a problem really can help solve it, say scientists who found a dreamy nap boosts creative powers. They tested whether "incubating" a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep known as REM. [Excerpt, click on the link to read the rest of this article.]

Sleeping on a problem really can help solve it, say scientists who found a dreamy nap boosts creative powers. They tested whether "incubating" a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep known as REM. Volunteers who had entered REM or rapid eye movement sleep - when most dreams occur - were then better able to solve a new problem with lateral thinking.

We propose that REM sleep is important for assimilating new information into past experience to create a richer network of associations for future use. They tested whether "incubating" a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep called REM sleep.

The study at the University of California San Diego showed that the volunteers who entered REM during sleep improved their creative problem solving ability by almost 40%.

"We found that, for creative problems you've already been working on, the passage of time is enough to find solutions. "However for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity."

自分もこうなってる気がする…

もうそのネタだけで記事1本いけるよ。我々は新しいもの買うとまるでそれを持ってることが勝ち組の証でもあるかのように人に見せびらかす生き物なのだ。なぜ？　僕はiPad作ったわけでもない。ただ買っただけなのに）

僕がiPadを返品した理由：Why I Returned My iPad - HBR http://dlvr.it/1qwbh

その通り。悪いのは自分。これは自分の問題なのだ。そばにあると、つい使わずにいられない。しかも不幸なことに、あれはいつもそばにいる。だから返した。／退屈な時間から創造性は生まれる。納得。

Does language profoundly influence the way people see the world? http://bit.ly/cAtxU8 (via @SteveAkinsSEO @lindahollier)

This is an interesting article describing the differences of understanding in different languages.

Language is a uniquely human gift. When we study language, we are uncovering in part what makes us human, getting a peek at the very nature of human nature. As we uncover how languages and their speakers differ from one another, we discover that human natures too can differ dramatically, depending on the languages we speak. The next steps are to understand the mechanisms through which languages help us construct the incredibly complex knowledge systems we have. Understanding how knowledge is built will allow us to create ideas that go beyond the currently thinkable. This research cuts right to the fundamental questions we all ask about ourselves. How do we come to be the way we are? Why do we think the way we do? An important part of the answer, it turns out, is in the languages we speak.

Add: http://bit.ly/aRLx4F @nedkumar: ..how language influences the way people see the world. Lost in Translation http://bit.ly/ba7GUV

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1543871