Prepping for Performance

This just in from the Boston.com (the Boston Globe online):

Overcoming performance anxiety: get excited

Harvard study shows mind-body connection.

Happy Holidays!

Exercise and Memory

Yes, I do remember this tournament!

Just a brief news flash.

The number of news items about the positive effects of exercise (and, perhaps by extension, movement) on brain function has been growing.

Today the BBC News released this story:
Exercise 'significant role' in reducing risk of dementia, long-term study finds

Earlier this year, the New York Times online posted this piece: 
Getting a Brain Boost Through Exercise

Some days I feel much more mentally functional after I fence.
Except, of course, last night -- when I fell asleep on the couch after coaching!

Perhaps because I had stopped moving and was being a "coach potato"?

Well, you can try this experiment at home, courtesy of the PBS Kids program DragonflyTV:
Exercise and Memory

Feel free to post other links to this topic!

Toys in Everyday Science Exhibit

exhibit_illustration-by-tadashi-tokieda

In Radcliffe Yard at Harvard (Cambridge, MA), there is an exhibit by Tadashi Tokieda on Toys in Everyday Science.

It looks like fun!

This evening, as part of the Radcliffe Open Yard event, students will be staffing the exhibit.

To help people play with the toys in science.

Tadashi Tokieda is the 2013–2014 William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellow, Radcliffe Institute and is spending the year hanging out and helping people understand how science (and mathematics) works.


His learning history is fascinating, and a good example to those outside the academy!

Speaking of the academy, I am saddened to report that this exhibit is not list of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture website.

Nor is there any connection to museum education methodology mentioned on the Radcliffe Institute website.

This is ironic, as what Tokieda essentially is doing the work of museum educators.

For example, look at past and current exhibits developed at museums.

Try the Exploratorium's Geometry Playground, the Acton Discovery Museums' Hands On Science, the Boston Children's Museum Science Interactives, the Museum of Science's Investigation Station, or others....

Museum educators spend a lot of time, creativity, and joy developing hands on demonstrations of scientific and mathematic principals so others can learn by doing.

It's a field of study, as well.



Look at the current issue of the Museum Educators' Roundtable journal, entitled Engaging Visitors to Create Positive Futures.  They are offering the editor's review article for all to read here.

Or go to the American Alliance of Museum's EdCom publication on principals and practice.

So when one of the high holies of academia presents something (admittedly, a wonderful something) as revolutionary and new, by virtue of the nature of its presentation and by what is funded and the nature of its funding, the subsequent reification of that approach by what is not said becomes significant.

In other words, ignoring others who are doing essentially the same work and have been doing it for a long time, continues the existing power dynamics of 1) the university as a more important site of learning than any other learning environment (school or museum or other) 2) maintaining traditional educational views of learning as content transference from the expert to the novitiate.

Ok, the Institute may fight me on the 2nd point there -- and with some reason -- but my contention here is that offering a "playful" approach as so unique and isolated as deserving of special recognition only serves to highlight the majority of the institution that isn't that.

And it also demonstrates how, once again, learning is compartmentalized and how we do not communicate with each other, despite our commonalities of subject and approach.

oy.*

The HMSC website is mentioning this Saturday's Day of the Dead event.





Think I'll go to that.

And to the Toys in Science exhibit.

After all this meta-conversation, I could use a little fun!



*Ok, sorry to get all Foucault up in your face!  Shouldn't take myself too seriously, either!

Improv and Education and Museums -- the Art of Doing

Jen Oleniczak doesn't know me, although we share a common group (NEMA YEPs -- yay!).

She's the founder of The Engaging Educator.

According to the website, their company is:
Specializing in improv, presentation, movement and theatre classes and workshops, The Engaging Educator strives to help educators work towards a primary goal – education that engages both students and teachers to the top of their potential.
As educators, we spend hours worrying about what to say to our students. How often do we worry about HOW we say it? Our communication and presentation skills are just as important as any fact. Students pay better attention when we are interesting and the job is more fun when we enjoy ourselves.
In a classroom, at a residency or in a gallery – we work with all educators to make them the absolute best they can be.

Right up our alley!

Engaging Educator also has a blog.  One of their early posts linked to Jen's piece in the Art Museum Teaching blog "Improv(e) Your Teaching."

It neatly summarizes how improving listening skills and using movement can stimulate thinking and learning in educational spaces, such as schools and museums.

Improv's emphasis on listening to the other person -- using the response "Yes, AND..." -- was in fact my key takeaway from Tina Fey's autobiography Bossypants.

"Yes, AND..." works really, really well in meetings, conferences, and VTS in front of an object....

Sometimes the most creative educational work comes from outside the school, such as the museum or the comedy club.

And we can learn a lot from multiple modalities.

Thanks, Jen!

A Passover Thought

Passover_Seder_Plate by Sheynhertz-Unbayg from Wikimedia Commons

I had a great conversation today with a colleague as he ate sardines and matzoh for lunch.

He made the point that a full Passover seder (the traditional one, hosted on the first or second night of the holiday) really got at the essence of the flight from Egypt: take whatever one had -- no time to allow the bread to rise -- and subsist on what was available.....

"Experiential learning in a nutshell," I said.

He agreed.

What other events, religious observances,  items of culture embody significant experience?

The Physicality of Emotions

Listening to WBUR's Here and Now promo a couple of weeks ago had me perking up at the mention of a story about Botox being an anti-depressant of sorts...

Seems that limiting the range of facial expressions that the forehead is able to produce means that there are corresponding changes of experienced (i.e., felt) emotions as well.

In other words, "freezing your face" makes you feel fine... ?

There is something to this  -- thinking of mirror neurons and the mind-body connection.

At the same time, I really want to see quantified experimental studies.

I will say that my "theory of mind" of Botoxed faces is that emotional empathy and creative thought seems to be limited....

But mainly, the body can influence the mind.

Read more here.

Kinesthetic Learner Video

Found this while researching something else. It's from About.com.

Note the blurb for field trips and museum visits.  ;)

It also brings back memories of teaching in an all-girls school!

Role Playing is Gaming with the Whole Body

Fighters with rapiers and daggers at a reenactment, 3 September 2007, 11:57, Crossed Blades, Jean, upload by Herrick, from Wikimedia Commons

Apparently, role-playing is undergoing a "renaissance."

Which is a wonderful play on words, as a lot of these stories are really medieval.

According to the WBUR story "You Be the Dragon Slayer":
The term interactive storytelling is used to describe all manner of games where both the audience and actors are part of the performance: live-action role-playing (LARPs); alternate reality games (ARGs) that often mix in technology or mobile devices; interactive theater; and everything in between, including old-fashioned role-playing games (RPGs) like D&D.

There is also the Society for Creative Anachronism.
(Sorta the anti-sport fencing.)

The connection here to museums is pretty clear, as there are a number of living history museums -- Old Sturbridge Village, Conner Prairie, and Plimoth Plantation to name a few -- that use role play as interpretation.

And there is a host of information coming out about gaming as educational, as well.
(Or not.  There is some debate.)

So is there some way we can combine these?

Higgins Armoury Museum already is.

Can we at indoor, non-armoury museums use this experience?

More Wii Research in Motion...!

This just in:

Wii use helps surgery students translate the 2-D to 3-D world of laparoscopy surgery.

A recent study by Dr. Gregorio Patrizi, a professor at the University of Rome Medical School, "found that the gamers performed significantly better than another group of residents who didn't undergo this grueling video game training" according to a February 28, 2013 NPR story "Nintendo Wii Helped Budding Surgeons Move To Head Of The Class."

Additionally, "Several earlier studies suggested that playing video games can boost laparoscopic skills, but those studies were largely based on surveys of surgeons' prior video gaming habits. Patrizi's study is one of the first randomized trials that had some surgeons undergo a structured game-playing routine and also maintained a separate control group.

"Patrizi and his team had surgical residents play three Wii games — tennis, ping pong and one that involved shooting balloons from an aircraft. As the researchers write in their article published online by PLOS ONE, they chose these games because they all required strong hand-eye coordination and three-dimensional visualization of a space."

Playing Beck means PLAYING Beck

http://www.beck.com/index.php/song-reader-the-exhibition

Today on WBUR's RadioBoston show, there was a piece about Beck's "Song Reader," the album that isn't.

Well, it is, if you actually play the music yourself, because "Song Reader" is boxed sheet music.
Which makes it a "box set" in the original sense.

As Beck's website for the music says, "Only you can bring Beck Hansen's Song Reader to life."

Making people actually play the music both democratizes and experientializes* it.

Listen to the story here.



*yes, I know this isn't a word, but what would you say here?