Mindfulness and Technology: An Unlikely Duo

Mindfulness continues to gain momentum as a practice that can be designed to combat the ever demanding world of technology and media. It is a way for us to "unplug" from the Ipads and emails that vie for our attention like rock star groupies outside of an 80's era Whitesnake concert. Using mindfulness can help us turn off the things that steal our attention and tune into the things that are happening in the present moment such as the way we feel and the sounds we hear. By redirecting out attention to the present moment we are able create space between what is happening and how we respond to it.

In a twist of irony it appears that there are an ever growing list of Applications for our smartphones that make it easier to employ mindfulness in order to unplug from the very smartphones that are helping us to be mindful. Yeah confusing I know... its kind of like trying to start a diet by going to McDonald's and ordering a chicken salad topped with fried nuggets. However, part of dealing with a world that is increasingly being taken over by technology is approaching the way we deal with that technology in a contemplative manner. By mindfully paying attention to how we interact with these technologies we can use them to our advantage and help increase and strengthen a daily mindfulness practice. I have compiled a list of "Mindfulness Apps" that I think can help us maintain our daily practice through fun interactive means.

Insight Timer- Meditation Timer ($2.99): This is my current favorite application for my smartphone. It is available for both Iphones and Android operating systems. With the Insight Timer you can try both guided meditations as well as silent self-guided sits. It has a handy timer that starts and stops your session with a variety of bells and singing bowls. It also has a journal feature to write about your experience after meditating. The app has an online community called Insight Connect that lets you connect with other people using the application.  According to Amazon "With the Insight Connect feature, you can become part of a global meditation community - seeing at a glance people around the world who are meditating with you." 

Conscious App by Makan Studios (free): This is another app that is available for both the Android and Iphone smartphones. This app pushes daily challenges to you that help you stay mindful of a certain goal. It also has a community of users to help you stay motivated. Every morning, everyone gets the same new challenge for the day. If you accept the challenge, you then try your best throughout the day to incorporate it in your experience. In the evening, you mark the challenge as finished and add a daily journal entry to keep track of your progress and share your insights with the others. I think it is a great idea I just am not too thrilled about the idea of more notifications being pushed through my phone.

ReWire by Seated Monkey (free): This free app tries to increase your inherent ability to pay attention. It is simple and easy to use. You listen to sound and when the sound disappears you tap the screen. I also find it to be a great precursor to a meditation session by helping to ready your ability to focus. I  like that you can import your own music or purchase the ReWire "brainwave tracks." Although not specifically meditation this is a great app to use with kids or other novices who may not be experienced with staying aware of their own attention. 

The Mind Gardner App ($.99): This app can be download on both the Android and Itunes platforms. It is based off the popular Mind Gardener website which focuses on positive thinking in the realm of positive psychology rather than mindfulness. It is another app that tries to help with mind training to increase attention and focus. However, it relies more on training your brain for positive thinking and motivation... kind of like a pocket sized Tony Robbins. According to the Android store "Mind Gardener Moments contains 20 topics, including the procrastination buster, the relationship smoother, the mood shifter, the busyness buster, the change embracer and the creativity booster. Each topic reveals 3 simple and practical exercises designed to hit the spot." I don't use this app and by the looks of the website its full of platitudes that can come off a little trite. However give it a shot it may be just what you need. 

Mind Hacker app ($1.92): Mind Hacker uses binaural beat technology to alter your though patterns by stimulating specific parts of the brain using various frequencies. Binaural beats are believed to lower brain frequency, decrease anxiety and increase learning (working memory). Theta waves specifically are supposed to help with meditation. The jury here at the Mindful School Psychologist is still out on this one, but if this is your thing its a great app. 

The Meditation Jar (free):  This app is only for the Iphone and is great for kids to practice "mindful seeing". The Meditation Jar app gives relaxation to your mind and helps you to focus on the simple settling of dots in a jar- similar to a snow globe. Just shake the jar and let the dots clear your mind in 10 seconds right where you are.

As mindfulness continues to "go mainstream" more and more of these apps will continue to be developed. From websites that are dedicated to tracking the growing movement of technology in contemplation/ meditation, as well as podcasts that discuss their utility, the lines between awareness and technology will continue to blur. As a practitioner who is  excited to be apart of the growing mindfulness movement I am optimistic about how these apps can help us to strengthen or daily practice as well as bring mindfulness to those who have not found it. However, I am cautious and always mindful to approach my relationship with this technology in a inquisitive and introspective manner. What apps do you use? Are there any you would recommend. Leave your recommendations in the comments section. 

Infographics... The 21st Century King of Graphic Organizers

I'm sitting at a meeting trying to explain to teachers how Suzy's visuo-spatial processing disorder impacts her ability to understand graphs and spatial relations with regards to math reasoning. This is after exemplifying her significant strengths in verbal reasoning and vocabulary development. Her mother is next to me nodding her head in agreement. She contributes "Yes, I have always know she has trouble with directions as well as scanning and sequencing visual information. I wish we could find a way to combine and organize visual and verbal information to help Suzy understand concepts and processes." DING DING DING DING, the bell in my head rings. I immediately say, "well, Infographics have taken over social media as a way to quickly organize and present complex information in a short period of time."..... Crickets.

I go on my computer and immediately get denied by the schools firewall. After a few more attempts I am allowed on a website that has the above example of what an infographic is. I explain to the folks at the meeting that the pre-organized information and color coded nature of the info-graphic may help to lessen the visual processing burden that Suzy has every time she is presented with a page of paper or assignment to read. The reason infographics are so efficient is that they organize and sequence information for us, rather than having to rely on our own executive functions to do it. Its kind of like touring a city. You can try to tour a city yourself, map and guide book in hand, all while trying to read about each landmark and neighborhood. Or, you can get on one of those double-decker tour buses and have a tour guide tell you what to look at and what to think about it. Infographics are the double-decker tour buses of reading comprehension and math reasoning.

Infographics are an extremely effective way of quickly disseminating large amounts of information in a organized and easily digestible manner. The reason this works so well is that they utilize Preattenitve attributes, or visual cues to guide our attention to what is important. These can be size, orientation, color or contrast. By using these "visual cues" infographics are eliminating the need for focused attention and utilizing the brain's natural visual proclivity of observation and processing (Treisman, 1985, Treisman, 1986). Its like we have our own airplane Marshaller that guides our attention to the "information terminal." By eliminating the focused attention necessary to process an unorganized visual field, concepts and ideas are readily available for storage and digestion.

This is especially important for students who have disabilities or learn at a slower rate than their peers. These students spend so much attention and cognitive energy on decoding words, keeping ideas in their working memory and organizing concepts that they often miss the big picture or idea being taught. Infographics can serve to reinforce or remmediate information that gets lost in the cognitive processes of learning. Teachers can use them to teach vocabulary, show hierarchy or stress chronology. It is even helpful for students to create their own infographic as a project to exhibit skill mastery. By relying on preattentive attributes and dealing directly with content, infographics can increase the fluency of comprehension and analyzation necessary for high order skill development . The following links may be helpful for further information regarding infographics and how to incorporate them into a classroom:


http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mccandless_the_beauty_of_data_visualization.html

http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/06/16/infographics-what-why-how/

http://columnfivemedia.com/what-is-an-infographic/

http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php/Preattentive_processing

http://www.easel.ly/

http://www.teachhub.com/teacher-infographics

http://visual.ly/


A. Treisman, Preattentive Processing in Vision, Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing, 31(2):156-177, August 1985.

A. Treisman, Features and Objects in Visual Processing, Scientific American, 255(5):114-125, 1986.

‘Smartpen’ Pilot Program Helps Students with Disabilities

‘Smartpen’ Pilot Program Helps Students with Disabilities

Great assistive technology that Penn State University is using in order to help student with disabilities take notes. We need to get this technology in our high schools for students with Individual Education Plans (IEP).

6 Ways of Increasing Comprehension using Social Media

I'm sitting in my office looking over email and trying to get ready for the day when the door bursts open. In comes a frustrated High School special education teacher 3-5 year away from retirement. Cue cliche:"Kids these days, they just don't care. Whatever I say they could care less", he stammers. Seeing that it clearly does not matter to him that I may be in the middle of doing work, I put on my consultant cap and try to see what it is I may be able to help him with. "Can you clarify?",  I ask. He proceeds to tell me that he has tried everything, but his class just does not get it. "They don't understand the Roman empire or Juliues Cesear, even after watching a movie", he moaned. "I asked them to tell me one thing about the movie, one thing... and you know what they said Ben ?? You know what they said? They said it was about Rome." Success!!! You asked for one detail and they gave it to you, I thought.  He grumbled further, "Its like all they care about is their cell phones and the Internet."

Seeing that this was turning into a negative Nancy soliloquy I tried to think of some positive ways to engage the students with what I knew: they love cell phones and social media. So I told the teacher "Why don't you have them tweet about the movie while they are watching it?" His response ... "What is tweet?" At this point I find it fascinating that you can be a High School teacher and not know what Twitter is. However, being that this teacher is still learning to respond to emails I wasn't necessarily surprised. After explaining that they could formulate short thoughts about the movie, which may help with overall comprehension, he became enthusiastic. We started brainstorming other ideas to facilitate knowledge and understanding through social media.

It can often be tiresome for teachers to find ways to help our low ability/ low achieving students understand abstract or complicated academic material. The key to this is modifying instructional delivery to fit their interest and ability level. Although these strategies may not be specifically appropriate for children that do not have disabilities or learn at an average developmental rate, the possibilities are endless when one begins to look towards social media as a means of promoting comprehension and understanding of instruction.  Here are 6 easy ways to use social media to increasing comprehension.

1.) TWEET: Have students compose a tweet (they don't have to send it) after each paragraph they read or scene of a movie they watch. Encourage the student to use a minimum amount of characters to describe the main idea of what they just read. This will not only help them to take notes, it will also help them organize the information in the concise manner that they are used to when tweeting. Another option is to compose a Twitter handle of a person or concept (e.g. WWII), then compose tweets that would be consistent with that user. For example @JuliusCesear: Just finished conquering France #sotired

2.) #Hashtag: A Hashtag in its broadest sense is a way to order discussions on particular topics. For example: #WWII after any post on a social media site will group all of the comments on the topic of World War II together. Interestingly Generation Y has run with this concept and started using Hashtags as ways to express concepts. A teacher could have students compose 10 different Hashtags around a learning objective. For example the students are learning about Shakespear they could compose #playright, #Romeo&Juliet, #London, #GoldenAge, #QueenElizabeth, ect.

3.) Create a Facebook Profile and Timeline: This is a great way to organize and visually represent a concept or person that a student is learning about. Create a Facebook page for that concept or person. Lets say the student is learning about Winston Churchill. What important events would be on his timeline? Google pictures that you could add that would to reinforce the important aspects of his life or that time of history. What would his status updates read? This idea is similar to tweets in that the student what have to summarize important ideas about the topic in short sentences, reinforcing main ideas in a practical manner. One could even do a Facebook page for abstract ideas like Physics, or Photosynthesis.

4.) Compose a Rap or Viral Video on YouTube- Teenagers love You Tube and viral videos. Have student break into pairs and create a short rap or song about the chapter they a learning about. This can be done over a current song (which is has been done to death with that summer of 2012 song). They can film each other then decide which video is the best. Research even suggest music can help with memory     

5.)Create a playlist on Spotify- I love music and it often helps me focus and understand feelings in a deeper manner. Along with helping us remember things music can serve as a great mnemonic device. A student can name the playlist a certain topic e.g. American Revolution. Then each song in the list can serve as a different device to help them remember a key fact from the lesson. For example They could add Beastie Boys Paul Reverie to the list to help them remember Mr. Reverie's his role in the revolution. Helping the child relate the song to the lesson will increase their ability to retain what they have learned. They can then listen to the playlist while they study.

6.) Create a Meme- Ahh the Meme. If there was anything that so exemplified our teenagers today it is the Meme. Typically a Meme says so much with just so little and their are endless examples of how this can be achieved. By using a Meme generator students can use the main idea of a lesson and turn it into a Meme. For example a recent Meme was created for a US Gymnast that was not impressed with her dismal silver medal in the 2012 London Olympic games. Students could try to re-create this Meme with a current event or literary character in order to encourage understanding of a theme or concept. For example the "I'm not impressed Meme" could be used in the context of Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Or maybe create a meme for Philosoraptor  to help explain Plato. The possibilities are endless.

So next time a frustrated teacher comes barging into your office complaining about how all the Special Education kids want to do is play on their phones, tell him "Great, I have just the trick for that."

*It should be noted that these ideas are heavily modified and may only be applicable for children who do not learn at the same rate or style as their peers.  However, I'm sure that you could get creative and use the same strategies for your AP European history class, the integration just may be more complicated. If your a frustrated Special Education teacher let me know how these work.

Morning links

• Test-based promotion policies can be successful (i.e. grade retention ) if  those retained are provided with research-based instruction in reading funding for said instruction. 

• Gratitude in children is linked to positive life outcomes such as a lower probability of abusing drugs and alcohol as well as behavior problems in school. Start those gratitude journals....

• Are we sure she wasn't just playing Words With Friends ??

• It appears confidence intervals are the new Emergency Pardon on death row. However, not sure if IQ testing correlates with moral/ethical aptitude...discuss....

• Human Genome project now appears to have a Neurological counterpart in the Human Cennectome Project... If anything it provides some beautiful visuals

• Educational Rap Videos appear to be a thing...

Kids develop app to fight bullying

Since bullying appears to be a theme today, I wanted to comment on a growing number of apps popping up that focus on children anonymously reporting incidences of bullying. One such app,  created by students in a Connecticut High School lets victims (or witnesses) report the time and place of bullying without having to give their names (names are optional). What is great about this particular app is that all reports are put into a data base where administrators are able to study it and intervene. This system would seamlessly align with Positive Behavior Support programs in schools, which attempt to gather data for informed decision making. Such data can then be used to monitor response to school wide initiatives. Apps, such as the one in Connecticut, not only help to foster a positive school climate, they also give children a voice and sense of efficacy that is often ripped away from them when they are bullied or witness such acts.