Time to boogie on down the road. Next stop is Wellness. She started off saying that this section was just put in to remind us that as much as we need to take care of our students, we also need to take care of ourselves. A bit of talking about diet, food allergies and intolerances and such.
That was a really quick session and to be honest, it was just a typical health presentation. The usual. Nothing really new, nothing really significant. I just don’t get the feeling like it has too much to do with the SMART program, short of keeping in mind that if a child isn’t well nourished, then it may contribute to problems they’re having in school. It isn’t really apparent how this fits into the rest of the program. Almost seems like filler. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this because I don’t think this stuff is valuable. There’s no question that it’s valuable. But learning about looking both ways before crossing the street is also valuable and we aren’t talking about that. Positive reinforcement vs. negative reinforcement is valuable to discuss, but it doesn’t have a place here either. I guess my point is, if it doesn’t directly tie in to the rest of the program, then why are we spending 45 minutes on it?
Am I just overly critical or a complainer? Sometimes I think I am. I do tend to criticize things quite often. The first thing I do upon leaving a movie is point out every part of it that I had an issue with. I suppose I just have very high expectations for how things should be and if something doesn’t meet my expectations I tend to share that observation.
Onwards yet again. This time we’re getting into NeuroTechnology! I’ve been waiting for this one. Just sounds like a good topic to me. Yes, I’m judging the book by its cover. Not a good start though. She’s started off by saying that some students don’t get ‘fixed’ by SMART and this is a way to address them. Once again, I’m going to jump to a conclusion and say that offhand it sounds like filler. I hope not.
“NeuroTechnology may improve the symptoms associated with an unregulated brain such as : behavior challenges, inattention, hyperactivity, depression, sleep problems, impulsivity, headaches, etc…”
NT basically gets the brain in shape. It’s brain exercise. Can relax the state of mind, improve academics and possibly even athletic performance.
All brain waves are always available, but certain ones are more predominant depending on activity. Children often have high theta brain waves, sleepy drowsy ones. It causes kids to seek stimulation because they’re trying to wake up that part of the brain.
There’s good stress and bad stress. Good stress occurs during sports, complex mental tasks, performances and public speaking. Harmful stress occurs with over stimulation, anxiety, fear, inadequate diets, allergies and overwhelming concerns.
Side note, this presenter is reading her notes most of the time. A few times, she’s gone off her notes and just talked. When she does, she’s actually quite a good presenter. She has a great personality and it shows through, very dynamic. However, when she’s reading her notes she becomes dry and almost boring. Right now there’s a full paragraph on the screen. If that wasn’t bad enough, she’s actually reading the entire paragraph. What’s even worse than that is that I’ve seen it before in an email that friends have forwarded to me on a few occasions. Do a search for “email cow dolphin stress” and you’ll find it I’m sure. I’d provide a link but I have no wifi.
Back to the presentation, there are two tools used in NeuroTechnology primarily. The first is EEG Neurofeedback. A person wears two sensors on their head and two on their ears. They’re like microphones for listening to raw electrical activity in the brain. The person seems an image or a game, where the person is rewarded when they reduce theta waves. In other words, when the person is zoning out, the game stops. When they’re active and in the optimal thinking zone, the game moves forward.
The other tool is AVE, Audio Visual Entrainment. It’s portable, basically a set of glasses and headphones. The audio is relaxing music and variable heartbeats. The visual is pulsing lights inside glasses. Entrainment sounds like it’s basically a zone that you get into, like when you stare into a fire for quite a while, or someone is so into a TV show that they block out external stimuli. So we have a device that flickers lights and plays music, and a person is supposed to veg out and just absorb this for twenty minutes. Hmm… Sounds suspiciously like the way I spent the better part of my undergrad years! Pink Floyd and a lava lamp just might be an AVE! But seriously folks…
Sounds like the audio is not just music, but may have academic content as well. Test answers, Spanish words, vocabulary and so on. Sounds like hypnotic learning of sorts. She’s saying that you can use this to alleviate test anxiety. Put the device on, and imagine yourself getting ready to take a test. Then imagine how you want to feel while you’re doing it. Run that through your head again and again. Then when you go to actually take a test, you’ll put yourself in that same frame of mind. This really does sound a lot like self-hypnosis. I wonder if there have been any studies that compare this device to actual hypnotherapy. I’d also be REALLY curious to see how it would compare to Pink Floyd and a lava lamp. Totally serious, I wonder if it would have a similar effect.
This also vaguely reminds me of that headphone device that I blogged about some months back, just without the visual. Basically they’re both trying to use audio stimulation to influence brain waves.
Once again, this seems to have little to do with the SMART program directly. I really hope we come back to this at some point in the workshop. If we don’t, then this afternoon was largely a disappointment. Not that the information wasn’t interesting, but it just doesn’t seem to apply to what we’re here to learn! I hope I’m wrong. If I do, I will issue an apology and retraction, highlighted and bolded!