The Two Hemispheres of the Brain

Metacognition is a term used in the science of reading.  It is an unfamiliar word to people not involved directly in the academic discipline of Reading.  It may be defined as knowing ourselves as thinkers and learners and constantly monitoring how we think and learn.  It is the means by which we take charge of our intellect.  Part of knowing ourselves includes understanding which lobe of our brain is dominant, the

 left or right hemisphere.  Much has been written about brain lobe dominance.

When exploring this topic, it is important to make note of the word dominance. As we reflect on this topic we need to remember that while most of us have a dominant lobe, the other hemisphere is not asleep.  This self-knowledge can inform us of how we solve problems and how we look at the world.  If we know this, we can better direct our activities.  The influence of brain hemisphere dominance affects not only our intellectual activities but also our social personalities.  It is helpful for us to know this aspect of our essential selves.

I first considered brain lobe dominance more than twenty years ago.  I have always been involved in artwork.  In 1980, Betty Edwards, a teacher first at Venice High School, CA then, at community colleges and finally in the UC university system published a book entitled, Drawing On The Right Side of The Brain.  I read the book as an artist who is always trying to improve my drawing skills and to look at new approaches to creating art.  Later, I realized the brain hemisphere/lobe dominance also affects learning in general, not just the making of art.  I have always used this as a component of my teaching.

Lately, there is much in the news about the importance of different areas of the brain.  Recall, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona.  She was shot right through the brain, with the bullet going into her forehead and coming out at the other side of her skull.  Dr, Sanjay Gupta  (a practicing brain surgeon) who also works as a health commentator for CNN did an informative program regarding Congresswoman Giffords’

healing progress and the effect of the damage to her brain’s left  hemisphere.  Research on people with early onset of Alzheimer’s disease also studies the brain activity of the two hemispheres.  Returning soldiers from the mid-East have unfortunately, suffered serious brain injuries.  Knowing the tasks of both of the hemispheres helps rehab of these ‘wounded warriors’.

Some researchers believe that there is a link between right or left brain hemisphere dominance and right or left handedness. There maybe, but there are many other factors involved.

I am right handed and I was brought up with a heavy emphasis on left brain intellectual activity.  However, I have also been involved in art since an early age.  I had a double major as an undergraduate of history and mathematics, but I also took art courses at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since I was in the sixth grade.  When I take hemisphere dominance tests, I often come out almost balanced.  For me, I think it is evidence of nurture over nature.  My family had high expectations for me to perform intellectually, my spirit wanted to paint and dance.  So, I am definitely a hybrid re: brain hemisphere activity.  That could be you, also. I mention this because one or two tests indicate a trend they do not always reveal the total picture.  They are valuable because they tell us more about ourselves.

The right side of the brain controls muscles on the left side of the body and the left side of the brain controls muscles on the right side of the body. Also, in general, sensory information from the left side of the body crosses over to the right side of the brain and information from the right side of the body crosses over to the left side of the brain. Therefore, damage to one side of the brain will affect the opposite side of the body.

In 95% of right-handers, the left side of the brain is dominant for language. Even in 60-70% of left-handers, the left side of brain is used for language. Back in the 1860s and 1870s, two neurologists (Paul Broca and Karl Wernicke) observed that people who had damage to a particular area on the left side of the brain had speech and language problems. People with damage to these areas on the right side usually did not have any language problems. The two language areas of the brain that are important for language now bear their names: Broca's area and Wernicke's area.
( From the website Neuroscience for Kids – check this out – TERRIFIC REFERENCES.)

If you are interested in reading more about this I have two recommendations from the internet.  One, I highly recommend; the other is worth reading.  Here are the urls for both.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Differences Between Left and Right Hemispheres at
http://frank.mtsu.edu/-studskl/hd/hemis.html

This website has many components: Difference Between Left and Right Hemisphere; Hemisphere Dominance Inventory; Left vs. Right Which Side are You On?  This site defines the concept and gives a test which is scored immediately.  It gives you a personalized picture of your brain hemisphere dominance.

WORTH READING: An excellent student paper entitled,

Left and Right SIDES OF THE BRAIN: Which is your dominant side?  This is found at the Serendipity site.  The url is:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1733
This paper gives an interesting history and discussion of

the brain dominance theory. 

I am always trying to follow Socrates’ admonition, “Know thyself.”  Finding out your brain hemisphere inclinations increases your personal knowledge bank.  I hope you will take the Hemisphere Dominance Survey and get your score.  It only takes a few minutes.

How do you consider yourself: right or left hemisphere dominant? 

Or a hybrid?  

Humans are always fascinating subjects to learn about.

  What are your thoughts?

  Please share them.

Dr. CW

"A person stays alive as long as someone remembers the person."

Yesterday, Steve Jobs left the Blue Planet, but his creativity remains; his work insures that his name will live on for some time to come.  You may or may not have watched him deliver the 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford University.  It is being played on You Tube and other media right now.  I recommend your watching it.  There is nothing like seeing and hearing a person share his/her thoughts about life.  I have copied and pasted the entire address.  I hope that you print it out and read it once in awhile.  He has many worth while things to say and to pass on.  Read this carefully; it is studded with 'memory gems'.  If you don't want to read it, watch it on You Tube.

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

Video of the Commencement address.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much

I echo Steve Jobs words:  "Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition."

Dr. CW

VOCABULARY - Expanding your base

Vocabulary Development as an Integral Component of Reading and Writing

Language is first developed by hearing others speak, by observing what the people are speaking about; by making associations between sounds and concrete objects.

Reading is first developed by decoding written or printed marks on paper and making meaning of those marks and by assigning experiential sounds to those marks.  Chimpanzees can be taught to recognize and associate simple words with concrete objects.  Dolphins communicate through sonar.

Humankind learns language best in a group, through shared experiences, and by using as many of the five senses as possible.  Hearing a word is critical to knowing and understanding the word.  Therefore, the optimal approach to developing vocabulary is to have the learning experience occur in a climate where voices are heard, and opinions exchanged and respected.

Project Based Learning is one approach to providing a climate for students to hear as well as see new words, new concepts to educate, inform and entertain themselves.  Whether or not a teacher chooses to use a project based teaching approach is up to the individual teacher.  Any group learning environment where students have the opportunity to hear a word, to research together the meanings of a word, to create sentences, and stories and poems, and song lyrics using the word will have the outcome of individual student Ownership of a word.

Paulo Freire emphasized the importance of OWNING a word. It is a foundation principle in Freirean literacy programs in Brazil, Africa, Latin America, and in the U.S.  Memorizing a word simply ‘rents out’ the word to the student for one objective test; without use, the word is forgotten a week later. Students must “use it or lose it”. Authentic vocabulary development only occurs when learners OWN a word. The ownership is evidenced by correct usage of the word in conversation, written work, and critical reading of material.

Learning and/or memorizing vocabulary out of context for a short range goal – passing a quiz or test – is not the way to vocabulary ownership.

Students need to READ words in context; students need to WRITE words they want to own: first in sentences, then, in paragraphs, then in both expository and creative writing.  But, first, students need to HEAR, to tune in, to actively listen to the word and words they need to own to achieve academic success.

Consider an ideal vocabulary learning environment that utilizes all five senses:

Hearing:  Teacher modeling, student conversation, excepts from recorded books, poetry readings, popular song lyrics,  iTunes, You Tube, recorded ‘white noise’ while doing an assignment.

Seeing:    Hard copy written material, books, handouts, brochures, pamphlets, e-books, browser pages, texting, advertising.

Touching:  Opportunities to create words through games, eg. Scrabble, Hangman, word manipulatives, puzzles.

Tasting:            Teaching students the necessity of hydration for brain activity.  Drinking water before any intellectual task.  In addition, supplying fruit or hard candy during group work.

Smelling:     A little hard to insert into a learning environment, but at least try not to have negative disconcerting odors present

What are some words that you like to hear?

What are some words that you like to see on the printed page?

What is a word that is your endearment for your favorite person?

What is the emotional connotation of the word, WHATEVER.?

What is the correct grammatical usage of the word, WHATEVER?

What is the influence of TEXTING on your spelling, your vocabulary, your written communication??? 

Computer Game Design, Skill Sets & Reading

I want to recommend an online book that may be accessed at the following URL:

http://www.vancouver.wsu.ed/fac/peabody/game-book/

The title of the book is The Art of Computer Game Design.  The author is Chris Crawford.  If you are not interested in the entire book, which is very readable, and you are a ‘gamer’, Chapter 8 is fascinating; it is about The Development of Excalibur.  This is an example of a free on-line book that can be downloaded, read on the computer screen, or printed out as a hard copy from the screen.  It requires only your PC or MAC.

Many people play computer games, some people want to design them. Playing and designing games take special SKILL SETS.  A Skill Set is a group of skills that you have, or you may want to develop for a specific job.

There are three different types of skills: personality traits; transferable skills; and job specific skills.  You can find out more about this by going to Google and using IDENTIFYING YOUR SKILL SET as your key words. I did this and found a very good introduction to the topic published by Youth Guide.  There are a number of resources regarding skill sets on the web.

What does Reading have to do with all of this??? An adult, active reader inherently has a number of reading skills that may be transferred to computer game design.  Many of the higher order thinking categories of Benjamin Bloom’s revised taxonomy play a part in computer game design.  Look at some of the verbs in the subsets of higher order thinking. Use them as a checklist to gauge your thinking skills.

Compare your personal profile of higher order thinking activities/skills (HOTS) with the profile of a computer game designer that emerges from Chris Crawford’s on-line free book.  Do you share some of the characteristics of Chris Crawford?  Or, does your higher order thinking profile equip you for another area?

Maybe you have no interest in computer games. For an overview of one of the new 21^st century careers (computer game design)  and avocations (computer game playing),  find Chris Crawford’s book on the internet.  You can select only ONE chapter to read to inform and educate yourself about this important element in 21^st century culture. Even if you never play a computer game, or think about yourself designing a computer game, read one on-line chapter for the experience of learning something new, and reading off of the computer screen.

 

What do you think about computer games?

Do you see yourself as a computer game designer?

Consider both William Perry’s Classifications of College Student Thinking and Benjamin Bloom’s Revised Taxonomies (reading & digital). What transferable thinking skills do you already possess and continually use that would be helpful in computer design?

The act of reading, the material read, and your world view directly affect your thinking skills. 

Please share your thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

Dr. CW

SELF-EFFICACY, The Little Red Engine That Could & Personal Empowerment

Dawn Balloon Ride Over Albuquerque

As we enter this second decade of the 21st century, we face the facts of lives lived in a struggling economy under the constant shadow of terrorism in a world where many nations are engaged in war.  It is hard to keep on trying, and it is difficult to have a positive view of the world and a positive attitude about our personal lives.

I work at not surrendering to negativity.  I think of how I can help myself, and what story I could tell you that might give a glimmer of light in a dark world.

Others think as I think.  CNN is recognizing some unsung heroes, nominated and voted upon by the internet public as individuals who are making a difference in their immediate world.  Until this Unsung Heroes Project began, we would never have the opportunity to know the individuals involved.  They would quietly and anonymously go on with their generous acts.  These unsung heroes are good role models for us all.  We can find people who are in better and in worse circumstances than ourselves.  What is important is to learn from one another.  It is beneficial to know about individuals who Think They Can Achieve their goals and who make a difference in the quality of life of others.
In the U.S., there is a very popular children's story, The Little Red Engine That Could.  You may have read this story or have had someone read it to you.  You might have forgotten this popular story.  I have read the story to my children and others in my reading specialist career.  As many children's stories do, the story is applicable to the adult world.  I would recommend your re-reading this story, or reading it for the first time - for yourself.  It is found in most public libraries and bookstores.  If you are in a bookstore, you can read it in the bookstore.  It is a quck read with a long impact on the psyche. You might like to share this story.  Pass it on to a child, because children are always open to learning from stories.  You could tell the story as well as read it.  Pass it on to an adult, because adults need to be reminded of the benefits of storytelling - their stories and other people's stories.

The plot of  The Little Red Engine That Could goes like this.  There is a small, red train engine that has to go up a steep, steep hill.  The little engine wonders, if he can make it up the steep incline.  He keeps himself going by repeating the phrase, "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.  I can"  Because he believes in his abilities, he does make it up the incline - he conquers the hill.  This story could be a parable for all of us.  We need to believe that we have the capacity to accomplish what needs to be done.  That is not so easy in 2010.  It takes constant 'self-talk" based on what we believe about ourselves.  This belief in our personal capability is called SELF EFFICACY.

Self efficacy is quite different from self-confidence.  Don't confuse the two.

Self-efficacy is the internal belief system that we are capable of achieving our goals and objectives.

Self-confidence is the feeling we have about ourselves as the result of the messages the external world, people, and organizations, gives us. The optimal situation is for an individual to have both self-efficacy and self-confidence but in reality that does not always happen.  A person who has been laid off of  her/his job and has been actively looking for a job for two years could have a basis for losing self-confidence after many job interviews that were unsuccessful.  Some people who share this experience can handle "interview trauma" better than some others because they have a strong sense of self-efficacy.  We have all heard the adage, "Nothing succeeds like success."  A person who can experience success in some area of her/his life is more likely to have self-efficacy.

In these hard times, belief in one's capabilities is essential.  It is an avenue to personal empowerment.  Empowerment does not always imply riches or a high standard of living.  For me, empowerment means I have the right to make my own decisions and the responsibility to live with the outcomes of my decisions.  I live in a democracy and I can determine my attitude towards life's pluses and minuses.

What stories can you tell to help yourself and/or some one else to believe that what needs to be done can be done?

I frequently quote Cesar Chavez' statement, Si, su puede! Yes, it can be done!  I don't know, if Cesar ever heard or read the story of the Little Red Engine That Could.  Cesar is just one example of a person who believed he could make a difference -- and he did.  Just ask anyone in the United Farmworkers of America.

What are your stories? How do you develop your self-efficacy?

Mantras (chants) can make a difference.  Echo the Little Red Engine and say to yourself, "I think I can. I think I can.  I can....

How powerful are you feeling?  What are You Doing About your personal empowerment?

Dr. CW

WORLD VIEW - What is Your World View? Does World View Evolve?

Etching by Escher

World View can be considered from many perspectives: philosophical, historical, political, and psychological.  It can can be both personal and societal; often the world view of a society cannot help but be part of an individual's personal world view.  The concept of world view first arose in Gernan philosophy, the German word,weltanschauung has been translated into the English word, world view.

Definition.  Many definitions of world view can be found on the internet. I found an excellent discussion of the concept at this URL:

http://www.teachingaboutreligion.org/WorldviewDiversity/wwdiversity.htm

The website posted above provides these two understandings of the concept.

1)  The over-all perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.

2)  A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or group.

It is important to note that worldview does NOT have to be connected to a specific religion, but it could be. Angelenos (citizens of Los Angeles) do not all share the same religion, butr many of them share a love of the Lakers, the Pacific Ocean, skill and acceptance of the inevitability of freeway driving, sophistication about celebrities, appreciation and patronage of 'dining out', etc.

New Yorkers, Chicagoans, San Franciscans, residents of Washington, D.C., Miami, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth all share an urban world view.  But, the geography, socio-economic, and ethnic characteristics of each of these cities creates a specific and unique world view.  Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists all have distinct world views.  Democrats, Republicans, Green Party, Tea Party, Independent voters all have distinct world views.

For a person committed to READING, it is important that she/he know what world view he/she is bringing to the content of the reading material.  Part of following Socrates's admonition about knowing oneself, is to reflect on one's own world view.  I took a world view survey on line, and got my personal world view profile.  I agree with the profile.  You might like to take this questionnaire for your own self-knowledge.  Or, you might want to have someone you met on a social network take the survey, to see, if your profiles are compatible.

The URL for the world view survey and personal profile is cited here.

http;//quizfarm.com/quizzes/new/eddxii/what-is-your-world-view/

As a former college history professor, I need to make this final reference to Weltanschauung. The Nazi party came to power because of a shared world view of many people in Germany. This world view did not originate in the twentieth century, the seeds for this political point of view pervaded Germanic culture long before Germany was even a nation.  As horrific as the Nazi party was, it was an example of an idea whose time had finally come in a specific nation, but the ideas can be found in prior centuries in the music, art and mythology of what would become 20th century Germany.

What do you think about the concept of World View?  How many world views do you have, religious, political, philosophical, social???  If you have the time and the inclination, take the World View Survey and analyze the profile it gives you.  What do you think??  Does individual WORLD VIEW evolve in the maturing adult??

Share your thoughts

Dr. CW

What is your Metacognitive Profile?

Integrating Intellectual Activity into your every day Life

Metacognition is a concept closely linked to the professions of reading education and literacy training.  Too often, the public uses a simplistic definition of metacognition.  Such a definition is just what the adjective simplistic implies - incomplete and inadequate.  If committed readers are to engage in developing their metacognitive abilities, it is essential tha they have a correct and thorough understanding of what metacognition is.

METACOGNITION involves TWO distinct processes.

The first component of metacognition is that an individual needs to be aware of her/his THINKING processes.It is important to remember that THINKING is a distinctly separate aspect of Learning.  There are many surveys, questionnaires/inventories on How People THINK, and also on How People Learn.  For this discussion, it is important for the reader to know that thinking and learning are two different intellectual activities.If you are interested in discovering more about your learning and thinking, there are many measures available for free on the internet.  Most of these measures provide some sort of personal profile based on your answers.

How People LEARN is a popular subject.  People may be auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learners.They might be right brain lobe/left brain lobe dominant. Anyone who is able to open the browser on the internet can create a profile of herself/himself as a THINKER and as a LEARNER.  In about one and a half hours we can get enough information from the internet to classify our learning styles and thinking skills in a rudimentary way.  Of course, cognitive psychologists and neurologists specializing in the brain can develop a deeper and  more accurate profile.  But, many internet profiling inventories have some value, if only to initiate thinking about a topic.

By the time an individual is fifteen years of age, she/he has enough self-knowledge to self-identify how they learn best, and what kind of learning is a challenge for them.  Socrates said, "Know yourself."  It is a complex, continual process to recognize and understand one's own individual and unique THINKING patterns.  Using internet assesment measures can help in this research of the self.

The second component of metacognition is to regulate one's own cognitive processes.

Once you are aware of your own personal thinking processes, you need to actively govern HOW you think and WHAT you think.  You need to question yourself., "Is this the most effective thinking approach for thisspecific task?"  I know HOW I think, "Does my personal thought pattern need to be changed or adjusted for this specific intellectual task?"

Regulating one's own cognitive processes is a skill to be learned and practiced continually.  Cognitive thinking manuals, hard copy and e-books contain metacogntive training tasks.  A manual that I recommend is Taking Control of Your College Reading & Learning by E. Byrd et al, published by Harcourt College Publishers.  There are many other tools you can find in an internet search.

Integrating Intellectual Activity into Everyday Thinking is no longer a voluntary commitment.

In this 21st century, we all need to THINK on a higher level, if we are to realize our personal goals and succeed in our jobs and personal relationships.  If an intellectual activity is robotic, then, robots are already being manufactured and used for these activities.  Robotic thinking is demeaning for humans, in my opinion.  Lower Level Thinking (see Benjamin Bloom's Hierarchy) is not going to get us very far in the 21st century.  If a task requires intellectual activity, then, we need to know our own cognitive processes and styles.

Follow Socrates' advice.  Know yourself and USE what you know to enhance your quality of life and your appreciation of your world.  What have you found out about yourself as you created your THINKING PROFILE?

Share your learning/thinking self.  What we think contributes to who we are.  Who are you?

Dr. CW