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An ongoing study of mania

My husband is bipolar, and since I am not inclined to settle for simple labels of things, his incredibly complex mental state is a constant source of ripe material for me to attempt to grasp and comprehend. His logic (obtained from decades of rapid and constant thinking and rethinking) makes perfect sense, but it remains an ongoing challenge for me to see some angles of certain aspects (which are necessary for me to keep my patience and maintain growth). I “grok” each piece eventually, but I readily admit that sometimes it takes me a while. Though I consider myself intelligent at times, he always helps me keep myself humble in that regard.

Some pieces are significant enough that I know I will need to remember them (on frequent occasion) forever… I will share any valid realizations I can muster, for my own memory, and for any comfort they provide.
Lately, as we’ve been in the middle of a move (and our car just burnt to the ground), and we’ve been interacting with people constantly, his mania has been periodically present in full gear. This has prevented his sleep as he considers the consequences of each and every potential interaction with any person of significance. This cycle– partly attributable to his state of hyper-awareness (as a result of past trauma)– is something he cannot prevent, and it helps explain why social interaction fuels his mania indefinitely. Each person is a dot with a miasma of connections to other dots, especially in the realm of potential. In the past, he has had weeks of insomnia as a result of this, leading alternately to a nervous breakdown, kidney failure, and respiratory attacks.

In the past two years, we’ve been extensively discussing his symptoms, and his ability to verbalize his perspective has been improving immensely. This has, in turn, helped him understand his own condition– and, in some ways, to cope with it. He has made great progress in recovering parts of himself that he once thought lost (he couldn’t listen to music for years, but he is now discovering a musical ability), and I am delighted with each piece of his own puzzle that he finds and recognizes.

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Awakening the right side of the brain

In developmental psychology, it is generally accepted that we each have left and right hemispheres within our brains that address specific functions of our bodies. The right brain is said to be dominant in spatial and facial recognition, and musical/visual affinity. The left brain is more rigid, preferring calculations, math, and logic. Our personal preference is most often based on our dominant hand, which causes the most activation and strengthening of the corresponding opposite hemisphere.

For example, I am right handed, and developed my left brain very strongly as a result. Throughout my life I have attempted to write and draw with my left hand, or to incorporate it into usage, but it was frustratingly difficult to remember to do so.

I became interested in specifically expanding the usage of my right brain as I learned more about neuroscience, and how the brain can actively grow through the learning of skills or knowledge. Learning juggling is said to physically increase the white matter of your brain—any such gain leads in turn to enhanced efficiency and capability in any other task correlated with the skill you learn. The right brain is said to be the home of “intuition”, or your ability to connect the dots (the dots being the specific objects or facts in your left brain), and I was definitely eager to see if I could improve that.

I took a drawing class—“Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain”—to see how easy and/or effective such a change could be. I have always been an artist, but I have always drawn with my right hand and left brain (resulting in stiff drawings from clipped memories).

After just a few classes, I began to notice shifts in my perception. Practicing this method of drawing was forcing me to specifically consider the spatial relationships between objects, rather than the objects themselves. As that became more and more fluid, I became able to draw accurately from life rather than from the filtered viewpoint of the left brain (which acts to sort and categorize all incoming information).

Other aspects of my life changed as well. I gained a greater appreciation of music, and have started writing songs (something I’ve never done before). I understand geometry and the sciences of spatial relationships much more (formerly one of my weakest subjects). My terrible memory for faces has started to improve—all in the past 6 months, since the drawing course started.

I started practicing writing with my left hand again, though it didn’t seem comfortable or fluid in any sense until I realized it made more sense to write in a mirrored fashion to enhance the flow of the wrist. Making that shift was surprisingly easy, and it has enabled a tremendous gain in speed and accuracy.

I thought I might get a boost out of tracing a mirrored alphabet, and set about finding one online. However, every single site that I looked at presented only worksheets on fixing mirrored writing. Parents were worried, seeing their children write in such a fashion, and they set about correcting what they perceived as flaws.

For many kids, being told that something is absolutely wrong will affect their perception of it for the rest of their life. Inserting a filter that confines spatial perception blocks the growth of the right brain and each attached function (musical, visual, facial affinity). Teaching a child to do both methods (or teaching anybody to do so) enhances their ability to make connections. The best example of this point may be Leonardo da Vinci, who could and did write effectively in both fashions.

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Dedicated to the Maine NEWL of 2013

We came here as individuals,

noble and fierce in our own right.

Those first few days changed us

as we learned of leadership’s great might.

Hand to hand we considered our lives

broken apart by society’s divide.

Heart to heart a new chain was formed

Ready and able to withstand any storm.

Knowing the truth in that strength,

tempered by love and by rage,

Bar by bar we will tear down

that terrible oppressive cage.

So that each and every future woman

can stand up and say,

“I’m ready to face life.

Today is my day.”

–Lura Jackson, 06/03/13

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The i with no eyes

For most of our species’ existence, as individuals, we did have ready access to mirrors (and hence, reflections). Our only source of ever seeing ourselves would be on the surface of water or in the reflection of another person’s eye. Seeing yourself reflected in the eyes of other people lent significant value to those interactions (on a psychological level).

Now, we do have access to mirrors, but beyond that, our focus is essentially on an electronic screen. Appropriately, our reflections are lost whenever these devices are on (as is our ability to self-reflect). We become caught in our creations.

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Can our creations teach us?

We are faced, occasionally, with the task of defining our philosophy of technology in education. For myself, I believe that we have reached the technological capacity of being able to convey any imaginable thought or feeling in some fashion, giving us a level of communicative capability that we have never before reached. Communication and creativity are the driving forces of human success, and they will continue to propel us into the futures we wish to experience, especially aided by technology that is becoming reality shortly after its original imagining.

Speaking broadly, if we teach ourselves and our children to be receptive to the changing nature of technology (instead focusing on honing our adaptive technical abilities over our concrete technical ones), we will achieve the greatest advantage our species offers. Being afixed to outdated, slower formats is being afixed to outdated and slower methods of expressing thought.

The important thing to keep in mind is that we must teach this philosophy. We must work to remember that there is no certainty we should assume in the limits of technological capacity. Each child should be taught that their computer is a tool to help them understand, not a source of simplistic answers that will help them fill in their homework. We should shift our methods of teaching to critical interpretation of information, now that information retention is no longer as significant (as information is now retained on the web).

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Footprints in the Cybersands

As a college student in the process of transferring to another college, it seems relevant to consider the issue of one’s digital footprints. The Huffington Post reported in 2011 that upwards of 80% of college admission officers will look up applicants on Facebook or using Google (article here). I imagine that number is much higher now, and it will continue to be one of the determining factors in admission for the upcoming batches of college students.

Are you aware of the traces you leave whenever you log in to a website, search for terms, or make comments on certain sites? Perhaps you use proxy software to mask your online adventures, or make use of the security features in Google Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers. Perhaps you take the opposite approach, figuring the information is relatively harmless in the sea of data that is the web. Either way, it is prudent to prepare all users of the web in knowing of the extent of the tracking that can go on, and the effect their digital footprint could have on them.

Some schools are taking a proactive approach to handle this issue, and to convey the seriousness of it to their students. Many teachers (such as Nichole Pinkard in Chicago) find it goes hand in hand with promoting digital literacy, which will soon define literacy in general as media and technology become completely integrated with daily interactions.

In the best cases, students are taught the benefits of making a positive footprint (rather than hiding anonymously on the web), as well as the ramifications of negative ones. This could be said to be the modern version of imparting responsible and ethical behavior to the online citizen– teaching students that their actions and words have repercussions and should be treated as such (rather than allowing the misconception to continue that it is the ideal trolling ground).

Thinking on this, I have to consider my own digital footprint. I enjoy commenting on news and blog posts now and then, and I use my Facebook profile to sign in to various sites. I search for a variety of terms and subjects in the pursuit of various academic topics. Presently, I keep most of my Facebook profile restricted to the general public, though some of my political and scientific inclinations shine through at times. Should I be concerned?

Doing a search on myself reveals all of the places I’ve lived in the past 12 years, along with a few archived newspaper articles (which are positive). Some other loosely statistical information is available, not all of it accurate. I have to wonder at the breadth of companies that have one or more of my e-mail addresses in their mailing lists or on file, as it is difficult to know how much of that has been saved and shared over the 15 years I’ve been online… it is easy to feel invaded by such incessant tracking, but it is also empowering to realize how you can impact the impression people have of you by augmenting your online presence with positive reinforcement.

The opposite potential is disturbing, but it should be said– someone can easily harass and manipulate another by publishing false information online, and spreading it. Thus, we have the need for cyberethics.

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Learnboost Lesson Planner (reviewish)

The prior three posts are an attempt to explore the capabilities of the Learnboost lesson planning system at https://www.learnboost.com. Overall, I’ve been pretty impressed so far, though I have run into a few bugs that have resulted in time outs during web page loading (when trying to share to wordpress). I haven’t put the Learnboost system through its full paces as yet, but it appears to be extensive in what it covers (including the ability to add standards). All in all, not bad!

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Lesson Plan – Picturacy (picture literacy)

General

Teacher

Grade Level

11th Grade

Classroom

Concept

Deducing the meaning of pictures and symbols

Goals

Students who take this class will be treated to an elaborate lesson supporting the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. In this age of quickly shifting methods of communication, being able to actively employ multiple methods of interpretation is key to cultural understanding.

Students will analyze images and symbols and interpret their meaning on a cultural and historical level (by “telling the story” of the picture).

Tags
  • critical thinking
  • sociology
  • interpretation

Standards

  • 6.RH.2

    Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.

    Reading History/Social Studies › Key Ideas and Details

Materials

Materials

Notebook, writing utensil

Media (URLs)