quarta-feira, 28 de dezembro de 2011

FELIZ 2012!! O que significa o número 12?




Meus queridos leitores espero que dois mil e DOZE seja DOCE, mas tomem muito cuidado com a glicose, e que a DOSE de amor seja triplicada na vida de cada um. Lembrem-se que o número DOZE é poderoso, pois foram 12 apóstolos que Jesus escolheu, o dia é dividido em DOZE horas, Climatologicamente são quatro as estações e cada uma de três meses. 4 x 3 = 12, a fonte dessa letra é DOZE rsrsrsr.



Os mistérios do doze dizem respeito às relações entre o abstrato e o concreto, entre a Trindade e o mundo material.


3 = Trindade. 4 = Estruturação Material. 3 x 4 = 12



"O doze é um número glorioso, é a manifestação da Trindade nos quatro cantos do horizonte. É a exaltação da matéria pelo espírito".


O Simbolismo do Número Doze



Trata-se de um número sagrado e serve para medir os corpos celestes, assim como os doze meses do ano. Doze foi os discípulos de Jesus, 12 os frutos do Espírito Santo, 12 as tribos de Israel, 12 os filhos de Jacob, 12 vezes apareceu Jesus Cristo depois de morto.


O 12 se considera passivo e é o sinônimo da perfeição. Doze vezes 30 graus formam os 360 graus da circunferência.


Os caldeus, os etruscos e os romanos dividiam a seus deuses em 12 grupos. O deus Odin escandinavo tinha 12 nomes, do mesmo modo que os rabinos sustentavam antigamente que o nome de Deus se compunha de 12 letras. Adão e Eva foram expulsos do Paraíso às 12 horas do meio dia. São 12 as pedras preciosas da Coroa da Inglaterra, 12 as portas da cidade de Jerusalém e 12 os anjos que as custodiavam, segundo o Apocalipse. Segundo João, o Evangelista, em Jerusalém viverão 12 mil homens eleitos.


O 12 representa o sacrifício no Tarô. Nos 12 primeiros arcanos deste jogo se encontra a chave do total de cartas que o compõem. Em Atenas se adotou o sistema decimal e Platão admitia 12 deuses em sua República. Também havia 12 deuses primitivos entre os japoneses. O 12 é o número do justo equilíbrio, a prudência, a forma graciosa. Para os etruscos o céu tinha 12 divisões pelas as quais o sol passava todos os dias, e dividiam suas possessões em 12 províncias. As 12 é a hora do cenit do sol, e 12 é o número da esfera do relógio.

FELIZ





Leia mais: http://www.revistasextosentido.net/news/o-numero-12/


segunda-feira, 21 de novembro de 2011

Pensando no futuro, pais investem na educação bilíngue dos filhos






Mãe brasileira, pai norueguês e professores ingleses. Foi em meio a essa realidade que Cláudia Storvik criou a filha, hoje com 13 anos. "Sempre soube que ela iria crescer escutando três línguas diferentes: português, norueguês e inglês", conta a advogada moradora de Londres, na Inglaterra. Cláudia sempre lidou de forma natural com situação peculiar da família, mas comenta que muitos pais que vivem em condições semelhantes não encaram de forma tranquila. "Eles têm medo que a criança não fale, que comece a falar muito tarde ou que fique confusa com mais de uma língua", diz.




Porém, o que é motivo de receio para muitos pais no exterior têm se tornado uma opção atrativa para aqueles que permanecem no Brasil. O ensino bilíngue ou multilíngue - que é caracterizado quando uma criança é alfabetizada em duas ou mais línguas, respectivamente - não é mais realidade somente para crianças que vivem em outro país. "Com a globalização, a internet e o crescimento da necessidade do uso do inglês no trabalho e na comunicação, os responsáveis têm demandado melhores resultados linguísticos de seus filhos", afirma Vanessa Tenório, sócia do Systemic Bilingual de Ensino, empresa especializada em implementar educação bilíngue em escolas.



Vanessa enxergou o potencial do ensino bilíngue no país em 1998, quando fundou a empresa com a irmã Fátima. Utilizando um método que aplica o inglês de cinco a dez horas semanais para trabalhar matérias escolares como matemática, ciências, história, geografia, artes e outras, a mestre em Educação começou a implementar o modelo em escolas particulares de São Paulo. Em 2010, o programa foi inserido em quatro escolas privadas, duas em São Paulo, uma no Rio Grande do Norte e a última em Minas Gerais. Neste ano, o número aumentou para 40 colégios privados em 12 Estados no Brasil.



Por não possuir legislação específica e nem dados oficiais, o número de escolas bilíngues no Brasil ainda é incerto. Contudo, Lyle Gordon French, ex-diretor pedagógico da Escola Cidade Jardim/PlayPen (SP) fez um mapeamento dessas instituições de ensino durante os anos de 2007 e 2009, e concluiu que o número de escolas bilíngues cresceu 24% em apenas dois anos. De acordo com a apuração, eram 149 colégios no ano de 2007 e 180 em 2009.



"A questão é que a velha fórmula do inglês oferecido no colégio, que é somente o estudo da estrutura da língua, nunca levou a resultados palpáveis em termos do uso efetivo da língua para a comunicação fluente", explica Vanessa. Para ela, o que os pais buscam é uma fluência dos pequenos, principalmente na língua inglesa. "O ensino bilíngue consegue isso, uma vez que trata a língua estrangeira como um meio de comunicação efetiva dentro de um contexto, seja em uma aula de culinária, matemática ou história".



A paulista Lilian da Silva Santos colocou a filha Marina em uma escola bilíngue já no primeiro ano de idade. Hoje, com 7 anos, a menina já consegue se comunicar de forma fluente em inglês e em português. "Eu e meu marido sofremos para aprender um pouco de inglês nos velhos cursinhos de idiomas. Gostaríamos que nossa filha aprendesse de maneira mais tranquila a língua, pois o inglês é essencial na vida acadêmica e profissional", conta a terapeuta ocupacional.



Aprender outro idioma antes dos 6 anos facilita fluência

No pátio do Colégio Friburgo, em São Paulo, uma turma da segunda série é separada em grupos de quatro. Em seguida, a professora entrega uma cartolina para cada grupo com caixas de tinta e canetinhas coloridas. Os alunos são instruídos a pintar os círculos desenhados conforme a cor descrita. A atividade seria algo ordinário não fosse o idioma falado fluentemente pela professora e os pequenos alunos: o inglês.



O exemplo da aula bilíngue da escola Friburgo comprova um fato explicado por Ricardo Schütz, pesquisador do ensino de inglês e criador do site English Made in Brazil: as crianças se adaptam ao idioma para conseguir se comunicar. Criando a filha em Londres e falando com ela em português em casa, Cláudia Storvik confirma a tese. "Desde o nascimento de nossa filha, eu falava português com ela, e meu marido, que é norueguês, falava a sua língua materna. Usávamos o famoso sistema ¿one parent, one language¿ (um pai, uma língua)", conta explicando que somente tomavam o cuidado de sempre falar com a filha no mesmo idioma: a mãe em português e o pai em norueguês. "Assim ela sabia que, para se comunicar comigo, precisava falar em português, com o pai, em norueguês, e na escola, em inglês", conta.



Cláudia afirma que a filha começou a falar com 10 meses de vida. "No começo, ela misturava as palavras, mas isso é normal e não é sinal de confusão. No início, a criança pode usar palavras das várias línguas indiscriminadamente, como minha filha fazia, porque seu principal objetivo é se comunicar. Mas uma vez que seu vocabulário cresce, o uso de cada língua passa a ser sistemático", explica.



No site English Made in Brazil, que publica artigos e estudos científicos sobre o aprendizado de idiomas, Schütz descreve que o estudo antes dos 6 anos de idade é o que torna a criança fluente em um idioma. Ele afirma que os dois hemisférios cerebrais desempenham diferentes funções - o lado esquerdo é lógico e analítico, enquanto o direito é criativo e especializado em percepção e construção de conhecimento. O hemisfério direito seria, por assim dizer, a porta de entrada das experiências e a área de processamento para transformá-las em conhecimento.



O pesquisador explica que, no cérebro de uma criança, os dois hemisférios estão mais interligados do que no cérebro de um adulto, o que significa que este é o melhor período da vida para se aprender qualquer coisa, incluindo idiomas. Com isso, a assimilação da língua ocorreria via hemisfério direito para ser sedimentada no hemisfério esquerdo como habilidade permanente, a tão desejada fluência. Ainda de acordo com ele, a maior separação dos dois hemisférios ocorre a partir da puberdade, por volta dos 12 anos de idade, ou seja, depois disso, se torna cada vez mais difícil tornar-se fluente em outras línguas. O auge da comunicação entre as duas partes do cérebro ocorre do primeiro ao sexto ano de vida, daí a facilidade das crianças em aprender novos idiomas.



Escolas bilíngues são mais caras

Porém, os pais que querem propiciar uma alfabetização para os filhos em dois idiomas precisam se preparar para os custos elevados. Segundo Vanessa Tenório, esses colégios geralmente são mais caros porque a carga horária é superior e porque demandam a contratação de profissionais mais especializados.



Segundo a especialista, essas escolas costumam ter mais horas de aula por dia, mas na educação infantil é comum lecionar uma aula do currículo padrão no segundo idioma, sem acrescentar mais tempo no colégio. "O conceito é usar a língua como meio de comunicação, e não como fim", diz ela, explicando que o ensino bilíngue não compreende aulas sobre o idioma estrangeiro, mas assuntos diversos lecionados em um outro idioma além do português. "Só assim em nível subconsciente que o aluno vai poder se tornar fluente um dia", finaliza.

quarta-feira, 15 de junho de 2011

The Bilingual Advantage

The Bilingual Advantage  By CLAUDIA DREIFUS


Published: May 30, 2011

A cognitive neuroscientist, Ellen Bialystok has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind. Her good news: Among other benefits, the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, was awarded a $100,000 Killam Prize last year for her contributions to social science. We spoke for two hours in a Washington hotel room in February and again, more recently, by telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.



Chris Young for The New York Times

MENTAL WORKOUT Ellen Bialystok with a neuroimaging electrode cap.

Get Science News From The New York Times » .

Q. How did you begin studying bilingualism?



A. You know, I didn’t start trying to find out whether bilingualism was bad or good. I did my doctorate in psychology: on how children acquire language. When I finished graduate school, in 1976, there was a job shortage in Canada for Ph.D.’s. The only position I found was with a research project studying second language acquisition in school children. It wasn’t my area. But it was close enough.



As a psychologist, I brought neuroscience questions to the study, like “How does the acquisition of a second language change thought?” It was these types of questions that naturally led to the bilingualism research. The way research works is, it takes you down a road. You then follow that road.



Q. So what exactly did you find on this unexpected road?



A. As we did our research, you could see there was a big difference in the way monolingual and bilingual children processed language. We found that if you gave 5- and 6-year-olds language problems to solve, monolingual and bilingual children knew, pretty much, the same amount of language.



But on one question, there was a difference. We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important.



Q. How does this work — do you understand it?



A. Yes. There’s a system in your brain, the executive control system. It’s a general manager. Its job is to keep you focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It’s what makes it possible for you to hold two different things in your mind at one time and switch between them.



If you have two languages and you use them regularly, the way the brain’s networks work is that every time you speak, both languages pop up and the executive control system has to sort through everything and attend to what’s relevant in the moment. Therefore the bilinguals use that system more, and it’s that regular use that makes that system more efficient.



Q. One of your most startling recent findings is that bilingualism helps forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. How did you come to learn this?



A. We did two kinds of studies. In the first, published in 2004, we found that normally aging bilinguals had better cognitive functioning than normally aging monolinguals. Bilingual older adults performed better than monolingual older adults on executive control tasks. That was very impressive because it didn’t have to be that way. It could have turned out that everybody just lost function equally as they got older.



That evidence made us look at people who didn’t have normal cognitive function. In our next studies , we looked at the medical records of 400 Alzheimer’s patients. On average, the bilinguals showed Alzheimer’s symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language. This didn’t mean that the bilinguals didn’t have Alzheimer’s. It meant that as the disease took root in their brains, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level. They could cope with the disease for longer.



Q. So high school French is useful for something other than ordering a special meal in a restaurant?



A. Sorry, no. You have to use both languages all the time. You won’t get the bilingual benefit from occasional use.



Q. One would think bilingualism might help with multitasking — does it?



A. Yes, multitasking is one of the things the executive control system handles. We wondered, “Are bilinguals better at multitasking?” So we put monolinguals and bilinguals into a driving simulator. Through headphones, we gave them extra tasks to do — as if they were driving and talking on cellphones. We then measured how much worse their driving got. Now, everybody’s driving got worse. But the bilinguals, their driving didn’t drop as much. Because adding on another task while trying to concentrate on a driving problem, that’s what bilingualism gives you — though I wouldn’t advise doing this.



Q. Has the development of new neuroimaging technologies changed your work?



A. Tremendously. It used to be that we could only see what parts of the brain lit up when our subjects performed different tasks. Now, with the new technologies, we can see how all the brain structures work in accord with each other.



In terms of monolinguals and bilinguals, the big thing that we have found is that the connections are different. So we have monolinguals solving a problem, and they use X systems, but when bilinguals solve the same problem, they use others. One of the things we’ve seen is that on certain kinds of even nonverbal tests, bilingual people are faster. Why? Well, when we look in their brains through neuroimaging, it appears like they’re using a different kind of a network that might include language centers to solve a completely nonverbal problem. Their whole brain appears to rewire because of bilingualism.



Q. Bilingualism used to be considered a negative thing — at least in the United States. Is it still?



A. Until about the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that bilingualism was a disadvantage. Some of this was xenophobia. Thanks to science, we now know that the opposite is true.



Q. Many immigrants choose not to teach their children their native language. Is this a good thing?



A. I’m asked about this all the time. People e-mail me and say, “I’m getting married to someone from another culture, what should we do with the children?” I always say, “You’re sitting on a potential gift.”



There are two major reasons people should pass their heritage language onto children. First, it connects children to their ancestors. The second is my research: Bilingualism is good for you. It makes brains stronger. It is brain exercise.



Q. Are you bilingual?



A. Well, I have fully bilingual grandchildren because my daughter married a Frenchman. When my daughter announced her engagement to her French boyfriend, we were a little surprised. It’s always astonishing when your child announces she’s getting married. She said, “But Mom, it’ll be fine, our children will be bilingual!”



A version of this interview appeared in print on May 31, 2011, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Conversation With
Ellen Bialystok.

terça-feira, 3 de maio de 2011

Digital Natives



Are we ready for theses students?


Classes in 18th century looked like this:

And today classrooms look like this:


What's the difference? Why are students so bored in class? What can we do to help them?

Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
Today‟s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.

If our students are digital natives what are we?
"Things Aren't What They Used to Be"

If you are under 20 you are a Digital Native
If you are over 20, no matter how tech savvy you are, you are a still a Digital Immigrant
If you are over 40 and have steadfastly avoided technology, you are a Digital Dinosaur


What happens if you are a dinosaur?

Stop making excuses and ponder these …




  • Recognize that around 65% – 85% of students and parents DO HAVE ACCESS to computers and the Internet and acknowledge that TECHNOLOGY IS NOT JUST A FAD.


  • Things are changing at an ever increasing rate and will continue to do so in the lives of today's children, so you need to be a role model for LIFE-LONG LEARNING AND FLEXIBLE THINKING or you risk becoming irrelevant.

  • Consider where you'd be today if most people in the 20th Century refused to accept the automobile and kept using horse-drawn buggies just because a car seemed unnatural and complicated?

  • If you worked in business or industry, you would NOT HAVE THE OPTION TO REFUSE to use new programs instituted by your employer, so why should teachers think they are exempt?

  • Would you want to go to a doctor or surgeon who refused to use new cutting-edge innovations?

  • Don't keep bragging about your unwillingness to try new technology because YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED OVER 65 MILLION YEARS AGO TO DINOSAURS WHO COULDN'T ADAPT!

  • Thank your lucky stars that according to modern research in neuroscience, your BRAIN DOES NOT STOP making new connections when you are six years old!

  • Remember that you are still the teacher, and even though you may not be as adept at computers as some of your students, you are the expert in your content. You only have to learn enough tech tricks to engage your students' attention. Then they'll be motivated to learn subject content from you, and they can teach you the tech tools!

  • According to Jack Lemmon, "FAILURE SELDOM STOPS YOU. WHAT STOPS YOU IS FEAR OF FAILURE."

  • You CAN LEARN to use these tools, but the longer you ignore them, the more skills and knowledge you will have to catch up with – so don’t waste any more time ignoring them – START LEARNING!

  • TRANSLATION - OLD DOGS DINOSAURS CAN LEARN NEW TRICKS 
bottom line __________________________________ there is still hope!!



for more information visit these websites:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~techlady/immigrants.html#dinosaur
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/

segunda-feira, 4 de abril de 2011

Are you a dog person or a cat person?

Even Among Animals: Leaders, Followers and Schmoozers
Serge BlochBy NATALIE ANGIER

Published: April 5, 2010



I recently tried taking a couple of online personality tests, and I must say I was disappointed by the exercise. I was asked bland amorphisms like whether I was “someone who tends to find fault” with people (duh), is generally “friendly and agreeable” (see previous response), and always “does a thorough job” (can I just skip this question?).



Nowhere were there any real challenges like the following: Let’s say you are very hungry, and you go over to your favorite food dish. Inside you see, in addition to the standard blend of peanuts and insect parts, a bright pink plastic frog. How long before you work up the nerve to eat your dinner anyway? Or: You have just been ushered into a room that is in every way familiar, except that somebody has put a scrap of old, brown carpet in the middle of the floor. Do you keep your distance from the novelty item, or do you rush over and start pecking at it?



These and other vividly tangible gems are taken from the burgeoning field of animal personality research, the effort to understand why individual members of the same species can be so mulishly themselves, and so unlike one another on a wide variety of behavioral measures. Scientists studying animals from virtually every niche of the bestial kingdom have found evidence of distinctive personalities — bundled sets of behaviors, quirks, preferences and pet peeves that remain stable over time and across settings. They have found stylistic diversity in chimpanzees, monkeys, barnacle geese, farm minks, blue tits and great tits, bighorn sheep, dumpling squid, pumpkinseed sunfish, zebra finches, spotted hyenas, even spiders and water striders, to name but a few. They have identified hotheads and tiptoers, schmoozers and loners, divas, dullards and fearless explorers, and they have learned that animals, like us, often cling to the same personality for the bulk of their lives. The daredevil chicken of today is the one out crossing the road tomorrow.



Researchers are delving into the source and significance of all these animal spirits. They are asking questions like, when geese start on a wild goose chase, what sort of goose will lead the flock, and why do the rest choose to follow it? They are devising computer models to explain how different personality types can be maintained in a given animal population, and they are exploring the upsides and drawbacks of different personal styles.



In his studies of fishing spiders, for example, J. Chadwick Johnson, now at Arizona State University, has discovered that some juvenile female spiders are exceptionally voracious predators and thus grow into beefy, fecund adults. But the avarice has a potential downside. The big-mouthed female spiders have a nasty habit of cannibalizing potential mates before copulation, and without sperm to fertilize their eggs, all their hard-won superfecundity could go to waste.



Other scientists are exploring personal qualities that span phylogenies and allegories: Recent research suggests that highly sensitive, arty-type humans have a lot in common with squealing pigs and twitchy mice, and that to call a hypersensitive person thin-skinned or touchy might hold a grain of physical truth.



Some critics complain that the term “animal personality” is a bit too slick, while others worry that the entire enterprise smacks of that dread golem of biology, anthropomorphism — assigning human traits to nonhuman beings. Researchers in the field, however, defend their lingo and tactics. “Some of the behavior patterns we’re talking about are similar to what we call personality in human psychology literature,” said Max Wolf of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. “So why not call it personality in other animals?”



M. Bell of the University of Illinois at Urbana, who studies personality in stickleback fish, said: “We’re not being cute and anecdotal, we’re looking at consistent differences in behavior that we can test and measure.”



Reporting in this month’s issue of the journal Animal Behaviour, researchers from the University of Glasgow addressed the widespread concern that the findings of animal personality studies, so often performed on captive subjects, may be laboratory artifacts, with scant relevance to how the creatures behave in nature.



Working with a group of 125 wild-caught blue tits over the course of two winters, Katherine A. Herborn and her colleagues first typed each bird’s personality in the lab, focusing on two key traits: neophobia, or fear of novelty, and the willingness to explore one’s surroundings. They put pink plastic frogs in the birds’ food dish and clocked the time it took each bird to feed. All the birds noticed the luminous intruder.





A version of this article appeared in print on April 6, 2010, on page D1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/science/06angi.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&sq=EVenamonganimalsLeadersfollowersandschmoozers&st=cse&scp=1


Your Pet May Reveal Information About Your Personality


Would you consider yourself more of a "dog person" or a "cat person"? According to one personality study, your answer to this question might actually reveal important information about your personality.


In a study of 4,500 people, researchers asked participants whether they considered themselves to be more dog people or cat people. These individuals also completed a personality survey that measured a number of broad traits including conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism and agreeableness.



The researchers discovered that people who identified themselves as dog people tended to be more extroverted and eager to please others, while those who described themselves as cat people tended to be more introverted and curious.



According to researcher Sam Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas-Austin, the results might have important implications in the field of pet therapy. By using personality screenings, therapists might be able to match people in need with animals that are best suited to their personality.

http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/tp/facs-about-personality.htm











Pesquisar este blog