Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
"It's Not ADD; It's Childhood."

Just a brilliantly blunt but needed reminder that sometimes, when children aren’t paying attention to what you want them to, that isn’t ADD – just kids being kids normal, healthy kids.

(Though yes, please ignore the fact that the reminder is coming from one of those crappy commodified “personal tutoring and learning centers.” It’s still good advice.)

Nov 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Paul Graham: "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule"

John Gruber recently mentioned how he fell in love with this piece from Paul Graham; after reading it, I feel exactly the same way.

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

I know my day is just shot when I have to run errands or make it to meetings in the middle of the day. Similarly, going to school classes does the same thing; by the time I get out around noon, I’ve lost all creative motivation and essentially waste the rest of the afternoon.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Jul 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Attention: the Real Reason Why Kids Have Trouble In School?

Recent pediatric studies are suggesting new reasons for why a kid might have trouble in school:

A study in last month’s Pediatrics shows that the greater a child’s attention problems at age 6, the more likely that child will perform poorly on tests of math and reading in the last few years of high school. Contrary to some of their own expectations, researchers found no connection between achievement and behavioral problems, whether they were aggressive actions (such as children pushing classmates or lashing out at the teacher) or issues like depression or withdrawal.

And… I never read the rest. Maybe you can tell me what it says.

(But how’s this for a postscript: It’s really good that at least science – if only education would get there too – is getting away from the ridiculously regimental and outdated behaviorist concepts and frameworks that have driven most of our collective policy and work with young children.)

(Another postscript: If you’re at all interested in childhood ADHD, there’s some good stuff in here. Julie Schweitzer, a co-author of the aforementioned study, points to mounting evidence from the field of neuroscience that suggests “that ADHD has its roots in a person’s physiology” – and while she doesn’t come out and say it, her remarks do subtly lend credence in my mind to the “Hunter vs. Farmer” theory of the causes of ADHD, which posits that some people are genetically predisposed with ADHD-like symptoms, to help them better thrive off short, periodic episodes of excitement and action. While those with ADHD appear to lack focus generally, often they also have the ability to hyperfocus on particular tasks or objects when they’re uniquely engaged in them. Speaking personally as one with ADHD, I experience “hyperfocus” quite a fair bit.)

(The last post-script, I promise: The “Tools of the Mind” method mentioned in the article is, indeed, pretty fascinating. I can see a lot of future educational potential to it.)

Jul 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

Why You Should Stop Paying Attention and Zone Out More

Oh good – there’s hope for me yet. From DISCOVER Magazine:

Everybody knows what it is like for our minds to wander, and yet, for a long time psychologists shied away from examining the experience. It seemed too elusive and subjective to study scientifically. Only in the past decade have they even measured just how common mind wandering is. The answer is very.

Some of the most striking evidence comes from Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who is one of the leading researchers on mind wandering. In 2005 he and his colleagues told a group of undergraduates to read the opening chapters of War and Peace on a computer monitor and then to tap a key whenever they realized they were not thinking about what they were reading. On average, the students reported that their minds wandered 5.4 times in a 45-minute session. Other researchers have gotten similar results with simpler tasks, such as pronouncing words or pressing a button in response to seeing particular letters and numbers. Depending on the experiment, people spend up to half their time not thinking about the task at hand—even when they’ve been told explicitly to pay attention.

5.4 times in a 45-minute session? My brain wanders that many times in a 1-minute session.

But the gist of the research – in case you didn’t have the attention span to read the whole article – is that our minds wandering in and out when we’re not aware isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a way our brains actively process more distant, long-term goals and problems, and think more deeply about “the big picture” of things. Different “networks” of the brain are exercised when we unintentionally zone out, shifting our focus from more immediate, situational and task-oriented thinking to the long-term thinking that often yields the best discoveries and solutions.

Of course, the researchers say a balance must be struck – zoning out permanently is a bad thing. (Alas.) But finally, we have some scientific proof standing up on the side of daydreamers everywhere!

(Via Gever Tulley.)

Jul 11, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #