Profile

It seems that you have made it inside my head. Now, I'm supposed to

give you atour of the learning area of the brain and explain what I

need to do to become a better learner.

The Big circles represent my brain

The diagram you can see on the right is of my body, (no I do not look

like that) the orange parts of the body indicate which side of the

body for that limb is dominant. Basically the orange part is the

dominant one, the better one, the white not as proficient .

This blog will be based mostly on a sheet of paper I have with me.

Using the information I have gained by finding out my dominant limbs I

have discovered that I have a profile. The profile tells me how I

learn best and what areas I need to grow in to become a better

learner. It tells me how I can do this, as well as what will happen to

my abilities if I become stressed. It told me that was of the

logical-sequential brain type as opposed to the gestalt brain type. As

the name suggest a person with my type of brain is logical and

sequential, e.g. we like instructions, while a Gestalt person wants to

have the whole picture first and details later. I have used this

information to create this blogpost. Let me tell you that I became

stressed out during the writing of this blog and was by the end,

rather fed-up.

It turns out that I learn best by "visually focusing on and analyzing

the details of information", I think that means that I learn best by

looking at the details, before just focusing on the bigger picture. I

like to think of it as taking things one thing at a time, no need to

rush on when there's still work to be done here. I prefer it if these

details are placed before me in an orderly manner with a clear reason

why one is before two.

I need to sit on the right side of the classroom, at the front of the

class, because this will put me in a better spot from which to listen

and look at the teacher. This particular spot is best suited to me as

my dominant eye is my right eye, allowing it to be used more, and my

dominant ear is my left ear, meaning with it at the front of the

classroom it will be more aware of the teacher. I also need to read

more non-fiction books, I don't know if this has anything to do with

what I'm talking about now, but I'm supposed to read more non-fiction

books. This strikes me as counter-productive, as I am

logical-sequential won't reading a structured, ordered book with lists

and boxes, stop me strengthening the gestalt part of my brain; while

reading a book that branches wildly out into random directions help

the Gestalt part of my brain? For example "The Hitchhikers Guide to

the Galaxy" was a book that totally blew me away, events that I would

usually consider to be rather important e.g. million litres of custard

randomly falling out of the sky or whales falling out of the sky or

petunias thinking while falling out of the sky; completed their use in

the story damn fast. To me this blew everything out of proportion and

I had to sit down and try and comprehend this for a few days. Doesn't

that sound like the Gestalt part of my brain grew?

Strategies that would help me learn would include letting me fidget.

It is stated very firmly that a person with my profile loves movement

and that I would learn better if I were allowed to fidget, say with

clay while I was listening to someone talk. I should also read out

loud (perhaps a non-fiction book?) but not too loud as I must also

practice my active listening skills (my mother has already harped upon

this one). I must use megaphones, as I am now, and I must also listen

to the lyrics of the song I am listening to, as I am now, I don't

think this will help with learning, it's just recommended. Apparently

when under stress my communication skills become less efficient, a

strategy that would help me deal with this is to massage my jaw

(Temporal Mandibular Joint to be precise, bet you didn't know that)

I would like my teachers to know most of the above as well as one

other thing. I need to know why. I need to know why I am learning

whatever it is you're teaching me. I need to know how this will affect

me, me as a human. If you tell me that the Scotia tectonic plate is

placed in the Southern Atlantic ocean and borders the Africa plate,

I'm going to ask you why anybody cares. Why should I care? This has

gotten me absurd stares from my classmates, in their heads they think

"Why can't he shut up and let the teacher dismiss us to go outside?".

My question is why are we inside? I think that a lot of the stuff that

is taught is only useful as trivia and unless you go into that field,

useless, absolutely useless. Okay back on subject, time to talk about

brains and profiles, oh by the way I want my teachers to know that

unless checked I will go on long rants as I just have.

Calmed Down

I would like my teachers to know that I am a visual learner, and that

pictures and slides help me a great deal. During projects when at a

loss I will go and look at a slideshow of what I have to do, it calms

me down and puts me back on feet. If it would be possible to have

these as well as auditory instructions it would help a great deal.

This Blogpost has given me a chance to rant as well as provide some

useful pointers about my educational training. I hope I will look back

at this and realise that back then I was at least a little bit right.

This is

AlexK

Signing out

Resolutions and other stuff

I am here to write about my New Year's resolutions. Now, I'll be straight with you, I find it pretty boring when people ramble on about themselves, so, if you wish, you can get out now or you can face me talk about myself.....
Uninterested people gone now?
Only interested people left?
Good, now I can start.

My first resolution for this wonderful New Year is to eat healthy. There are a lot of people out there who believe in eating healthy, you can just turn on the television and find whole shows full of tips about the said subject. For my entire life, I have been one of those people who has never seen the point in doing this. I mean we're gonna die anyway, right? Unfortunately, I have now come to the conclusion that in order to stay fit and continue playing the sports I love, I must maintain my health to a certain extent, which unfortunately cannot be done without a little healthy eating. In other contexts I had also come to the conclusion that to do something well I must learn to love it and then nurture this love. So I guess my real New Year's resolution, is to trick myself into liking healthy foods. I do not know how this can be done but I sure do hope it's possible.


Now I have to write a second resolution, I have decided that I must work more. My lazy attitude toward life has garnered criticism from some, but I found it an easier lifestyle choice than almost any other possible. This year will - I hope - be different. I will endeavour to work harder this year, as I would like to see what happens to my workload when I actually try, if this doesn't really improve the said workload than I will go back to my old lazy ways. Also I have decided that I would like it if my grade were to improve, I have decided that one of the ways I can achieve this is by as said above - working harder.


Now I'm going to talk about my past experiences, in my experience these stories can be interesting but usually only if the teller of the story tells you so at the beginning of the said story. Look, I just told you about a past experience so why don't you just stick around for this one.


Now I was told to write about the holidays which have just ended for me. I ran through thoughts in my head about what could possibly be interesting enough to write about, but I decided that nothing really was and that this piece of writing will be for my own sake, and not yours.

I went to Sri Lanka during the holidays in question, 

as it happens I also went to Penang, but that's not the point, 

Sri Lanka is. When in Sri Lanka we went to a place 

called Sigiriya, now Sigiriya's main claim to fame is a large rock/mountain on which a father-killing king built a palace/fortress 1600 years ago.  Tourists such as myself have fun climbing up this mountain, if your idea of fun is being 200m 

in the air on the side of a large rock with nothing to 

stop you falling to your death but a few small pieces 

of 70 year old metal. Most of the walk was 

an extremely long stone staircase the path

 to which went from about 1km away from the rock.

 I had a thrilling narrative prepared about my ascent to

 the top but on second thoughts 

I might not write it after all.

Later that day I went on a safari, now usually these things happen in Africa, but this was billed as one so I'll call it that. During this safari we stood up inside the open top jeep and were constantly forced to duck as we passed under low-hanging branches. The animals that I saw that day included elephants, lizards, buffaloes and eagles. There were quite a few elephants that hung out in large herds, eating lots and lots of plant-life. the eagles flew around and called for mates, while my "spotter" also called out just to elicit a reaction from the great birds, 

http://cdn.elev8.com/files/2010/09/healthy-food.jpg

If you're still here, thanks for reading these words!


This is
AlexK
Signing out