TV OR NOT TV?

From the moment Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon to Roberto Piazza's wedding, everything is televised nowadays. He who doesn't own a TV set is at least outcast, and at most, outrageously wrong. Yet, there are those who would go back to the good old times, when the living room sofa naturally faced the fireplace.

Those who believe that TV is essential in everyday life support the idea that it serves as a form of entertainment for everyone, from children to the elderly. What is more, it is a means of communication, and even fulfils the purpose of educating. Viewers can choose, from a wide variety of channels, the one that suits them best: cartoons, news and sports programmes, documentaries, films, series and soap operas, just to mention a few.

On the other hand, those who maintain they were far better without a telly, suggest that television is addictive and, therefore, leads viewers to spend hours in front of the screen, instead of devoting that valuable time to more productive activities, such as reading a book. Added to this, the quality of TV programmes has decreased enormously in the last years. Consequently, there are hundreds of channels, but actually very few worth tuning to.

In my opinion, television is an important source of information, and it is true that it does help us to keep ourselves entertained and our minds busy, always provided that we are watching it a reasonable amount of hours a week. It is up to us to decide what kind of viewers we want to be: the one who watches with a critical eye, and knows when TV is harmless and when it is harmful; or the couch potato, who will lie on the couch for hours on end, not filtering out the abusive language and violent scenes, who speaks like the latest soap opera gallant and only exercises his thumb while flicking channels.

Advertisements Targeting Children

Dear audience,

I am writing to bring to your attention the pernicious effects advertising campaigns have on children nowadays. As a citizen, I consider that this massive project is exploiting children for commercial and financial purposes, regardless of its harmful psychological implications for their development. Based on this, I would like to offer a little constructive criticism.

I strongly think that the tremendous impact adverts have upon children is closely related to their incapacity to understand or care about the aim of the adverts. Marketing managers take advantage of children´s lack of understanding to make money, purposefully ignoring the damaging consequences. The results are not only an epidemic of materialistic values among children, but also the belief that they are inferior if they don´t have a new product.

Something should be done to prevent children from becoming more and more insecure; similarly parents should stop fostering a materialistic value that makes their kids believe that they need to buy the latest product to be happy.
One solution to the problem would be to introduce a tight regulation in order to decrease the amount of advertisements aimed at children that are constantly published. Moreover, parents should stop with the bad habit of buying their sons whatever they want, and instead, teach them that they have to feel more secure and that material objects have nothing to do with happiness.

• Taking into account children´s incapacity to differentiate between fantasy and reality and the tremendous influence advertisements have upon them, a tight regulation is needed to protect the young ones. It is assumed that marketing managers only worry about the financial gain regardless of the harmful effect adverts´ can produce on children. As it is beyong parental control to decrease the amount of advertisements that are displayed, an official rule made by the government is required.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMDPql6rweo

- LEARNING AT COLLEGE -

The word Neuro linguistic programming can be broken down to three distinct words:
neuro
linguistic and
programming.

Neuro refers to the brain and neural network that feeds into the brain. Neurons or nerve cells are the working units used by the nervous system to send, receive, and store signals that add up to information.
Linguistics refer to the content, both verbal and non-verbal, that moves across and through these pathways.
Programming is the way the content or signal is manipulated to convert it into useful information. The brain may direct the signal, sequence it, change it based on our prior experience, or connect it to some other experience we have stored in our brain to convert it into thinking patterns and behaviors that are the essence of our experience of life.
Our experiences and feelings affect the way we react to external stimuli. Let me illustrate. I am afraid of snakes. The impulse I get if I see a snake or even hear a sound close to resembling that of a snake is a feeling of total fright. This is because, I was born in an area infested with several deadly snakes. One day a boy from my neighborhood came to our house. He knocked on the door. I opened the door. He had a snake in his hand. He wanted to show me the prize catch he had. He was holding it like we hold a pet cat. For him it was a pet. So, it gave him lot of joy to hold one. To me, it gave a migraine headache!
Both myself and my neighbor boy saw the same thing. The same signal was passed to our brain. It was the picture of a snake. However, our brains interpreted the implications of the snake entirely differently. In processing the information, our brains used our experiences (good and bad), our biases, our opinions, our value systems, etc. to convert it into useful information that we can use.
Neuro linguistic programming (NLP for short) was developed in the early 1970s by an information scientist and a linguist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. They had observed that people with similar education, training, background, and years of experience were achieving widely varying results ranging from wonderful to mediocre. They wanted to know the secrets of effective people. What makes them perform and accomplish things. They were especially interested in the possibility of being able to duplicate the behavior, and therefore the competence, of these highly effective individuals. It was the golden era of modeling and simulation. They decided to model human excellence. They looked at factors such as education, business and therapy. They have then zeroed in on the communication aspect. They started studying how the successful people communicated (verbal language, body language, eye movements, and others). By modeling their behavior, John Grinder and Richard Bandler were able to make out patterns of thinking that assisted in the subject's success. The two theorized that the brain can learn the healthy patterns and behaviors and that this would bring about positive physical and emotional effects. What emerged from their work came to be known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
The basic premise of NLP is that the words we use reflect an inner, subconscious perception of our problems. If these words and perceptions are inaccurate, they will create an underlying problem as long as we continue to use and to think them. Our attitudes are, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The neuro linguistic therapist will analyze every word and phrase you use in describing your symptoms or concerns about your health. He or she will examine your facial expressions and body movements. After determining problems in your perception, the therapist will help you understand the root cause. The therapist will help you remodel your thoughts and mental associations in order to fix your preconceived notions. These preconceived notions may be keeping you from achieving the success you deserve.
NLP will help you get out of these unhealthy traits and replace them with positive thoughts, and patterns that promote wellness.


Hi everyone! I have decided to share this piece of information about NeuroLinguistic Programming because the other day we worked on it in ECO (Taller de Expresión) and it found it very relevant to our formation as teachers.

For further information go to http://www.holisticonline.com/hol_neurolinguistic.htm

Hi all! I have found something about successful presentations that I'd like to share with you:



In Ten Steps To a Successful Presentation

Start in time.
Once you submitted the abstract to the conference organizers, it is time to start thinking about how you organize the material in a talk if your abstract will have been accepted. Read about the background of your work, read related work, look at your own results regularly and think about the most relevant conclusions. Try to imagine what type of audience you would have and consider what you would have to include as background information

The Message
Try to capture the message of your presentation in a single sentence. This is difficult. You will only be able to do this if you really master your subject (which is actually the main requirement for being able to clearly present your work to others).

Select Results and Order Them
Although it may at first sight seem natural to present your results in the chronological order in which you obtained them, this does not have to be the most ideal order for the audience to understand what you have done. Think about where to discuss highlights, at the beginning? Near the end? Maybe dispersing the remarkable features through the entire talk? It is up to you, but take the order which you feel appeals most to the audience.The scientific background of your audience determines how much you should explain about experimental approaches, characterization techniques. Be careful NOT to identify your audience with your supervisor, the majority of listeners is unlikely to possess much specific knowledge about your subject. By the way, hardly anyone minds to hear something he already knows, as long as you explain it well, and possibly in an entertaining way.

Opening and Introduction
In the opening, i.e. the first few sentences, you catch the attention, for example by a scientific question, or a catchy or maybe even provocative statement. Perhaps you could already give the conclusion of your work too. Try to speak slowly, with emphasis, and look at the audience. Of course, you must have prepared and rehearsed the opening carefully.
However, before you give your opening sentence, it is good to start with "Mister Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen … " followed by a few seconds of silence, in which you look around to see if people are paying attention. By doing so, you actually force the audience to listen. With these words you also test the sound system, and you ascertain that your important opening lines are going to be heard.
In the rest of the Introduction, you sketch the background of your research. Remember that many people will be very interested in a concise summary of the status in your area. Hence, reserve sufficient time (i.e. at least 30% of the total time) for the general aspects of your work. It is good practice to not only clearly identify the scientific question you address, but also give the conclusion of your work, if you wish so. In this way you enable the audience to better follow your reasoning and to anticipate on the outcome of the experiments. In other words, you give them a chance to listen actively. Remember that a scientific presentation is not a detective story which is solved in the last moment.

Conclusions and Ending Conclusions should be properly announced to regain full attention. Present your conclusions in relation to the questions you raised in the Introduction. Avoid all irrelevant details. Once you finished the conclusions, you may acknowledge people who helped you (not the coauthors listed in the program) and the Funding Agencies. Then you may end with a final sentence that repeats the message of your talk, for instance: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope I have convinced you that XY/Support is a very promising catalyst for converting methane into synthetic gasoline at room temperature." This is the take-home message that the audience should remember, hopefully in combination with your name and affiliation.


Hence, when showing a series of spectra or activity curves, you put an understandable label on each curve (not a,b,c, which are explained in a separate legend!!). Avoid reference to samples in codes such as "Sample AX234/a5" which may be handy in laboratory notebooks, but are unsuitable in presentations (and in articles as well).
Using tables with numbers is in most cases not recommended. Remember that an audience reads everything you show on a transparency, and while they read they pay less attention to what you say. Also avoid theoretical formulas and mathematical derivations. Sometimes you may have to show one, but try to keep it to a minimum. You should realize that the human memory remembers in terms of pictorial information. Hence clear figures, schemes, and diagrams are the best means to convey information.

Visual Aids: Overhead Transparencies, Slides, or Computer Projection?
Using transparencies on a simple overhead projector is more or less problem free. In most cases, transparencies project well, are easy to read for the audience, and the lecture hall does not have to be darkened so that people can make notes if they wish. For you as a speaker, transparencies leave you the flexibility to make last minute changes, or even write on them during projection.
Slides do not give this kind of flexibility. Optimally prepared slides in combination with a high quality projector can certainly provide beautiful visual support to your talk. Unfortunately, many slide projectors offer less than optimum quality, and moreover, many speakers show unsatisfactory slides. In addition, many things may go wrong: slide carrousels may get stuck, slides may go upside down, the slide control does not work properly, etc. Another serious drawback of using slides is that the lecture theater has to be dark, making it difficult for the audience to take notes. If the speaker is insufficiently entertaining, one easily falls asleep…
Recently the use of computer projection with a beamer has become popular. No doubt, this offers wonderful opportunities for spectacular effects. However, most portable beamers are not bright enough for large conference halls, and only very few conference centers have the necessary high-quality beamers installed. Also, the usual presentation software offers so many inviting opportunities, that speakers often use ineffective color combinations and disturbing background patterns, see also Figure 5.
Actually, the ‘old fashioned’ overhead slides are not so bad at all…

Communication in stead of performing
Your presentation will be most effective if you use the same everyday language in which you explain things to a fellow student in the lab. There is absolutely no need to use a more formal language. In fact, formal language is not desirable at all as it is more difficult to understand for the audience. Do not try to impress the audience with fancy words, formal constructions, subject-specific jargon, or unnecessary abbreviations. Think about oral presentations in terms of communication and do not see it as the performance of a literary play. The audience will be grateful if you are easy to follow.

Timing: Absolutely Necessary
Now comes the moment of truth: Does everything you prepared fit within the available time? There is only one way to find out: Take your stopwatch and go. This is usually a frustrating experience. First, you may note that the sentences simply do not come. My solution is to sit down and write the first part out in clear, short sentences. Second, you will probably find that you have too much material. Hence, you have to cut down and I do hope that you will not take out too much of the General Introduction. Carefully timing your presentation is extremely important. Going overtime is an offense to the audience and to the speakers following you, particularly if there are parallel sessions. Nothing is more embarrassing than that the chairman has to stop you before you have been able to present your conclusions!

Are You Nervous? Hopefully you are!
Only very few of us have been born as a talented speaker. Almost everyone will be nervous before a presentation. For beginners, nervousness may easily lead to lack of confidence, caused by feelings of being inexperienced.
First time speakers often interpret nervousness as a sign that they are apparently incapable of delivering a good presentation. This is not true. All the symptoms that accompany nervousness, such as frequent swallowing, trembling, transpiration, etc. are signs that your body is getting ready for something important. Athletes, stage performers, musicians, and … experienced speakers have learned to recognize these symptoms and to appreciate them. They start to worry when these symptoms stay away!
Experience is something that will come in time, by practicing and by analyzing your presentations and those by others. No one in the audience will blame you for being a beginner. However, if you take care to avoid a number of typical mistakes that beginners (and even experienced speakers) make, you will make a very good start with your career as a presenter. If you know and understand the basic principles and you know how to apply these, you are likely to give a talk that is significantly better than the average presentation at international meetings. Hence, lack of experience is not important provided you prepare your presentation well and you do your best to avoid the obvious mistakes listed in this brochure.