by atmara | Nov 13, 2014 | Creativity, Inspiration, TED Talks, Video
According to ted.com: “Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free — not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. With Coursera (cofounded by Andrew Ng), each keystroke, quiz, peer-to-peer discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed.”
“A 3rd generation Ph.D who is passionate about education, Stanford professor Daphne Koller is excited to be making the college experience available to anyone through her startup, Coursera. With classes from 85 top colleges, Coursera is an innovative model for online learning. While top schools have been putting lectures online for years, Coursera’s platform supports the other vital aspect of the classroom: tests and assignments that reinforce learning.”
“At the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, computer scientist Daphne Koller studies how to model large, complicated decisions with lots of uncertainty. (Her research group is called DAGS, which stands for Daphne’s Approximate Group of Students.) In 2004, she won a MacArthur Fellowship for her work, which involves, among other things, using Bayesian networks and other techniques to explore biomedical and genetic data sets.”
For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”
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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!
by atmara | Nov 10, 2014 | Art, Healing, Mandala Monday, Mandalas
Manipura Mandala
The third chakra is called the solar plexus chakra. It is located at the base of the rib cage, between the sternum and the navel. The color frequency is yellow or gold and it is depicted as the Manipura mandala in Sanskrit. Its element is fire and it is the foundation of the mental body and the intellect. It influences our personal power, self-control, creativity, motivation, and issues of self-esteem and self-acceptance.
This chakra physically influences muscles, stomach, digestion, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, metabolism and the nervous system. When it is healthy, we are able to successfully wield our powers of personal creation and manifestation. Whatever we intend we are able to manifest as our reality. From thought to feeling to visualization, our abilities to create and inspire are unlimited when the solar plexus chakra is pure and unblocked. We become focused, disciplined, and determined to succeed and because of our optimism, we empower ourselves to do so.
When the solar plexus chakra is blocked, however, this chakra can bring a tremendous hindrance to our personal powers of manifestation. We become pessimistic, self-doubtful, and therefore tend to sabotage whatever it is we intend to create. We become our own worst enemy due to arrogance and smugness, and sometimes great rises end up as great falls. We are sloppy, reckless, and disorganized. The worst part of our ego surfaces and we begin to play the role of the victim in life, focusing our energy on how it is always someone else’s fault as to why we have failed, time and time again, in one endeavor after another. We become consumed by conflict, anger, and drama in our career and personal endeavors.
When this chakra is properly aligned, however, we are highly organized, meticulous, and methodical in our approach to innovation, invention, and creation. We see the gods in the details, crossing every “t” and dotting every “i.” We are nothing less than machine-like in our steady and sure rise to the top of whatever ring we choose to throw our hat in. Doors open and people rush to our assistance. The world becomes our oyster.
Consultation with a spiritual counselor can be helpful in focusing on the tools and modalities for healing the solar plexus chakra. Crystals recommended are: citrine, gold topaz, amber, rhodochrosite, gold calcite, and rhodonite. Herbs for healing are: goldenseal and lemon balm. Incenses recommended are: carnation, cinnamon, and marigold.
About the Author:
Jason Lincoln Jeffers is a Wellness Coach and Spiritual Life Coach who founded Sunlighten and co-founded Sunlight Day Spa; two holistic wellness companies dedicated to infrared radiant heat therapy, sound therapy, and massage therapy. His Wellness Coaching and Spiritual Life Coaching practice embraces infrared sauna purification, upper cervical care, and adhering to an alkaline-forming, nutrient-dense, anti-oxidant rich, ketogenic diet.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!
by atmara | Nov 6, 2014 | Creativity, Inspiration, TED Talks, Video
According to ted.com: “Onstage at TED2013, Sugata Mitra makes his bold TED Prize wish: Help me design the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other — using resources and mentoring from the cloud. Hear his inspiring vision for Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE), and learn more at tedprize.org.”
“Educational researcher Dr. Sugata Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they’re motivated by curiosity and peer interest. In 1999, Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.”
“The “Hole in the Wall” project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who’s now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it “minimally invasive education.”
Enjoy this intriguing talk.
For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”
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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!
