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Growth Mindset by Professor Carol Dweck

I choose this topic in an effort to better understand and analyze my mindset to be best version of myself in achieve goals in life.

The discussion link is provided below:

This discussion has taught me that

Mindset is a very fluid, it can be mixed of fixed mindset and growth mindset.

Effort is an important term when it comes to fixed and growth mindset, unlike many people that think effort is for non-smart people, where smart people doesn’t exert effort as they depend on their own talent and ability, it is actually quite the opposite.

Dr. Dweck coined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset in this discussion to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence. When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. Therefore, they put in extra time and effort, and that leads to higher achievement. It worth mentioning that growth mindset can be an excellent concept for promoting professional development and this could be a very interesting context for encouraging learning to learn and lifelong learning absolutely at every age. People with fixed mindset are often afraid to take on challenges they're not as persistent in the face of obstacles because they worry about looking smart and not looking dumb, while other people have more of a growth mindset they believe their talents and abilities can be developed, according to Prof Carol these are the people who take on the challenges, who stick to them, and achieve more in the long term because they are energized by their mistakes and really plunge in more deeply to figure out what happened and what they should do. Carol talked about how growth mindset is crucial for the children as many children are no longer eager to take new challenges due to the fact that many of them are judge either internally or as a result of others judging them, hence they begin to protect themselves by avoiding situations that might make them appear incompetent. However, in growth mindset we encourage children to go out of their comfort zone to learn something hard, really challenging and they stick to it, and they can actually change their intellectual ability. When people with fixed mindset make a mistake, they don't get involved, they become very emotional, and when you show them the correct answer, they don't process it deeply, It's more likely that they notice it and ignore it, but those with a growth mindset really focus on the mistake, you can observe the brain's relevant areas lighting up, processing the error thoroughly, and then correcting it, and then when you retest them on the material, they perform better. so, the whole way that you treat errors and errors are such a rich source of learning will differ dramatically depending on your mindset. It's also important to know that these mindsets are very fluid we can have one mindset about one ability and a different mindset about another ability and it's also important to know that these mindsets can change periodically, for instance when you're very successful you can slip into a fixed mindset where you have all the answers or sometimes when you're struggling you start thinking that you are no good at this time you never will be and it's becomes really important to monitor our mindsets to understand when we're slipping into a fixed mindset. Dr. Carol also mentioned that perfectionism can be very damaging with fixed mindset where you feel like you have to be perfect or prove that you have incredible talent to the point of perfection makes it difficult for you to accept challenges, but there is another type of perfectionism where you set very high standards for yourself but they are more like a guiding vision that you intend to achieve over time as they are growing toward that standard and that can be beneficial.

Carol Dweck is a professor at Stanford and the author of Mindset, a classic work on motivation and "growth mindset." Her work is influential among educators and increasingly among business leaders as well.

Carol Dweck | Speaker | TED

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Why you are not your brain by Prof. Alva Noe

I choose this topic in an effort to clear the ambiguous thought that I have on consciousness which I find it intriguing as sort of curiosity

The discussion link is provided below:

This discussion has taught me that

Consciousness is not just a thing that happen in our brain only.

It is possible to computer to have consciousness given the fact of creating artificial life.

 Consciousness can live on after an individual's death by the knowledge the skills the design the architecture the literature the art of the person.

The discussion focuses mainly on explaining and clarifying what is consciousness, Prof. Alva Noe refer to consciousness as life of mind which defines human experience as we are living in an environment surrounded by things in world, people, and noises all of which form, and this environment saturates our thought, it shapes our feeling, it influences our desires and our emotions.

Most of us think a consciousness as a something that happen inside of our brain however according to Alva it is something we do and achieve, in other word, brain is part of the story but not the end of it, for instance when we look at the active life of whole animal in its environment, brain alone is not sufficient as an abstract computational system, we can see patterns called sensory motor patterns that is ways in which movement and action and sensory events in the brain all interact. Consciousness isn't the sort of thing that could be revealed under a brain scan, consciousness is not something in the brain more than the value of money is in the money but that doesn't make it valuable.

One of the topics that Alva talked about in this discussion that computers may become conscious if we are able to create artificial life as sort of a theoretical possibility.

Alva also emphasis on the importance of our environment which has role of having a rich repository of information that we store it in our brain to build a habit, so we don't have to constantly recompute where we are and what we need to do, in fact habits allow us to leverage ourselves and get the places where we can pose new questions and ask new problems instead of recompute fundamental tasks.

Another interesting thought Alva mentioned is that animals are conscious given the fact that the world shows up for them differently than shows up for us, they can have very rich discriminate tory perceptual skills that can allow features of the environment to show up for them that don't show up for us.

Lastly Alva discuss what happens to consciousness when we die, as Alva state before consciousness is something that we enact ,perform and achieved and insofar as the end of life is the end of performances the end of action so it is the cessation of consciousness, but if we want to understand our conscious minds, what makes consciousness possible is the knowledge the skills the design the architecture the literature the art so much of what makes consciousness possible lives on after an individual's death in other word our bodies are essential to our ability to do anything, but when we are extending our bodies with technology tools for example we can use cars for driving and telephones for communicating across great distances and even language for interaction and communication between people and then writing, with writing we can use the power of language to influence people who are outside and beyond the reach of our voice indeed beyond the reach of our life and these extended bodies and action spaces are communal and depend not only on individual but on others, they're shared practice space which we call it culture, culture makes us what we are and culture out list us each individually.

Professor Alva Noe is a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of out of our heads, why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the biology of consciousness, Varieties of Presence, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, His latest book is Learning To Look. Alva received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1995, He works on the nature of mind and human experience.

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Learn how to learn by Dr Barba Oakley

I choose this topic in an effort to increase my learning and study more effectively by absorbing as much information as I can.

The discussion link is provided below:

This discussion has taught me that

learning is not just about focusing the whole time as I feel guilty to take break rather than completing a task.

Persistence and adaptability can alter one's mindset.

We mostly learn how to do something but not when to do it, so it is critical to understand when to apply what we've learned.

The discussion focuses on several topics starting with how the learning process occurs in the brain, according to Dr. Barba Oakley, neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the brain, and as we learn, we form new connections between these neurons. She also emphasizes the importance of practicing because it strengthens the connections between neurons and thickens the connections in the brain. Then she explained that brain has two part of memory: working memory(temporary)  and long-term memory which is the thing we use when remembering something, we connect the links that we have previously built, and the challenge is to convert working memory information that we use to learn to long memory so we can access them more easily, and one of the way of simplifying learning new complex material done by using metaphors where we use our strong fundamental built connection that is already stored before to link it with the new idea which make it much easier to understand complex topics and recall them when need it. She also mentioned that there are two thinking modes: focus mode and default mode (relaxing mode), and that learning occurs by switching between these two modes, not just one. For instance, when we are working really hard on something and feel frustrated about it then leave it a while it suddenly things start to make sense which is a proof that learning is not only focus mode because our brains consolidate information in the background when we switch to default mode. During her discussion, she placed a lot of emphasis on the pomodoro technique, a very potent and effective learning method that involves remove all the distraction in the environment then setting a timer it could be 25 minutes or more depending on the person, where you put your whole focus and effort in it then reward yourself with a mental break for 5 to 10 minute as appreciation for focusing, this technique makes it easier and more enjoyable to develop focus. Another crucial point is to break up long, complex tasks into manageable chunks (key point), which helps the brain connect all the chunks later to complete the desired task and It's totally acceptable if it takes you longer to learn and understand something than other people because you might understand it in greater depth. When it comes to learning it is not only an individual activity as most of us think but it is a social activity too as when you speak you actually embedded that information in your mind. Her last advice is don’t just keep doing the easy stuff, you have to push yourself in other word don’t just focus and practice on one thing as you will be only knowing that case and you won’t be able to know when to use it.

Dr Barba Oakley is an American professor of engineering at Oakland University and McMaster University, her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. She published several books that focuses on learning such as Uncommon Sense Teaching, Learn Like A Pro, Learn how to learn and Mindshift.

Barbara Oakley - Wikipedia

About Me - Barbara Oakley