Boosting Brain Power through the Arts

The Mozart Effect

There are some theories related to the Mozart Effect; one of them is that by listening to Mozart’s music, some kids can improve mental tasks known as “spatial temporal reasoning”. Another theory says that if you listen to Mozart’s music, you are going to be smarter, specialty if you listen to it when you are a baby.

Currently there are studies that try to prove the positive effect that this music has. A done in 1993 by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky, proves that the effect produced by this music is only temporal; the students that they used to do the research did not present effects extending beyond the 15-minute period and also the studies did not show an increase in IQ in general. They concluded that music has an effect in the spatial temporal reasoning, but not in a long-term talking.

The study mentioned before was made with in adults, but some scientists did the same study and instead of using adults, they used pre-school children aged 3-4 years. They gave keyboard music lessons for six months to those children. At the end of the training, all the children had the ability to play simple melodies. To prove if the music has an effect on the children, they did some tests to the children that did not receive music lessons and also to those ones who took music lessons and they compared the results. The performance of the kids who receive music lessons was more than 30% better than the kids that did not take the training.

The relaxation effect is another positive benefit that listening to this music can bring. Some women listen to this music when they are pregnant not only because they think that the baby is going to be smarter, but also because they feel more relaxed when listening to this kind of music.

I think that the effect that some kind of music can produce on us is real. For example, a song can make us feel energetic, happy, or maybe sad and depressed. So, I believe that Mozart’s music can relax our bodies and our minds, and when we are relaxed, we can think well and also show a better performance.

We should try to listen to this kind of music and see which effect it has on us; maybe we are going to discover a way to improve our skills.

U Fest

GOES August 15th, 2010
Gobierno Estudiantil
ULACIT

Dear GOES:

I want to thank you for prepared the University Fest, because it was an amazing activity. I also want to tell you a little bit about the activity that we prepared for that week. We wanted to do something different, so our classmate Javier gave us the idea of do a contest similar to “Who wants to be a millionaire” and we loved the idea. So, we started to plan the contest and we defined the steps that we were going to follow to have a successful activity. We defined the topics for the questions and we divided the class in for groups, so each group was in charge of do fifteen questions; the topics of the questions were: General Culture, Grammar, World Cup and Entertainment. After that we thought which prizes we were going to give and we decided to give food as a prize. The last step was to find participants. So, we went to visit English II groups to invite them to our activity. The day of the activity Javier was the host of the program, Luis and I were in change of manage the software and the soundtrack, and others classmates were in charge of say the rules of the game. Each participant only won five prizes, but everybody enjoyed the activity and had a lot of fun.
I think that this kind of activities helps the students to improve their English skills and also help them to lose their fear to speak in public. We learned a lot of things doing this activity, like team work and responsibility. So, congratulations for taking the initiative of prepare an activity like this.

Best Regards,
Graciela Rojas
Computer Science Student
English III

Warriors without Weapons

Red Cross

The Red Cross is an organization dedicated to help people. The Red Cross mission is “Being a humanitarian aid organization of governments, which seeks to improve the living conditions of vulnerable people, governed by the Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent.”

The Red Cross has seven fundamental principles. One of these principles is ”humanity”. This organization always tries to protect life, and health, as well as important values such as friendship, cooperation, and respect. Another principle is “impartiality” which means that discrimination is avoided. Everybody is equal and has the same rights.

Besides, they have the “neutrality” principle. Under this principle they do not follow a specific religion or ideology, so everybody can be helped or be part of this organization. Another principle is “independency”. This value lets them preserve autonomy. They have to respect the rules of the country where they are, but they are free to act according to the principles they follow. And the last three principles are”universality”, “unity” and”volunteering”. “Universality” means that each society has the same rights and must work together; “unity” means that it should be only one Red Cross society ant it should work as a group around all the country.

I leave the “volunteering” principle at the end because I think it is one of the most important values. “Volunteering” is the principle that makes this organization work. People who work at the Red Cross do it for free, so the organization does not have to pay for their services and can use that money to help with different causes.

We sometimes do not have the vocation to volunteer, but we can contribute doing other activities, for example, buying Tico Bingo. Yet, we should try to find the time and join them because what they do is amazing. If everybody contributes with the cause, probably a lot of people would have a different life. Remember that we do not know when we are going to need a hand.

Spiritual Renewal

Monasticism

Monasticism is a type of life where a person dedicates his/her life to the service of God. Men , who live this kind of life, are known as monks and women are known as nuns, and both, monks and nuns are called monastics. Being a monk or a nun is not an easy task. According to the Buddhist practice, there are three main steps that a person has to follow to become a nun or a monk. The first step is to get rid of all material things that you have. The second one is the elimination of the desire, and the last one is self-cherishing denial. Following these steps requires a strong commitment, so t monks and nuns have to be people that really want to give their life to the service of God. The principal activity that monks and nuns do is praying, but they not only pray for them, they also pray for us. It is very sad that in some moments of our life, we forget about praying because we think that there is no time or we are lazy, but thank God, these people are always praying for humanity. We need to learn about these amazing people. They dedicate their entire life to help other people and they do it because they want and they feel that it is their mission in this world.

But they do not only pray; monks and nuns also fulfill other tasks like teaching the True Faith, the Holy Tradition and an Orthodox lifestyle.

In Christian monasticism there are three levels of monks: the Rassaphore, the Stavrophore, and the Schema-Monk. When someone wants to be a monk or a nun, he or she has to choose a monastery and ask to be received by the Hegumen that is the head of the monastery.

To be a nun or a monk, you have to feel a call from God, because leaving your family and material world and dedicating your life to help other people is something really hard. We also have to admire these amazing people and follow their example of commitment with humanity.

Workplace Privacy

This week we could learn how surveillance could be good and bad for employees and employers.

Benefits:

Surveillance gives security to the employees and employers.

Sometimes employers listen in on phone calls to protect employess from sexual harassment.

Warriors without Weapons

Privacy

Should employers

have the right

to check their employees´ emails?

To give an assertive point of view, we need to know the meaning of the word privacy. According to Wikipedia privacy is “the ability of an individual or group to seclude themseles or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively”.

Based on the above information, I want to make a difference between personal information and job information. When we are at work, we should work only with job information, so here is where the paradoxical question comes out. If we are at work and our bosses want to check our email, are they going to check personal information or are they going to check information related to work? Because if they check job information, they are not violating our right to privacy; they are only doing their job.

Besides, we need to see this topic from two different perspectives. First, let see the employer’s position. As an employer, you need to be sure that everybody is doing his or her job in the best way and you also need to know and control what employees are doing, so checking emails is a good way to do this. Most of the companies have a corporative mail, so employees use it to receive and send information about work. Checking this email can be like a quality control system that employers can use to see if employees are fulfilling their tasks.

On the other hand, we have the employee position. How we can feel if we know that someone is checking what we are doing all the time. I think that this fact can create an uncomfortable environment at work. Employees that do not feel comfortable at work are not going to give the same dedication that those employees that feel comfortable at work.

Privacy is a controversial topic because both parts have valid reasons to agree or disagree with it. But not everything has to be black or white; I think that there are two key words that we need to take into count in our works; they are limits and empathy. As employees we need to understand our boss’s position and try to give the best of us and also get our bosses’ and coworkers’ confidence. There are sometimes emergencies where it is necessary to make a phone call or send an email, so, probably if we do it one time, nothing is going to happened, but if we always use work time to do personal things we are stealing our salary, so it is very important to know the limits and do not pass it. And as employers we need to trust our employees and make them feel comfortable at work.