Picture Day Friday: Admont Monastery Library

Library at the Benedictine Monastery of Admont, Austria

Multitasking Negatively Affects Learning

Sally Roy of Visual Academy reached out to me after reading my post on unitasking vs. multitasking.

Visual Academy is Online Schools' novel attempt at furthering education and creating a hunger for more knowledge through the use of visual learning techniques.

Sally Roy has done detailed research on the effects of social media (texting and Facebooking, in particular) on online learning of students. She has condensed her findings in an informational graphic. (Please see the image below.)

Roy's research shows that in the general populace, only two percent of the people can effectively multitask. The rest of the people simply perform poorly on all the tasks they're attempting to cycle amongst. Using social media in the midst of homework, studying, and attending online lectures affects short-term memory recall and long-term memory retention. This naturally translates into drops in GPA.

Thus, it clearly shows that unitasking is the way to go; multitasking is just another way of procrastinating.

Roy's mantra, which I support wholeheartedly, is: Want to accomplish more? Do less.


[Online Learning and Multitasking image copyrighted by onlineschools.org and used with permission.]

Poet William Blake's Cottage is For Sale

Out of the blue, I blogged on June 19 about two of William Blake's poems: Eternity and Auguries of Innocence. I had picked up a copy of Blake's selected works, and was seized with a desire to share how much joy I was deriving from my reading.

In a case of cosmic coincidence, I found out today that Blake's cottage is up for sale. He lived in this house in Felpham, West Sussex, England from 1800 to 1803.

The home is on what is now known as Blake's Road. It hasn't been on the market since 1928 and is listed for a song at $978,000.

Of his house, Blake wrote, "Sussex is certainly a happy place and Felpham in particular is the sweetest spot on earth," to his friend Thomas Butts in 1801.

You can now experience some of the joy Blake experienced here.

Picture Day Friday: New Forest National Park, England

The Hamptworth Lodge Estate is set within 1,100 acres of land in the New Forest National Park.

Click to see a larger picture.


[Image copyrighted by real estate agents Chesterton Humberts and the Daily Mail Online.]

Regency Dance Music Kickstarter

A project after my own heart. The 200 Dances Project is looking for seed money to "create historically accurate recordings of the music for 200 carefully researched dances from the English Regency Period."

The music will come out on sixteen CDs spaced out over a few months and will also be available for individual MP3 downloads. The music will be performed by concert musicians experienced in early music, on period instruments, and in ensembles that would've been found at Assemblies 200 years ago.

The project owners, from Winchester, England, also run Regency Dance, an educational website that specializes in detailed information on dances from the Regency era. Visit the website to vote for your favorite dances from the list. Of those, 200 will be chosen for this project.

The Janeiac Brainiac

[Click to see the details—they're hilarious. Illustrations by Peter and Maria Hoey; game by Mary Jo Murphy and Jennifer Schuessler; all copyrighted by The New York Times.]

The NYT came up with the game to join in the wave of Janeophilia that's been going on in America, the UK, and elsewhere in the world on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Pride & Prejudice.

I would like to confess right away that I succumbed, too. I'm the recent owner of a Pride & Prejudice board book—the story in 12 words.

Over the past two decades, prequels, sequels, retellings, fan fiction, switching point-of-view characters around, changing period setting around, zombiefying and vampiring of the stories, and so on have kept numerous writers very busy. The consumption rate of the reading public has been voracious and this year, more and more writers are joining the Janeites.

These two interesting nonfiction books take a look at the phenomenon: Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom by Deborah Yaffe and Global Jane Austen: Pleasure, Passion, and Possessiveness in the Jane Austen Community by Laurence Raw and Robert G. Dryden.

Other than a publishing cottage industry, there have been a spate of other related Jane activities. The most notable among these was Kelly Clarkson's quarter of a million dollars at an auction for a gold and turquoise ring owned by Austen. Unfortunately, the British culture minister refused to allow the ring to leave the country, because he says it's a national treasure. The other notable event was the issuing of the 10 pound banknote with Austen's face on it that I mentioned on August 28.

You can even get Austen-themed teas from Bingley’s Teas by Julia Matson. Wicked Wickham and Mr. Knightley's Reserve are especially popular. And for those of you suffering from borderline personality disorder, Christine Shih uses Austen's works in her counseling practice. More such fan extensions can be discovered HERE.