Brianna Skeen- Coyle- Ch1&2

 Chapter 1

 Summary-

-Talks about the Brazilian soccer training that uses a heavier ball in a smaller concrete playing field to practice moves and how players end up touching the ball more than those that playing with a regular ball in a larger outdoor soccer field. Uses that Link flight simulation and how because it simulates flying and the potential problems that might be faced without actually being in the air, pilots are able to train and correct errors in flying with a significantly smaller error margin and lower stakes. Talks about the sweet spot of learning right on the edge of a person's skills where they can make mistakes as they explore the next step in their skill level, detect the mistakes, correct them, and move forward a little at a time. It explains how struggling just enough working a little at a time helps to improve memory and build the skill faster. Gives the word pair example and how you remember the word pairs where some of the word is missing better than the word pairs that consist of complete words. 

Application

-When we are teaching our students we want to discover their sweet spot and work with them there wether it is in warm-ups or in working through their repetoire. We want to encourage them to be brave enough to make mistakes so that we can work with them on correcting them. Lessons can work as simulation rooms where we as instrctors can help students to detect and correct errors as we work with them while the stakes are low and the error margin is small.

Chapter 2

Summary

-Deep practice builds myelin. "Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals." The more skilled a person is at something the more mylein their brain contains. The thicker the myelin that faster the neural transmissions and the greater the skill. Discusses visit to Dr. Fields and his discussion about myelin. Discusses Greenough's work on animal brain autopsies and various other studies on myelin and its relationship with the brain. "Practice makes myelin, and mylein makes perfect." Principles of myelin: 1. The firing of the circuit is extremely important, 2. Myelin is universal to all skills, 3. Myelin only wraps, it doesn't unwrap once it's there it is there, 4. Age matters in that the more myelin you build when you are younger the better. Discussion on Anders Ericsoson's adventure which included his project to test how short-term memory works. Concluded in the equation of "deep practice X 10,000 hours= world class skill." 

Application

-The more we do something, the more myelin we are building. We can apply this principle in our practicing and help our students to do the same. The reason we want to dectect errors quickly is so that we can correct them quickly.  The more we sing something or practice something right the more myelin we are building around that particular skill until we can do it without even thinking about it.