RJA #10a: Thesis Statement

Research Question:
Are art and music a vital part of brain development in children?
Precise Claim:
Art and music should be encouraged in children to aid in brain development and stimulation.
Reasons:
1) Music (especially classical) has been proven to stimulate brain activity and development.
2) Art is proven to stimulate certain areas of the brain that are crucial to brain development.
3) Both art and music provide children with special needs and learning disabilities an outlet to succeed in and also help them strengthen certain parts of their brain.
Thesis Statement:
Art and music are of vital importance to the development of a child's brain and to child development in general.

Internet Research Project

Name of Tool: Exalead....http://www.exalead.com/search/
Description: You can do a web search that will search the entire Web for information. Or, you can do an image search to search for photos, illustrations and icons.
Strengths: Produced pretty helpful results; liked the thumbnail feature;provides related topics and ways to narrow your topic on the right side of findings;provides results in many languages
Weaknesses: Lots of irrelevant sites, as with any other search tool...
Databases: web pages, images, videos, wikipedia, labs, baagz, blog, enterprise
Operators: the Exalead review that was provided for class states that the operators used are AND, Not, and OR, but when I tried using and, it brought up nothing, when I used +, it brought up over 1,200,000 results....so in my review, I say use + and - and your search will be much more effective
Case Sensitivity: none
Stop Words: "a", "the", "in" ignored unless in a phrase search
Advanced Search Function: provides a "Refine your Search" panel that you can use to make your search results more pertinent to the topic.
Limits: limits on language and country (though not many!), site, date available, and file type
Sorting: by relevance, like most sites
Display: text only, thumbnails of the site's homepage with a brief description, or thumbnails with detailed descriptions of the site
Help Function: FAQ and Feedback
Special Features: I would say the best special feature is the lists that are available on the right hand side of the results page that contain the related topics and links to help find blogs, etc that are related to your topic.

RJA #8c: Multimedia

videosurf
music+brain+development
Used +
10/12/2009
86 hits
Relevance, 2-3, helpful website overall I suppose....

RJA #8b: Social Media

Feedmil
music+child+development
Used +
10/12/2009
only 10 hits
Relevance, 0-1, very unhelpful
GlobeofBlogs
art+child+development
Used +
10/12/2009
? hits...did not say, far too many to count!
Relevance, 0...lots of stuff on children, none of it involving art

RJA #8a: Websites

Exalead
Art+brain+development
Just used +, turned up plenty of results
1,190,279 hits
Did search 10/11/2009
Relevance, maybe a two...not very helpful results...
Scour
music+brain+development
Just used +
22 hits
Did search 10/12/2009
Relevance, 4-5 for most of the hits, very helpful
WoW
art+brain+development
Tried using AND instead of + and it did not turn up anything...
1,019 hits
Did search 10/12/2009
Relevance, 1-2, some helpful, most not helpful
deepdyve
music and brain development in children
no operators needed
3,851,789 hits
Did search 10/12/2009
Relevance, 3, but it was frustrating because a lot of the sites were for great articles, but all of them required payment to view the full article...
Browsys
art+brain+development
Just used +
about 6,970,000 hits
Did search 10/12/2009
Relevance, 3-4, great finds, excited to look at more of them!

RJA #5c: Search String Check

I couldn't find the link to the other classmates blogs! Help!

RJA #5b: Books

I found more than a few books that look like they will be extremely helpful on my research. Here are a couple....

**1.Gardner, Howard
Art, Mind, and Brain
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Copyright 1982

**2.Jensen, Eric
Art with the Brain in Mind
Alexandria, VA
ASCD
2001

These books were found using the google books search engine. I search with keywords art and brain development. This search was done a couple of weeks ago, I am not sure of the date. Again, there were many hits, some relevant, most were not.

RJA #5a: Reference Articles

Unfortunately, none of the links the teacher provided did me any good. They came up with absolutely nothing when I searched for my topic, and if they did come up with something, it was completely unrelated to my topic. I then turned to the Auraria Campus library to search their journal articles that are listed. I found a few articles that may be helpful, but bookmarked the entire list of results to look through them more closely when I have more time.
**1.((~Lundqvist Lars Olov~) au)','Lundqvist, Lars-Olov','ERIC','3'); return false">Lundqvist, Lars-Olov; ((~Andersson Gunilla~) au)','Andersson, Gunilla','ERIC','3'); return false">Andersson, Gunilla; ((~Viding Jane~) au)','Viding, Jane','ERIC','3'); return false">Viding, Jane
Effects of Vibroacoustic Music on Challenging Behaviors in Individuals with Autism and Developmental Disabilities
((~Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders~) jn)','Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders','ERIC','3'); return false">Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders
6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, FL 32887-4800
Elsevier
2009

**2.((~Geist Kamile~) au)','Geist, Kamile','ERIC','3'); return false">Geist, Kamile; ((~McCarthy John~) au)','McCarthy, John','ERIC','3'); return false">McCarthy, John; ((~Rodgers Smith Amy~) au)','Rodgers-Smith, Amy','ERIC','3'); return false">Rodgers-Smith, Amy; ((~Porter Jessica~) au)','Porter, Jessica','ERIC','3'); return false">Porter, Jessica
Integrating Music Therapy Services and Speech-Language Therapy Services for Children with Severe Communication Impairments: A Co-Treatment Model
((~Journal of Instructional Psychology~) jn)','Journal of Instructional Psychology','ERIC','3'); return false">Journal of Instructional Psychology
P.O. Box 8508 Spring Hill Station, Mobile, AL 36689-0508
Project Innovation, Inc.
2008

Both of these articles are on the ERIC database. I did not view the full articles. This search was made on 9/21/09. I searched using the words musicANDchildANDdevelopment as well as artANDchildANDdevelopment. I got thousands of hits, some relevant, some not.

RJA #4c: Checking Research Questions

LINKS TO BLOGS I COMMENTED ON:

http://lgreenmyer.blogspot.com/

http://denahankins.blogspot.com/

RJA# 4b: Writing Search Strings

Search Strings: +art+"child development", +music+"brain development", +art+music+brain+"child development", +child+development+music+art-adult, +child+development+music+art, "effects of art"+"child development", +school+art+music+"child development"

Boolean Operators: art AND brain AND development AND children AND NOT adults,
music AND art AND child AND development, music AND art AND brain AND development, music AND brain AND development AND children AND NOT adults, school AND art AND music AND child AND development

RJA #4a: Generating Keywords

Key Words: brain, art, child, development, music, thought processes, art class, school, school-age

Ladder of Organization: music, art, child, brain, music and art and child development, music and art and brain development, effects of music and art on child brain development

RJA #3c: Developing Research Question

Seeing as how I unfortunately do not have my book yet, I'm just going to take a stab at writing a research question and I will edit it later, after I've received my book.
"What are the effects of the Arts on brain development in children? Is it important to encourage the Arts beyond early childhood?"

RJA #3b: Narrowing Research Topic

After doing a bit more research, it seems like I chose a good topic to get a great research paper written. I fear if I narrow the research, say to only the effects of Classical Music on brain development, i won't be able to find enough information for the length of the paper. However, if I am writing the paper or the outline and it looks like I just have way too much information and it's going to be a little too lengthy, i will narrow it down to the topic I found the most research on and go from there.

RJA #3a: Exploring Research Topic

Upon checking some more sights, especially google scholar, I have found that the best resources for my report are probably going to be books. I have not yet been able to get to the library, but I plan to this week (hopefully!). However, I was able to get some solid facts out of the summaries and previews I was able to read about the different books I found.
In summary, it looks like there is a lot of studies on the effects art and music have on a child's brain development. It seems like the earlier you get started the better. The prime ages of brain development and imprinting lasting knowledge is between the age of birth (in some books, it even says before birth) to age 3-5 (depending on the source I was looking at). I also found a book that focused only on the importance of Art in continuing education for a variety of reasons, including keeping the brain stimulated and focused.

RJA #2c: Delicious Account

Okay everybody, here's the all-important link to my delicious account! I hope, for any of those interested in my topic, that my delicious page is a useful and informative page; that is once I figure out how to put the sites on it!

RJA #2b: Research Topic

I have chosen the effects of Art on child development for my research topic this semester. There are a few reasons why I chose this particular topic. First, I am an Art Education major and any extra understanding I gain on the importance of the Arts in a child's life will only help me in my future endeavors. Second, I have always been interested in the ways that the Arts impact people in general, not just children. From the interesting tie between classical music and brain development to the link between the visual arts (i.e. painting and colors) to different stimuli and development in the brain; I find it all fascinating. Last, I am getting ready to have a child of my own, and being an avid supporter of the Arts, i would love to learn additional ways to stimulate my child's ever-growing brain.
As I stated before, what I already know is the link between Classical music and brain development in the fetus and the stimulus on the brain that Classical music emits later on in life. I also know that there are ties between the visual arts in stimulating certain parts of the brain. I also know that the Arts can provide a great technique of stress release for the body, whether it's strumming out a song on your guitar or painting a mini-masterpiece while sitting at a nearby park.
What I don't know is why the above listed things happen. What is it about Classical music that promotes brain development? What part of the brain is being stimulated while listening to it? What part of the brain is being stimulated while you are painting or working on a potter's wheel? What benefit does this stimulation have in a child's (or adult's) life? How do the Arts help children with learning disabilities, like ADHD, or a more severe disability like Autism? These are all things I tend to find out in my research and gain a better understanding of exactly what it is about the Arts that so essential in a developing brain.

RJA #2a: Possible Topics

I believe I have settled on the topic of the importance of Art in child development. If I can't find enough information, I will update you on the next topic I choose. On the contrary, if I find too much information on the topic, I will post on what I have narrowed it down to. I can't wait to start researching this exciting topic!

RJA #1: Areas of Academic Interest

There are so many topics to choose from for this class. I have taken a class in Cultural Anthropology in the past and there are a variety of topics from that class that would be interesting to study further. Also, being an Art Education major, I would love to study the topic of the Arts and their effect on child development. Along with the previous topic, an interesting topic to research would be the effect of cutting these classes from schools and its impact on the students. For right now, those are my main topics, but there could be many more. There's just too much information and topics to choose from! I'm interested to see what other people in the class have listed!