The Memorable 1980 World Puppetry Festival

                          

Why I attended the impressionable conference held at Georgetown, Univ.,and the Kennedy Center for Perfoming Arts, Washington DC

An Inspirational Experience

The conference was a joint venture of the Union Internationale (UNIMA) and the Puppeteers of America, of which I was a member. Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, helped organize the event.

To promote the festival, Statler and Waldof (his cranky, human, muppets) appeared in a series of Muppet TV advertising spots.  This resulted in 2000 eager attendees and performers from around the world.

Continuous, assorted, puppet show performances were featured at Georgetown University theaters and the Kennedy Center's seven theaters for the performing arts. The eclectic conference gained attention to puppetry, as an art form, to the National Endowment for the Arts, a govt agency.

Thereby, puppeteers could be funded through grants, to perform and teach puppetry classroom skills at colleges throughout the United States. I eagerly attended professional’s touring classes, and soon learned puppetry skills to instruct Kansas City workshops for teachers, to engage students in the creative arts.

Earlier, as a vital member and article submitter in the 1970s for “The Puppeteers of America” organization, I had created my own family Voco Poco Puppets show that toured Kansas City and Topeka. 

Our unique stage show featured ventriloquist puppets that interacted with a hand puppet theatre. Electric piano music embellished the comedic acts, providing sound coherence for multiple puppet vocals.

             

Subsequently, I was desirous to see the creative performances of world-renown entertainers on various stages of Georgetown University and Kennedy Center.

Multiple Georgetown and Kennedy Center theaters ran shows simultaneously for the entrants. Various types of puppets engaged.  (Ventriloquist figures, marionette, shadow, rod, and hand puppets).

The esteemed Kennedy Center featured celebrity film and TV puppeteers

The celebrity, Edgar Bergen, with his witty Charlie McCarthy sidekick, did not perform as Edgar had recently passed in 1978.

 Yet, Buffalo Bob Smith performed with his marionette Howdy Doody, of the 1960s TV show, “It’s Howdy Doody Time”, as did the Jim Henson’s Muppets.

Bill Baird’s marionette presentations were engaging at Kennedy Center, as he is best known for his work in the film “Sound of Music” where Julie Andrews and the children sang for the dancing marionettes. Baird was a protégée of the early 20^th century celebrated puppeteer, Tony Sarg. They designed the Macy’s balloons for the annual Macy’s Christmas parade.

The Smithsonian's Natural Museum of History and Technology's long-term exhibit displayed three celebrity, puppet characters together; Charlie McCarthy (Bergen’s ventriloquist figure), Howdy Doody (Buffalo Bob’s marionette), with Kermit the Frog (Henson’s hand and rod puppet).

Preferably, hand puppets (like the themed Muppets and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood) and ventriloquists’ acts are best suited for film (television shows and movies mediums), rather than performing on large stages with large audiences. These performers obviously had production challenges adapting to a live stage performance with a vast audience.

Sitting in stage left box at the Kennedy Center's concert hall

Viewing actual live Muppets, Baird’s marionettes, Mr. Rogers work, and Buffalo Bob with Howdy Doody, in close proximity overlooking the stage, was joyful, astounding.

As a Kansas City performing artist, I found my self sitting next to, and chatting with the noted Hazel Rollins (Hazel’s marionettes) of Kansas City.

Key take away of our chat was: “be careful how you plan the puppet’s posterity. The worst thing you can do is bequeath them to a museum that will store them on a numbered shelf, stored in a box.” She now has her varied marionettes distributed online for mass market purchase.

But, the greatest experience was meeting several of them personally, and obtaining their autographs.

My greatest surprise was bumping into Jim Henson while I ran up the back stairwell of the Georgetown University’s “Old Main” building. Recognizing him immediately, he offered his autograph on my notepad.

Inspired and motivated, two months later, in August, 1980, I created the nonprofit, Educational Media Therapy Consultants, Inc, aimed to research puppets’ effects on listening sequencing memory, and learning.

Active Listening and AI Part 2

 This article is a continuance of Active listening Part 1, and how it will interface with AI. As the reader, you are interested in how AI will benefit, change, and/or disrupt your own personal world.

In many ways, there will be huge improvements to simply your life, as artificial intelligence WILL streamline many fields of endeavor to eliminate both small and consummate errors.

AI will rule data management, much to the relief of business and industry. Heath Care management will greatly benefit. Case in point: In the following incidence, I would have been grateful for an AI intervention like data management.

Recently, I endured a series of catapulting errors trying to get and prescription order filled. I finally did, but it took nearly a week of vacillating communication issues between the nurse, pharmacist, and me. 

Once an initial set of data was submitted, the pharmacist found another detail gap. 

The order remained in abstract limbo. It took my time and energy to finalize the order.  Humans have to organize information and notice discrepencies.

It had become chaotic mis-management. AI will streamline these routine data entries, and can offer additional competence, but, AI will NOT be able to THINK for the prescribing nurse. or the pharmacist, who is processing a specific order, having detailed instructions. It requires cognitive integration, of which listening is an integral component.

This type of personal hassle, you the reader, can relate to this. Similar incidences become daily nightmares to cope with. Life soon becomes too complicated.

Subsequently and conversely, AI will not manage human thought processes involving logical problem solving or unique innovations. Many life decisions will require your own, awareness and ability to resolve the problem. You wind up regretting having made unwise decisions and bad choices.  

Your life soon becomes chaos.

However, you can seek your own solutions. However, this requires enough memory strength to compare multiple options.

Answer lies in increasing our Critical Thinking Processes

How do we accomplish this achievement?

In review, active listening is the ability to integrate enough info correctly through cognitive integration, to make decisive judgments that benefit us. (see Hierarchy of Thinking model). The first step is to improve your own listening ability and memory levels to increase your self- awareness and monitoring.

Critical Thinking can only be achieved through deep learning rehearsal practice, and not though medications and pills, which might clear brain fog, but do not generate cohesive thought.

Bottom line: Training is a gradual, incremental process, like learning to play the a musical instrument or playing an athletic game.  Expertise does not happen overnight.  But, your gradual road toward excellence may be your feeling of accomplishment and resilient well-being.

Erland, J. K.  (1989c, 1980). The Hierarchy of Thinking Model.  Lawrence, KS. online; Academia.edu (2024). Jan Kuyper Erland.

Your Active Listening Capability vs. AI

Will Artificial Intelligence replace active listening and inter-communication?

This article series, as an early pioneer in cognitive neuroscience, as a lay practioner, can give you, the reader, hopeful communicative insight. We can find much discourse on this topic on social media. 

There are many viewpoints to consider.

My earlier article on “Listening Success” (February 18, 2024), outlined three types of listening; passive, active, and critical. 

That being said, can Artificial Intelligence replace active and critical listening, crucial components of inter-personal communicative skills and interaction?

The answer is a resounding “no.”  Why, so?

Business, educational, medical, and technical positions will always depend upon personal interaction with feelings and intent.

 AI cannot copy this.

There will also be conferencing and working in teams that will require inter-active communication. Subsequently, inter-personal thought patterns will be outside of AI.

Active listening requires cognition. Without it, you are relegated to only visual memory and careers that utilize the visual process.

Example: Lawn businesses and factory line work require only minimal critical- active, listening. It is primarily visual work.

     i.e. I live on a street where every house employs a difference lawn landscaping company, as there are multitudes to choose from.  

The owner often entails the workload personally, as his lawn assistants cannot follow the necessary, mandatory, oral directions. (auditory memory).

To compound the situation, the lawn proprietor also has limited sequential, listening memory.

Out hiking, I noticed a homeowner giving a lawn proprietor detailed instruction. The latter looked overly confused, as he could not follow, or remember, the procedural instructions entailed.

Subsequently, the specifics were accidentally skipped. Later, the disgruntled home owner then hired another company with the same problem.

Unfortunately, the town is saturated with lawn companies. It is an easy business to acquire the necessary equipment, as failed lawn services soon go broke, (after two or three years in the red), and sell their equipment at a loss to another aspiring lawn company.

Perhaps, it would be better to acquire active listening memory ability; even if it requires some effort. For enhanced performance, The Bridge to Achievement program requires deep learning practice like athletic and musical performance.

                

t may be time to lessen time spent on visual video games, and consider listening development.

 

 

Film-work Part 2: Complex Details Unfold

 

                                                            

Research and Development years: 1979-1999

 Initial 1979 research was conducted at the University of Kansas Watson Library, applying my class textbooks noted prominent researchers. It began with B.F. Skinner’s stimulus-response research followed with D. O. Hebb, Canadian Neuroscientist, who wrote on the organization of behavior.

 Those meant hours searching “the dark stacks” using Dewey decimal; cards, and printing textbook findings.

 Popular college instructional topics in the 1980s, expanded into Cognitive Behavioral Modification (CBM) with Donald Meichenbaum, who combined Skinner’s and Albert Bandura’s behavioral analysis work.

 It was an exciting, informative, time for me. I couldn’t read enough about it. The early 1980s created a fresh flavor for neuroscience, at a time when few lay people understood the meaning of the word “cognitive”, or cared about it.

 Scientific writing tutorials were recommended by a Journalism faculty member, who directed me to the well-known Topeka Menninger psychiatric clinic’s prominent editor.

 I soon found myself writing scientific papers, and publishing them in an accelerated learning journal, eager for fresh perspectives. Their editor soon became my mentor, and the research effort sprang from that point.

 Seeking Scientific Advancement

 

I kept going, setting up 12 research sites in the process, training and conducting trial classes with puppetry voices.

Today we have large, well-attended neuroscience conferences; many students major in cognition.

The topic now also floods the internet’s Social Media feeds, nearly half a century later.

The first memory and cognition lessons 1-30, were created on audio tape formats, recorded in detail several times.

Hefty personal-directive, workbook additions, complete with researched and cited, lessons, were added to interface with the listening tapes; 45 minutes of additional written/spoken homework was required.

Unfortunately, the cassette tapes consisted of the warm-up drills only; with few game lessons (which are the centerpiece of the instruction). The complete game lessons were administered by an instructor applying transparencies on an overhead projector in group settings, according to age ranges and abilities.

School implementations were activated on this crude model.

Data streams were compiled as such by 5 different university professors and grad students. Then, the data was submitted to the University of Iowa’s statistical analysis department with the Woodcock Johnson’s (Cognitive Skills Battery) Vice President, who evaluated the entire ongoing process.

The final data process then progressed to the New Jersey automated testing service for the schools’ achievement tests correlations.

This rehearsal model was rapidly becoming non-feasible, outdated, with technological advancement.

Subsequently, initial filming of the Warm-up lessons and a few simple “Games” followed. But the bulk of the program was in limbo, requiring high-definition video and sound.

The recent, arduous, film update was strapped with earlier detailed compilations to formulate, yet in the mirrored procedure as the earlier audio tape formats.

A long incubation followed, until recently, when the seemingly unattainable process was realized this spring in solid teamwork with talented sound engineer, Scott Adam Walker.

 

Film-work Realized

 A long, seven-year film production process, teamed with Scott Adam Walker, photogapher and sound engineer, was finally completed recently on April 30th. The Bridge to Achievement entity was realized in an upgraded format.

Early 2021 editing, Jan & Scott

The complex project entailed an updated high defination compilation of my earlier filmed video and audio tapes, with matched instructional manuals, used in field testing.

The Bridge to Achievement program consists of 43 years of inclusive, incubated practice.

Re-filming the ventriloquist puppets was no easy task, as it required dubbing of the multiple sounds at different pitches and pacing that looped. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) could not have replicated the task, due to the great variety of overlapping, timing elements.

Esarlier cognitive training entailed lengthy learner participation, ranging from one hour to 90 minutes. The newly streanlined prctice sessions  are left up to the learner until they realize their own strengthened memory spans. 

Improved listening is paramount.

The filmed lessons range a short 13-24 minutes, not including the participants' practice (like athletics and music rehearsals).

The Bridge to Achievement is an important realization for those wanting personal sharpness with high performance without medical, drug dependence.

Lesson 4 - Mem-ExSpan, memspan's The Bridge to Achievement, Sequential C...

Lesson 4 -  gives you a chance to test your short-term working memory by seeing if you can remember a food order. 

Learn by self-rehearsal-practice; then try repeating the items in the order.

Brain-Based Learning Wins All

 Why Brain Based Learning? (coined in the 1990s, the decade of the brain)

Brain Based Learning improves cognitve functions that include focus and memory. (Many scientific research articles support this).We all desire this, but with so many quick-fix options on the market-place, we are at a loss with making a final decision.

Peruse my 45 years of data backed events, (four juried, award-winning, longitudinal reports) combined with recent YouTube videos. My websites memspan.com and memexspan.com offer many new insights.

• 

YouTube Videos

Your investigation is now a personal search that will lead to meaningful actions.

Cubistic, Wooden Faces for Focus

 

Attention spans often lapse in today’s volatile, digital screen world.

 The objective:  is to improve attention to visual detail and listening skills, the ability to comprehend technical information, and follow oral and written directions.

 When entering information to the brain exceeds your short-term memory span capacity, the mind will go on "overload." 

 The working mechanism:

Filmed wooden faces are designed to progressively build Short-Term Memory span length, strength, and capacity to develop listening and visual detail skills. 

Once the automatic looping, wooden facial process begins, cubistic faces are repeated within daily practice sessions.

 Automated Chunking Action:  Each memory span has a beginning and an end.  Like a bridge span, it can hold many units.  A span can be Right-Brain or Left-Brain. 

 A Right-Brain span is global, or a unit of one.  A Left-Brain span is sequential, or is comprised of several units.

 Subsequently, you should be able to process five bits of information at once.

 By the end of the eight-weeks, participants can rehearse strings of ten items in varying chunked formations. A long, strong, and resilient memory span forms mental toughness. 

The chunking starts with a series of three items and progresses in difficulty level to ten or more items. Participants rehearse three unrelated items within the categories of letters, colors, numbers and words, reciting with the character models through scanning rotations [i].    

You Tube Film

 The objective is to enhance encoding and decoding processes.  Memory strengthening also makes following complicated step-wise procedures easier.  Learning strategies are taught on how to follow complex directions easily.

How:

 1.                  New information begins to process into the brain.

2.                  It registers in the brain either in parts or its entirety
Many subconscious thoughts enter as whole patterns.  The   complexity of the information  interfaces with the length and strength of your Short-Term memory span.

3.                  Information enters Short-Term Memory, and settles according to your span length.

4.                  If it doesn't process correctly, because of a short, overloaded span length, it is forgotten.

5.                  If it continues to process, it is synthesized with other background knowledge, and then classified by topic and enters Intermediate-Term Memory.  Mental thoughts or concepts form.

6.                  Next, the Left-Brain sorts and categorizes the information.

7.                  It then requires ordering or visual or auditory sequencing to integrate.

8.                  The sorted information finally enters Long-Term Memory. Understanding and conceptualization develop, based upon the early pattern selection, with intuitive thought and feelings.

9.                  Reasoning and logic commence, which are dependent on the above factors.

      Unfortunately, weak attention spans coupled with wandering thoughts, hinder our daily lives, leaving us lost in a digital world.

 

 

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[i] Erland, J. K. (1980).  Vicarious Modeling, Using Peers and Puppets With Learning Disabled Adolescents In Following Oral Directions.  Unpublished Masters thesis, The University of Kansas.

Erland, J.  K.  (1990, 1988, 1987, 1986, 1981).  The Memory Retainer Mental Exercise Review Book.
Lawrence, KS: Mem-ExSpan, Inc.

Erland, J . K. (1992).  Reading and learning disabled students improve reading and math through video-taped analytical training.  Journal of the Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching, 17, (3 & 4),  171-223.

Erland, J.  K.  (1994, 1991).  The Bridge To Achievement, Accelerated Cognitive Training System.  Lawrence, KS: Mem-ExSpan, Inc.

Erland, J.  K.  (1994).  Analytical skills training through video-tape instruction develops higher-order thinking skills capability.  Journal of Accelerative Learning and Teaching,  19, (2), 155-227.

Erland, J.  K.  (1998).  Cognitive skills and accelerated learning memory training using interactive media improves academic performance in reading and math.  Journal of Accelerative Learning and Teaching,  23, (3 & 4), 3-57.

Erland, J. K. (1999, Spring):  Brain-Based Learning Longitudinal Study Reveals Solid Academic Achievement Maintenance With Accelerated Learning Practice. Journal of Accelerative Learning and Teaching,  Volume 24,
(1 & 2).  (available for pdf download on www.memspan.com/jalt.html)

Erland, J. K.  (!999, Fall)  Brain-Based Accelerated Learning and Cognitive Skills Training Using Interactive Media Expedites High Academic Achievement  The Journal of Accelerated Learning and Teaching, 24, (3 & 4).  (available for pdf download on www.memspan.com/jalt.html)  In ERIC Clearinghouse  ED # 437 650. 100-page Jan K. Erland Monograph Scientific Report on Intelligences and Accelerated Learning Applications Documenting Treatment success with eleven classrooms and three control groups in all  ITBS academic subject areas. 

Erland, J. K. (2000, Fall)  Brain-Based Accelerated Learning Longitudinal Study Reveals Subsequent High Academic Achievement Gain for Low Achieving, Low Cognitive Skill Fourth Grade Students”. The Journal of Accelerated Learning and Teaching, 25, (3 & 4). 5-48.  (available for pdf download on www.memspan.com/jalt.html)

 Paivio, A.  (1986).  Mental Representation:  A dual coding approach.  New York:  Oxford University Press.

Discovering an Arts and Science Film Model

Creating, implementing, monitoring continual data analyses, then evaluating, and publishing with the medical model is a lofty goal. Then converting this successful executive function application to mainstream understanding is even loftier.

My learning disability training came from renowned The University of Kansas’ instructional center, located at the main Kansas City, Kansas hospital. The rigorous medical model training was based upon the neuro-psychological construct.

As a learning disability specialist and classroom teacher, in the ‘70s & ‘80s, I applied science and art to the accepted accelerated learning construct.

At that time, creative instruction, was not a friendly construct with some public-school districts, administrators, and educators that depended on government funding.

Traditional teaching methods were inherent and cemented.

To my dismay, I soon discovered:

1)   Referred students required psycho-educational testing and evaluations to qualify, and many did not.

2)   Many students were not being identified, and fell through the testing requirement cracks.

3)   Furthermore, public schools could lose funding when the student was remediated. To maintain the funding stability, a newly referred student was needed to replace the vacancy.

4)   This meant additional after school staffing meetings with teachers, and administrators who were reluctant to lengthen their work-day.

5)   Auditory/sound/listening training was minimal, if any. (for creating auditory/visual integration for proficient logic and conceptualization).  Lightweight "listening" training lessons existed, but there were few heavy practice routines, like athletic or musical training. 

These attributes created a large learning gap for most everyone. Many concerned parents became desperate and sought private remediation resources.

Many instructional programs soon emerged. Some were cumbersome tutorials, whereas the individual traveled to a new setting/location.

This awkward construct opened the pathway for online leaning as broadband emerged, decades later.

Regrettably, many online auditory/visual training methods had their shortcomings with limited achievement results.

Then, there was me with my “arts in science” cognitive skills enhancement program with a phonological practice system that was working.

 

 Problem: My vocalized puppets, sitting on stools, demanded a filming interface. Moving them to distant states to film studios would be difficult, time consuming, and costly.

Subsequently, I created my own home laboratory complete with sound - recording, lighting, and video equipment to formulate procedural learning segments.

 Locating a talented sound technician who could work on small piece sound segments, plus learn a new looping system, was no easy task.

 Yet, one walked in from nowhere, as I interviewed many local candidates.

 My earlier blog discussions revealed the reluctance of current day individuals, faced with memory and cognitive deficiencies to rely on pills and concoctions as an easy quick-fix.

 And, with lots of Social Media time involvements over-riding educational learning.

However, hasty mental solutions will not produce efficient procedural upskill training.

Fortunately, looping, vocalized, puppet characters can realize and maintain their phonological sequencing results through continued science research, upskill implementation practice, and technology.

 

Listening Success

This article continues my perspective on the importance of listening comprehension as it plays a role in procedural training and the cognitive skills required for deep learning acquisition.

 Technology now creates fast, easy, auditory enhancement deliverables not possible until recently.

 With consumers looking for quick solutions (my previous blog article, “Solutions Rejected”) of pills and relaxants, my application is most applicable for future cognitive brain/language/phonological research and/or upskilling by companies needing a workable, research-evidenced, practice verified. application.

This commentary follows my “Listening Your Best Asset” November 2021 blog.

It accentuates my “Hierarchy of Thinking” paradigm. [i]

 Understanding aural information is critically important in our every day life. Many take listening for granted, but there are three types: [ii]

 1.         Passive Listening as listening to music

2.         Active Listening: with full attention to learn and retain information

3.         Critical, or analytical to make judgments what was heard.

           

My innovative work is to strengthen short term memory spans for active listening. a requirement for critical listening found through parallel processing.[iii]  This process creatively applies images and sound/voices[iv] described in juried, publications [v]

 Many platforms, like YouTube, Patreon, and various podcasts, offer listening suggestions, but none have evidence-based, technological application.

 

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[i]  Erland J. K. (c 1989), Hierarchy of Thinking. Lawrence, KS.

[ii] Cherednichenko G., (2011, Vedeco trendy technology conference paper) “The Role of Technology and Teaching Listening” monograph pp.78-83 available on online, Academia.edu.

[iii] Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J. and the PDP Research Group. (1986).  Parallel distributed processing:  Explorations in the micro structure of cognition.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press    

[iv] Erland, Janis L. (February 4, 1986; copyright TXu 225 862). Contrapuntal Thinking and Definition of Sweeping Thoughts.

[v] Erland, J. K. (Fall 2000). Brain-Based Longitudinal Study Reveals Subsequent High Academic Achievement Gain for Low-Achieving, Low Cognitive Skills, Fourth Grade Students. Journal of Accelerated Learning and Teaching. 25, (3&4) pp.5-48. ERIC ED # 453-553. & # CS 510 558. https://Books.Google.com/jankuypererland page 44.

Solutions Rejected

 

A former December blog. “Memory Development for Me, revealed my pleasure in upskilling my own cognitive skills, and the mental overload relief I obtained with mental practice exercises.

 “Effective Wellness Reconsidered” talk followed  in my January post.

 Yet, today’s world generally does not embrace or recognize the concept of self-improvement through practice exercise, unless it is athletic teams whose objective design is performance. 

An individual may consider it “cool” to have a mental or physical weakness, to align with majority thought.

The new order code is “sensationalism”. All seek it. All want it. 

Many unsubstantial memory and learning companies have entered a crowded landscape promising the ill-informed individual an answer.

 Solutions, unfortunately,  can become a faulty choice. Rather than a weakness becoming “resolved” it is something to brag about.

If our weakness becomes uncomfortable, we swallow a pill, or smoke a joint. Ultimately, our health becomes at stake.

Yet, procedural learning remains critically important, beyond the pill or joint.

 Many individuals cannot embrace it or qualify for a demanding job position. Or, successfully engage in competitive athletics.

Because a good outcome takes practice, and more practice, then, some more.

Analytics become looped with the practiced outcome. Questions follow. What additionally is needed? 

Tried and True researched, clinical trials, or taking actions that work under pressure.

 Whatever the choice, it is for you to decide if  you are geared to grip technical job skills.

Effective Wellness Reconsidered

Many are unaware that they operate below par with their mental wellness functions. Some are concerned, while many do not care.

Several cognitive, medical, and psychological predispositions comprise mental state relationships.

Trapped, disappointed, and living in a non-focus state, their fingers rapidly scroll their screens. When not scrolling rapidly, they rush between tasks and demands at hand.

Unfortunately, productivity is lost. Only one in five can execute, and then complete a challenging, technical procedure. Personal skills remain at a low ebb. 

Subsequently, work skills remain at a premium, and are in short supply.

Finding their work life in a static position, promotions or new jobs remain elusive, inflation stings. 

We may rush to find partners online to help pay the freight, whereas, it might be better to upskill for proficient, mental wellness enhancement.

It is time to contemplate your own situation, select effective researched, self-recovery methods, as marketing is having a hey-day at your personal well-being expense.

Follow my work with viewing pogram and lesson samples 

on YouTube under jankuypererland1111

https://youtu.be/0yBvAnGjJeI

Additionally, YouTube features one minute “shorts” to expedite the scrolling process, to complement their social media platforms that may promote ego boosting photos hinged with brief comments.

Utilize my research and developed applications, as it becomes cemented into ongoing and future medical, cognitive, and psychological research applications.