Almost all researches in sleep explain that nightmares are a reaction to negative experiences that happen during waking hours. However, some of them believe that nightmares do have some real benefits. One 2017 study, for example, found that frequent nightmare sufferers rated themselves as more empathetic (共鸣的). They also displayed more of a tendency to unconsciously mirror other people through things like yawning. People who have constant nightmares also tend to think further outside the box on psychoanalysis tasks. Some other researches have found support for the idea that nightmares might be linked to creativity.

    People seeking cure for nightmares were not necessarily more fearful or anxious, but rather had a general sensitivity to all emotional experience. Sensitivity is the driving force behind intense dreams. Heightened sensitivity to threats or fear during the day results in had dreams and nightmares, whereas heightened passion or excitement may result in more intense positive dream. And both these forms of dreams may feed back into waking life, perhaps increasing suffering after nightmares, or promoting social bonds and empathy after positive dreams.

    The effects go further still. This sensitivity overflows over into perceptions and thoughts: people who have a lot of nightmares experience a dreamlike quality to their waking thoughts. And this kind of thinking seems to give them a creative edge. For instance, studies show that such people tend to have greater creative talent and artistic express. And people who often have nightmares also tend to have more positive dreams than the average person.

    The evidence points towards the idea that, rather than disturbing normal activity, people who are unfortunate in having a lot of nightmares also have a dreaming life that is at least as creative, positive and vivid as it can be distressing and terrifying. What's more, this imaginative richness is unlikely to be limited to sleep, but also is filled with waking thought and daydreams. Even after people wake up and shake off the nightmare, in other words, a mark of it stays behind, possessing them throughout the day.

    On the day the tornado hit, there was no indication severe weather was on its way—the sky was blue and the sun had been out. The first alert my husband, Jimmy, 67, and I, 65, got came around 9 p.m., from some scrolling text on the TV Jimmy was watching. He ran upstairs to find me in our third-floor bedroom, and we changed the channel from the presidential primary debate I had been watching to our local Pensacola, Florida, station.

    No sooner had we found coverage of the tornado than it was on top of us. Suddenly, the bones of the house shook, the power went out, and the wind began to roar through blown-out windows. We had three flights of steps to navigate to the relative safety of the first floor, where a closet fixed underneath a brick staircase might be the firmest place to wait things out. Everything around rattling, we struggled forward, uncertain whether we would make it.

    As we reached the last flight of steps, our front door blew out. Shards of glass flew everywhere. A three-foot-long tree branch whipped, missing us by inches.

    By the time I reached the closet, the tornado had been over us for about a minute. Jimmy pushed me down to the closet floor, but the wind kept him outside. I grasped his arm as the tornado constantly sucked the door open and tried to bring him with it. My knees and scalp were full of glass, but I felt no pain. If I had let go, Jimmy would have flown right out the back of the house and into the bay. Then everything stopped. In those first quiet moments, I couldn't believe it was over.

    The storm lasted four minutes. Four of the twelve town houses in our unit were completely destroyed. Of the houses left standing, ours suffered the most damage. Amazingly, none of us were severely injured.

    I have a pair of pants. Tell me: How many different ways can I put a pair of pants to use?

    Now imagine you're Lady Gaga. Bill Gates. A scuba diver. An architect. You still have the pants. What other uses come to mind?

    What you just practiced—the conscious act of "wearing" another self—is an exercise that, according to psychiatrist Srini Pillay, MD, is essential to being creative.

    One problem about our understanding of creativity is that we tend to connect it to our concept of self: Either we're "creative" or we aren't, without much of a middle ground. "I'm just not a creative person!" a frustrated student might say in art class.

    Dr. Pillay, an assistant professor at Harvard University, has spent a good part of his career challenging these ideas. He believes that the key to unlocking your creative potential is to reject the old advice that urges you to "believe in yourself." In fact, you should do the opposite: Believe you are someone else.

    Dr. Pillay points to a 2016 study where the authors – educational psychologists Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar-divided their college-student subjects into three groups, instructing one group to think of themselves as "poets" and another to imagine they were "librarians" (the third group was the control). The researchers then presented all the participants with ten ordinary objects, including a fork, a carrot, and a pair of pants, and asked them to come up with as many different uses as possible for each one.

    Those who were asked to imagine themselves as poets came up with the widest range of ideas, whereas those in the librarian group had the fewest. Meanwhile, the researchers found only small differences in students' creativity levels across academic majors. In fact, the physics majors pretending to be poets came up with more ideas than the art majors did.

    These results, write Dumas and Dunbar, suggest that creativity is not an individual trait but a "product of context and perspective." Everyone can be creative, as long as he or she feels like a creative person.

    The British are known for their sense of humour. However, it is often difficult for foreigners to understand their jokes. The main point to remember is that the British often use understatement.

    Understatement means saying less than you think or feel. For example, if someone gets very wet in a shower of rain, he might say, "It's a little damp (潮湿的) outside." Or, if someone is very impolite and shouts at another person, someone else might say, "She isn't exactly friendly." Understatement is often used in unpleasant situation or to make another person look silly. Understatement plays an important part in British humour.

    Another key to understanding British humour is that the British like to make fun of themselves as well as others. They often laugh about the silly and unpleasant things that happen to our everyday life when someone accidentally falls over in the street. They also like to make jokes about people from different classes of society. They like to make jokes about their accents, the way they dress and the way they behave. What's more, the British love to watch comedies about people who do not know how to behave in society. The comedy series Mr. Bean is a good example of this kind of humour. Mr. Bean is the character created by British actor Rowan Atkinson in 1990.

    Mr. Bean doesn't talk often, and instead he uses his body movements and facial expressions to make people laugh. Perhaps what makes Mr. Bean so funny is that he does things that adults in the real world cannot do. Mr. Bean is popular in many countries around the world because you do not have to speak English to understand the humour. Because of this, many people have become familiar with the British sense of humour.

Thanks to the evolution of technology, the learning-centred mobile apps can help maintain learning even outside the classrooms and make the learning activities more efficient.

Study Blue

With Study Blue, teachers can create flashcards and interactive sessions. Meanwhile, you can view the study materials anywhere anytime and share flashcards with your teacher & classmates in real time.

App Features

• Unlimited access to over 500 million study materials.

• Quizzes to track your study process.

• Set reminders on bookmarked contents.

Ratings: 4.4/5 Users: 1,000,000+ Download: Android, iOS

TED

TED helps educators to bring out a colorful classroom and prepare unique lecture presentations. Thousands of sessions by experts can help you to get knowledge & topics to discuss in classrooms.

App Features

• TED talk videos with subtitles (字幕).

• Discover interesting lectures.

• Playing is possible with no Internet connection.

Ratings: 4.6/5 Users: 10,000,000+ Download: Android, iOS

Quizzes

Quizzes make your study more interesting. There are millions of teacher-created quizzes on Quizizz and you can compete with friends online. Teachers can make the whole class play together and assign individual homework.

App Features

• Customized games for individuals.

• Track & get timely progress reports.

• Teachers are the quiz masters.

Ratings: 4.8/5 Users: 1,000,000+ Download: Android, iOS

Pocket

Pocket is a solution to learning lectures on the go. You can instantly save articles or video content for improving your classroom studies. Teachers can communicate with students and parents virtually.

App Features

• Dark-colored themes for night use.

• Multi-language support.

• Access to saved articles without the Internet.

Ratings: 4.6/5 Users: 10,000,000+ Download: Android, iOS

In 1999, John Smith, a high-school teacher decided it was time to retire. Together with his wife Helen, he set off on a journey around Australia. But when they returned, John found he missed the classroom, so he spent another eight years doing casual teaching.

Then he heard about a program known as Volunteers for Isolated Students' Education (VISE), which pairs up energetic people with educational experience, usually retired teachers, with children whose schooling is largely done remotely, because they live too far away from towns and cities to attend regular schools. John grew up in the country and as a kid in the bush, he always dreamed of running with circus, but he didn't even have much chance to see the circus in person. Therefore he was immediately interested in the program and got a travelling post as a teacher with Stardust Circus.

The lesson timetable was built around the kid's performance schedules. "The eight-year-old I tutored was an awesome gymnast who was part of the teeterboard(跷跷板) act," he explains. "A big guy would jump on the other side, he would swing up in the air, do a couple of twirls(旋转) and land on his uncle's shoulders, and his uncle was standing on the boy's father's shoulders!"

The circus still includes some animal acts, including lions, monkeys, horses, goats and pigs. John and his wife Helen found it extraordinary enough to sink into sleep to the sound of lions roaring, but one day the lion-trainer, Matt, gave him a very special privilege,inviting him in to meet four 13-month old lions in person. While it was understandably a little scary at first, for John it was a never-to-be-forgotten experience, which helped him realize his boyhood dream in ms 75th year.