Brain Rules

[Skip Zilla]

Dr. John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant. He is an affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He is also the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University.

In addition to his research work, Dr. Medina has published a practical guide for applying knowledge gained from recent findings of brain research which is aimed at those whose professional work involves cognitive outcomes--especially educators--and in general at all of us who would better make use of our brains in leading our lives. Here's a link to his website which describes his work which is the basis for his book Brain Rules.

When I receive my copy of Dr. Medina's book and DVD, I intend to evaluate them as possible resources for discussion at FL about how we might improve the care and use of our students' and our own brains!

[Ian Carmichael]

Thanks, Skip,
I'm learning to play with RSS (Yawn, you say...) but Slashdot just pointed me to a Times Online article about creativity and its location in the brain. It's worth a skim in this context.

[Skip Zilla]

Thank you, Ian, for providing a link to Bryan Appleyard's article. I've got to confess that the part of the article about babyboomers' declining mental acuities made me uncomfortable largely because I've seen that decline in a very direct way over my own lifetime. However, I'm banking on the prospect of plasticity and generation of new neurons as the result of staying active mentally as I age. No matter our ages, too, we need to take very seriously how we care for our brains as the physiological gifts they are to us and our well-being at large.

[Ian Carmichael]

And the wheel turns! Here I am again, awaiting my own copy of Medina! Looks fascinating. And sounds very practical!

[Ian Carmichael]

Copy arrived, and I've just made a beginning. It is very informative material, and very applicable to modern learning. I'll post a few quotes, when I've got my pen-scans downloaded. (Yes, Skip, I've lashed out on an infoscan2 - neat, effective, a little clunky, but better than my old habits of underlining, highlighting, and telling myself I'll go back and scan the page, or type the quote, later.)

[Connie Weber]

Hi Skip and Ian,

Just went to locate my book and I realize I've loaned it to a friend. I'll get it back and happily join in on a discussion with you two! Anyone else want to join in?

[Ian Carmichael]

Just to plug in a couple of quotes, and brief comment

[If] you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over. (p5)

Although I share Stephen Jay Gould's suspicion of evolutionary accounts of behaviour ('just so stories' he called them.), I'm happy to credit current research! So I'll grant that exercise is indeed linked to better brain function - but I'll leave the origins of that to our savannah-roaming ancestors in the 'speculative sociobiology' bin. And indeed, discussing this with my wife, she'd come across research that Medina was wanting - that learning while exercising enhanced learning. (Gives a new image to the 'college treadmill.')

I love his image from William MacAdam that the development of commerce was because his roads improved access to good and services. So exercise provides the brain better access to the energy sources it needs. (Funny that Medina spells the process of bitumising roads correctly 'macadamising' but renders the inventor incorrectly as McAdam)

On p 38 Medina discusses the interaction between creativity and stored knowledge. We need both (which should be obvious, but the education wrestles still seem to require the choice of one over the other)
He speaks of teaching strategies which ignore our need to obtain a deep understanding of a subject, which includes memorizing and storing a richly structured database.
What is of importance here is richly-structured. The simple rote-learnings, I think, don't build anything rich. They build one-word one-response substitution lists, which is an important subset of the real database, but no adequate replacement for it. When we teach/learn, we need the challenges (the 'surprising facts' of Peirce) to force new connections between the lists, to develop schemas of explanation which unify some parts of the lists we have memorised.
To caricature:
The "test and rank" extremists often seem to require an impoverished database: 'look to the lists, lads' - (and no creativity)
The 'liberal' extremists seem to 'outsource' all of the database - and extol creativity and originality as the 'be all and end all.'

[Ian Carmichael]

So, if this is the case, how much of the database needs to be personally resident? I think it depends on who we're being. If I'm being a mathematician, a large amount of calculus, analytical geometry, group theory etc will be resident - I'm working with these things frequently, they'll at least be in 'cache memory'! If I'm being a physicist, I'll know where to find some of these things: most will be outsourced - but my resident database will hold the structures of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, crystallography... If I'm being an historian, my resident store will be different again. If I'm a musician, scores and tabs and fingering, tuning schemes and acoustics may be in my resident storage.
My self (not, ultimately, my school) will quantify the richness of my database (what's there). My expertises will structure the database relations (my manner of access).

[Ian Carmichael]

And here's Scientific American's article 'Your Workout Makes you Smarter"

[Connie Weber]

Hi Ian,

Exercise, for me, is like medicine. If I don't get exercise for a couple of days, I get really edgy. Something's missing.

When I go on those long country-road runs, I think, "good for your brain," "good for your brain," and that keeps me going when I'd really rather stop. (Heaven knows I need any advantage I can get!)

Beyond those long slow runs, I play soccer, too. There's nothing like the workout of soccer, the intensity of it, the fun, the way you can forget you're exercising and just play. I keep thinking I should quit soccer because it's too dangerous, but the benefits of getting that hard workout would be hard to go without. I get a real brain-clearing from the sport. It's high-powered stress relief.

My copy of Medina's book is still not available. I'll just join in anyway, ok? The book I purchased has a DVD in it, the videos from the website. I've used the video twice as meeting starters--gives people a big kick. Makes you think. Don't you think it's cute to see those executives bouncing around on ball-chairs?

Medina is a very good speaker. He's full of zip, eager for questions, passionate about his research. He also has applied his research to himself, and has taken off a lot of weight. I think he put a treadmill in his office, learned to always use stairs and not elevators, goes for walks whenever he can.

I have exercise equipment in the classroom: balance boards, Chinese jumpropes, arm-exercisers. We like to run outside and play kickball or other sports pretty regularly. Capture the Flag is a favorite.

[Laura Gibbs]

I love this book!!! Just got it and read it - I wish I had tackled it earlier this summer! It's not often that I read something which I think my students would actually enjoy, but I am going to be pushing this one very hard this semester for students who are curious about their own learning. It is full of so many practical real-world observations, connected to very smart scientific research. I think I will feature one of his "rules" every week and write up a blurb about it; esp. since there is the video at Medina's website, too, I think I might be able to pull my students into this book, so they can see what value it might have for them.

[Connie Weber]

Laura,

Isn't neuroscience fascinating? I just read an article I'd love to share, but I'd need permission. It's by Usha Goswami: "Neuroscience and education: from research and practice?"

My reaction to the article, viewpoint of Practitioner: Although there are some really good, practical, scientifically-informed people out there who can tell us the uses of neuroscience (I'm thinking here of Medina, but he's not referred to in the article), mostly it's a big gigantic, unchartered territory with no obvious pathways to conclusions.

I'm developing some exercises to do in learning groups, if a moment comes up... Oh wait, I'm not saying it just yet. Just part of it. Some background: We're all going to be discussing the article, then springing off from there. That paper is in the batch of readings on learners' futures that come from three perspectives: the digital revolution, neuroscience, and globalization.

Let me turn to the community and ask, what would you suggest as a fun assignment for playing with the neuroscience side of things?

---------------Everyone is trying to sell you (us, teachers, administrators) access to a special brain ability. They say that if we just use their methods, apparatus, guidelines, or tests, and you will get results.

Now get playful here. What assignment do you think would bring out understanding of the fact that neuromyths predominate?

How about a motion metaphor? (A reed in the wind? Migrating ducks?) How about a visual or musical producation?

How about an advertisement?

What if we forgot to say what the results were likely to be? Yes, you get results, but....

Please, colleagues o' mine, send some creative ideas my way if anything jumps to mind.

And PLEASE, if you know of some FUNNY VIDEOS about people trying to sell people brain power, share.

[Connie Weber]

More on the neuroscience-teacher connection: I think Todd Rose has a wealth of useful information to share. Now he's got important news, stuff we can use right now as teachers. He's a person going forth with machetes to create a pathway through the jungle. Among other things, he studies the working-memory.. And he's lived a life of having a learning style that wasn't the predominant cultural mode, learned much, so very much from that.

Also, Kurt Fischer--(Todd's mentor)--now he is clearly a powerhouse, and someone ready to help teachers. His dream (my dream too) is to develop lab schools, research schools, in which learning informs research which informs learning. Fischer is a bridge-builder between neurology and education. He's in a new Field: Mind, Brain, and Education. (I get such a kick out of that--who gets to declare that there is a new field?! Do you suddenly come out of the woods to find a new field? But I'm thinking it's so.)