Found this book by chance on a colleagues book shelf and promptly "borrowed" it. Medina is a molecular biologist and brain scientist. His personal research and review of current leading science about the brain led to this book, which presents 12 rules for how the brain operates. What I like in particular about Medina's approach is that every rule is accompanied by practical ideas for both education and business. I also appreciate that he admits that some of his ideas are just that... untested ideas that should be investigated, tried and studied. He doesn't have the answers, but he is willing to think about them. Just a couple of teasers for education:
- Committing learning to long term memory requires repetition, both while awake and (by your brain) while sleeping. Missing the conscious and explicit repetition or the sub-conscious, repetition while sleeping will decrease the likelihood of you remembering something. How do I organize my "teaching day" to take advantage of this and help (require) students to do so.
- Activity while learning (not just adjacent to, but while) increases ability to learn. Does taking time "out of class" to do this actually make learning more efficient
- Multiple, simultaneous sensory inputs are better than single sense. Can I organize lecture/discussion away from solitary text to text+pictures, or discussion+sound, or ...
This is definitely a read and discuss for educators.
Read
No comments:
Post a Comment