Group items tagged

Based on NOVA's "How Does the Brain Work?" program, " One of the online supplements to How Does the Brain Work? is this interactive collection of images of brain scans. The collection of images, titled Mapping the Brain, allows you to choose from six imaging methods and choose the part(s) of the brain that you want to see highlighted in the scans." R. Byrne also describes resources for teachers to use in conjunction with the show for high school and middle school students.

"The handy infographic below takes a look at the BELS process - Brain Essential Learning Steps. In other words, how does the brain process information in the learning process? The graphic breaks it down in terms of how to teach the material, making this a super useful reminder for teachers planning their lessons. Keep reading to learn more." The 4 Steps: Introducing material, collaborative brainstorming, students develop a learning plan, and then "take action," through writing, music, visuals, etc., and share.

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are "visual learners" and others are auditory; some are "left-brain" students, others "right-brain." . . . . "The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing," the researchers concluded. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding. "What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting," Testing helps memory: The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call "desirable difficulty," is evident in daily life.

Defines 3 types of bilinguals. Helpful in defining what your students needs might be.

This is a fascinating description of what FMRIs have found about brain function and playing music. We should all out our guitars and tune up the piano.

"Research now shows that there may be physical structural differences in the brains of adolescents who are regularly victimised, and this could increase the chance that they suffer from mental illness. " It could be very important to meet the threat of bullying head on, with talks in class, and recognition of the influence of social media.

"The participants were given an intelligence test in 1947 at the age of 11 and were retested in their early 70s, between 2008 and 2010. Of the participants, 262 said they were able to communicate in at least one language other than English. Of those, 195 learned the second language before the age of 18, while 65 learned the language after this age. Researchers found that those who spoke two or more languages had significantly better cognitive abilities in later life, compared to what would be predicted from their performance in the tests at age 11. " However, it might be that people who learn a second language also perform many other brain-activating functions throughout their lives.

"Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) have proven, for the first time in history, that physical fitness in children may affect their brain structure, which in turn may have an influence on their academic performance." A good reference for the concept of "sound mind, sound body."

Some alternative ways to get students to focus on you, not the distractions out the window: ask them to make a prediction (take a poll); use a pause and chunk technique with breaks to process; give hints and teasers to pre-focus attention; get them to buy in to the content with a hook or personal investment; do a physical activity (Simon Says or moving around puzzle pieces) to strengthen connections. Burns also suggests high interest materials that compel attention and using fast writing/free writing to get focus, using art work, drama, etc. Good ideas for the teacher.

Neuroimaging and neurochemical resarch support an education model in which stress and anxiety are not pervasive.

A very interesting article about the brain (though somewhat pop in approach), with obvious lessons for teaching language.

Nice teaching about the new food pyramid, but exceptionally dense reading--can be done in small parts

"Educational Origami is a blog and a wiki, about 21st Century Teaching and Learning. This wiki is not just about the integration of technology into the classroom, though this is certainly a critical area, it is about shifting our educational paradigm. The world is not as simple as saying teachers are digital immigrants and students digital natives. In fact, we know that exposure to technology changes the brains of those exposed to it. The longer and stronger the exposure and the more intense the emotions the use of the technology or its content evokes, the more profound the change. This technology is increasingly ubiquitous. We have to change how we teach, how we assess, what we teach, when we teach it, where we are teaching it, and with what." A most interesting site that tells us what the learner needs to know. [Thanks to Bee.]

"CK-12.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to education. Their website offers a large collection of resources for students and teachers like Brain Genie which I previously shared. The bulk of their resources are math and science centered where students can learn about chemistry, physics, algebra, and geometry just to name four. They also offer resources for other content areas as well including history, English, and SAT prep. Their website is free to join and offers a wealth of learning resources and activities. Their site offers articles, quizzes, interactive lessons, videos and students can keep track of their learning as they complete lessons and activities and members can upload their own resources to the site as well. " This looks like a good attempt to crowd-source materials for K-12 in the U.S. Could have uses for ESL/EFL, particularly with content- and project-based learning.

How to get students to focus when technology is all too distracting: "A tech break starts with the teacher asking all students to check their texts, the Web, Facebook, whatever, for a minute and then turn the device on silent and place it upside down on the desk in plain sight and "focus" on classroom work for 15 minutes. The upside down device prohibits external distractions from vibrations and flashing alerts and provides a signal to the brain that there is no need to be internally distracted since an opportunity to "check in" will be coming soon. "At the end of the 15-minute focus time the teacher declares a tech break and students take another minute to check in with their virtual worlds followed by more focus times and more tech breaks. The trick is to gradually lengthen the time between tech breaks to teach students how to focus for longer periods of time. I have teachers using this in classrooms, parents using it at the dinner table or at a restaurant, and bosses using tech breaks during meetings with great success. So far, though, the best we can get is about 30 minutes of focus thanks to Steve Jobs for making such alluring, distracting technologies."

Among the advice offered: "the person doing the most talking during an education session is the one doing the most learning. So that's actually the speaker. "We need to create more learning opportunities where the speaker talks for about 10 minutes and then the audience talks to each other. We talk in pairs or small groups so we can understand. We talk so we can remember. We talk so we can process."

This teacher-made site has lots of the traditional games: crossword, hangman, word search, but also brain teasers and visual puzzles. Free.

"Edraw Mind Map is a free mind map software with rich examples and templates which make it easy to create mind maps, brain-storming diagrams, project timeline, life planner, SWOT analysis and sketch maps."

This blog explores some of the reasons our brain is hungry for visual information, and why wee need more visuals in the classroom, whether it's land-based or flipped.

This is BBC's short science videos page. You can find all kinds of topics on physicas, the brain, biology, genetics, etc. Very helpful stuff for use in classes or flipped classrooms.