Starting Over.

That’s what John Medina says we need to do with our schools and offices IF we want to live and learn in an environment most conducive to what we know about the brain.

I first read about Brain Rules, on Glen Weibe’s site. But I wanted to know more.
Today, I spent some time reading John Medina’s posts and watching his fascinating videos on his Brain Rules blog.

He says:

Though we know precious little about how the brain works, our
evolutionary history tells us this: The brain appears to be designed to
solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment,
and to do so in nearly constant motion. I call this the brain’s
performance envelope.

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 you wanted to change things, you might have to
tear down both and start over.


In many ways, starting over is what the book is all about.

He also says I can’t multi-task effectively….

And I need a nap at 3 p.m. Plus, teachers only have 10 minutes to keep their students’ attention.

I need to read this book!

"For the Google generation, what happens to the concepts of truth and
knowledge in a user-generated world of information saturation?"
Monica Hesse, Washington Post reporter, takes a fascinating look at how we view the truth in an age when information is readily available and abundant.
The discussion of knowledge vs information is also interesting. "Information has replaced knowledge," says author Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto, quoted in the article. He says information is about crumbs of data, while knowledge is knowing what to do with accumulated information. What worries people (teachers, included) is that students are now information gatherers but not critical thinkers.
"That’s the most profound change," said Corbin Lyday, professor at George Washington University about many of his students compared to 30 years ago. "The way they manage information. There’s a growing impatience and a real passivity."
Also, people are too easily convinced that the information is correct and true and "use information to reinforce their own beliefs," Hesse says in the article, listing as an example the 9,000 hits in Google for "The moon landing was staged."
We at FA are also trying to navigate through these muddy waters as we work with our students. But it becomes even harder when we consider that research says, "we believe what we want to believe."

"People are very insensitive to where they hear things," says Norbert Schwarz, a University of Michigan
psychologist who worked on the study. If one quack repeats the same
piece of information to you five times, it’s nearly as effective as
hearing the sound bite from five different reputable sources.

Same goes for reading e-mails — if you get three spam e-mails
relating Abraham Lincoln’s folksy wisdom about truth and dogs, you’ll
eventually believe it as strongly as if you heard it from the reference
desk at the Lincoln Library.

"The basic psychological process is the same" as it’s always been,
Schwarz says. "But in the olden days you might have seen something once
in your newspaper . . . now the likelihood that you’ll see it again and
again and again" — on blogs, in your inbox, on YouTube — has
exploded."

All of this, of course, reinforces the need for our students to participate in the discussions of their learning. And is makes me realize how complicated teaching has become.

Beginning with Sheryl’s 9 principles for implementation in this shift is an excellent start. As Sheryl says, "it’s not business as usual."

Image: ‘need to know basis‘
www.flickr.com/photos/86176561@N00/124771501

One of the best ways to find new tools is Jane Knight’s site, Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day. Today she links to a PDF with the top 100 tools, compiled from readers. Included is a subset of 25 key free tools for learning. Check it out.
One that I hadn’t seen yet is FreeMind, an open source product. Another product I haven’t yet tried is Captivate, an Adobe tool for screen capturing, recording of podcasts, and making quizzes. Not free, of course, but seems robust. Has anyone else used this?