EDUC 2130-Lesson 4:

The Brain

Overview Viewpoint:

Lesson four of EDUC 2130 focuses on the brain and how it involves education.This lesson focuses on the ways you can help to keep the information that you learn stored and it gives you examples on how people lose this that they learn. For this lesson we had to listen to a podcast from Anita Woolfork titled "The Brain and Education". It runs for about 6 minutes and talks about the finding about the brain. Following this we had to read a artlicle about the brain called, "The Wave of the Brain" by Ruth Weiss. The article focused on memory, patterns, and the attention of the brain.

• What are some basic findings concerning the brain mentioned by Anita?

  The basic finding concerning the brain mentions by Anita is that the typical brain has approx. 100 billion neurons and each neuron has one to 10,000 synaptic connections. To learn more about the brain scientist had to discover how to perform studies that would provide information in on its most basic operations. A number of scientist have been using new technology such as the Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Functional MRI, and Positron. These test help scientist explore how human brains process memory, emotions, attention, pattering, and context among other areas.

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  What does Anita mean when she says "Use it or Lose it?"

   

  As the brain stores so many things sometimes when it isn’t thought of or used the brain will overtime forget it.  A healthy brain’s capability is to learn, change, and grow & it can’t grow unless we are working the brain. When the neurons are not used, they start to fade away overtime. However, in children going through adolescence their pruned or the start to lose them because their brain is making room for adult neurons.

   

• Why does Anita mention Taxi drivers in the podcast?

  Taxi drivers is what was mentioned. Anita stated that taxi drivers develop larger brains. Taxi drivers hippocampus enlarges and adapts to help them store detailed maps. Taxi drivers exercise this everday by working and going different places . It also grew as they spent more time on the job. The hippocampus is located at the front of the brain and is thought be the center of emotion, memory, and the autonomic nervous system.

   

• According to the podcast, why is it important to learn different methods in solving math problems?

  According to the podcast it’s important to learn different methods to a solution. The more different ways and solving skills that you have you can gain more knowledge from it. Anita used the taxi driver example that a driver that knows only one way will only travel in that direction each time. If they can’t use that road one day then the driver will feel like they don’t have another way around. The brains ability to store information allows drivers to find other solutions and a different way to travel. This is when the taxi drivers learn side roads and when they start to find other ways that might even be faster for them they are increasing the memory capacity.  

   

• Explain "Bloom's Taxonomy".

  Created by Benjamin Bloom and his collaborators published a framework that consisted of six major categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The categories after Knowledge were presented as “skills and abilities,” with the understanding that knowledge was the necessary precondition for putting these skills and abilities into practice.

  Knowledge “involves the recall of specifics and universals, the recall of methods and processes, or the recall of a pattern, structure, or setting.”

  Comprehension “refers to a type of understanding or apprehension such that the individual knows what is being communicated and can make use of the material or idea being communicated without necessarily relating it to other material or seeing its fullest implications.”

  Application refers to the “use of abstractions in particular and concrete situations.”

  Analysis represents the “breakdown of a communication into its constituent elements or parts such that the relative hierarchy of ideas is made clear and/or the relations between ideas expressed are made explicit.”

  Synthesis involves the “putting together of elements and parts so as to form a whole.”

  Evaluation engenders “judgments about the value of material and methods for given purposes.”

  https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

   

• Summary

  I find the brain to be very interesting. It had different parts that deal with many different things. I feel like when it comes to school this is why they tell you to study because it helps you increase your capacity. It helps you increase your knowledge and helps with understand other things that you may encounter. Anita’s podcast are always informational. The article also helped with understand the finding that have been found about the brain.

   

• Research Question

  How can teachers help their students increase their brain capacity?

   

• Research Analysis

  To help students learn to maintain focused attention, we can guide them to wire their brains for staying the course even during times of emotional upheaval, remaining level-headed, and riding the emotional waves of life. As with other skills, this cognitive strategy comes with conscious recognition and deliberate practice. Brain research summarized in a briefing paper from the Dana Foundation indicates that attention activates not one but several neural networks, including an alerting network that signals the brain about incoming sensory stimuli and an orienting network that directs the brain to take notice of the source of the stimuli. A third network, referred to as executive attention, enables us to choose which of the stimuli competing for our attention we will focus our thinking on. In effect, executive attention functions as a control tower for guiding the brain's higher-level cognitive processes to land on specific tasks and information.

  The focus of this instruction is on guiding students to understand that they can consciously direct and maintain their attention on learning tasks and that, with regular thoughtful practice, they can improve their ability to attend to learning. Recent research also suggests that improving students' working memories will help increase IQ and other cognitive abilities. Humor, Games, Analogy, Metaphors and movement can help students work there brains and increase their capacity.

   

• Research Summary

  There is many things that teacher can do to help their students. One thing that most happen with children is sometimes it has to be repeated more than a couple times before they start to understand it but if if the information is given to them in more than one way then It will help them understand it in many different ways that they are most comfortable with where they can branch off from it and use it to obtain more information about other different things. Overall the research that I found was very helpful I think. Working the students minds can help in so many different ways.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/neuroplasticity-engage-brains-enhance-learning-donna-wilson