Brains On Purpose™

Teaching kids about the brain: Foresight or flapdoodle? (Question applies to adults, too)

A new article in the New York Times about a school founded by an alternative theater troupe has resulted in some interesting responses; for example, on Twitter: click here or here or here or here or here. The school incorporates practices they claim are brain-based. I guess only time and some rigorous research will tell if the approach is effective in helping kids learn and achieve.

From "Making Education Brain Science":

[Y]oung children at the Blue School learn about what has been called “the amygdala hijack” — what happens to their brains when they flip out. Teachers try to get children into a “toward state,” in which they are open to new ideas. Periods of reflection are built into the day for students and teachers alike, because reflection helps executive function — the ability to process information in an orderly way, focus on tasks and exhibit self-control. Last year, the curriculum guide was amended to include the term “meta-cognition”: the ability to think about thinking.

...

For all the attention brain science is receiving in schools, experts say it is too soon to know whether its application will lead to improved academic outcomes. And some researchers say that while they embrace new ideas — especially around self-control — they personally prefer a more traditional approach to pedagogy.

“The older approach has led to some very good outcomes,” said Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University and co-author of “Welcome to Your Child’s Brain,” a child development primer for parents.

With brain science achieving much more time in the public spotlight, including in the arena of conflict resolution, some of the techniques and theories seeping out of research labs will be be bogus and some will be bona fide. Just a few years from now, we'll know more about what truly helps kids—and adults. In the meanwhile, as I have often warned, be careful, be conservative, be cautious.

In any popular application of neuroscience, you will find people who are careful, conservative, and cautious about what they say, and you will also find the people skilled at marketing. The latter group

How important is mindset to conflict resolution? Or to anything you do? Aging? Creating? Mediating?

What's your mindset about conflict? Those conflicts that you may be a party to and those that you work with as a conflict professional? What's your mindset about the role of a mediator? Before you answer those questions, read this good overview article about mindsets and their strong influence.

From "Intelligence and Other Stereotypes: The Power of Mindset":

Our brains never stop learning, never stop changing, never stop growing new connections and pruning unused ones. And they never stop growing stronger in those areas where we reinforce them, like a muscle that keeps strengthening with use (but atrophies with disuse), that can be trained to perform feats of strength we’d never before thought possible—indeed, that we’d never even thought to imagine.

...

Not only is intelligence not fixed, but neither are any number of abilities that we may think we either have or don’t have, be they as straightforward-seeming as math skills or as complex as musicality. Walter Mischel and Carol Dweck may have been labeled when young, but at the end, it was their attitude towards those labels and not the labels themselves that ended up determining the course of their lives.

It is a remarkable thing, the human brain.

Amen to that! Click to read the rest.

NEW KINDS OF SMART: Free resource on brain science and learning

Click to read New Kinds of Smart: How the Science of Learnable Intelligence is Changing Education online and at no charge. Although the book is written for educators, it has much that is informative to conflict professionals, too. As I have often said, moving towards the resolution of a dispute must involve learning, by both mediator and parties.

Excerpt from the book:

The book works like this. It has eight core chapters, each of which follows a similar format:

A specific piece of research which illustrates the theme of the chapter.

Getting to grips with. An overview of scientific and educational research relevant to the chapter.

Starting out. Examples of what schools that are just beginning to work with the ideas in the chapter are doing.

Going deeper. More advanced examples of the ways in which schools are working with the ideas in the chapter.

Ideas into practice. Questions to prompt thinking, reflection,discussion, action and further reading.

At an appropriate moment in each chapter we have also included auseful tool to enable you immediately to see how you could  move from thinking into action.

Read more about the book here at Amazon. Or quickly scan through New Kinds of Smart here, reading just the sidebars to see if the book is a fit with your interests.

Using games to educate and solve problems: Playing with conflict and brains

Over the years, the decades, I have been time after time convinced of the value of games to teach, and so recently have been researching game design. I want to create my own educational games. The topic is wide-ranging and opinions on every aspect, even the definition of game, are many. Unfortunately the number of books and articles on the actual how-to of designing is sparse. At this blog post, I will post what I find in my search. Do you recommend any resources I can add below?

The book I have found most interesting because it is almost a philosophical take on games is The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses; unfortunately reading it will not equip you to create your own game but will allow you to thoroughly evaluate one you've already designed.

Games focus on health, wealth, contentment, fun, war, much more—and the list grows daily. My emphasis right now is conflict resolution. Many of us have been using games in ADR training for decades and have found them beneficial for learning: Everything from a multitude of versions of Prisoners' Dilemma to Med-Arb. Several people with whom I have talked think it is time for a new crop of games to teach about conflict resolution and a number of people are working on design, myself included.

Let's look at an example of a teaching game. Although not focused on conflict resolution, here's one that looks at our other focus here: brains! From the news release:

AXON offers players a rare glimpse of how the brains is formed and an ‘inside the brain’ introduction to the strange world of neurons, proteins and axons.

Click to play the game.

At Gamasutra, the place where the news release about AXON was posted, you will find much information about game design. I enjoyed the three-part series on timing in storytelling. Story, by the way, is a critical component of many games. I also was glad I took the time to read Improv Acting And Game Development.

More soon. I will continue to post resources here at this blog post as I find them.

• "Interactivity and Reward-Related Neural Activation during a Serious Videogame" (PLoS ONE)
• "A video game that involves killing cancer cells, activates parts of the brain involved in motivation" (CNet)-About the research at the PLoS ONE link immediately above
• "My View: A Game-Changing Major" (CNN.com)-Game design is being taught in college
• "Cognitive Flow: The Psychology of Great Game Design" (Gamasutra)
• Slide presentation on gameification (MPI)-on how game principles can create engagement for meetings and events
• "Adult Learning Theory in Games and Simulations" (LEEF Blog)
• Gamification Wiki 
• "Serious Games Taxonomy: Game Theory Part 1" "...Part 2" (LEEF Blog)
• "All The World’s A Game" (TechCrunch)
• Video: "How to Use Games to Excel at Life and Work" (99%)
• Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success
• "The Gamification of Education Infographic" (Knewton)
• "Motivations of Play in Online Games" (Journal of CyberPsychology and Behavior)
• Chapter 6 of Art of Game Design: "The Game Begins with an Idea"-The whole book is online here.
• "Are you an achiever, explorer, socializer, or killer: Is conflict resolution a game?" (idealawg)
• "Why Do Games Need Neuroscience? or, The Importance of Having a Theory" (AndrewHsu.com)
• TED Talks on gaming
• "First Steps in Board Game Design" (EDTEC)

Wah, wah, wah: Excellent example of why people don't listen, even if you have good information

The blog post is titled "Meet Me Halfway" (Scientific American) and its author writes about one kind of two-way communication: The speaker gives information and the listener, well, listens. The blogger then gives us some interesting neuroscience-related information about the way the brains of speakers and listeners can synchronize.  And then she writes about scientists having much good information for the public—if the public would only listen!

But the vast majority of the populace still cheerfully go about their daily lives without giving science (or scientists) a second thought — when they’re not actively hostile to it. We’re simply not reaching them. To borrow a line from Cool Hand Luke: “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

The missing ingredient from her blog post is benefits. Why would a member of the populace want to listen? What would they gain by paying attention to a scientist? Of course, this is basic sales theory: I won't listen to you unless and until you show me what's in it for me to pay attention.

The blogger seems to leave out that powerful and essential ingredient of benefits.

Which is why I’m speaking directly to the listeners out there now who rarely give science a second thought and/or assume they could never have a meaningful connection with a scientist: you need to meet scientists halfway. It’s not enough to sit back and wait for them to impress or entertain you before you’ll deign to give science a smidgen of your attention — not if you want to truly grok what science is all about.

I am reminded of a salesperson who continues to stress the features of his or her product while ignoring what the product

Mind, Brain, and Education: Implications for Educators

In several past posts, we have considered the role of learning in conflict resolution. Today I want to bring your attention to the autumn edition of Mind, Brain, and Education [pdf] because it contains several interesting articles about learning, including

• The Need for a Deeper Exploration and Conceptual Understanding: The Critical Role of Creativity and Collaboration in Real-World Learning
  R. Keith Sawyer
• Mind, Brain and Education: The Impact of Educational Neuroscience on the Science of Teaching
  David A. Sousa
• Brain, Mind, and the Organization of Knowledge for Effective Recall and
  Application
  O. Roger Anderson
• Mind, Brain and Education: The Birth of a New Science
  Michel Ferrari & Hazel E. A. McBride
• Executive Function in the Classroom: Neurological Implications for Classroom Intervention
  Harriet Greenstone
• We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education
  Mary Helen Immordino-Yang & Antonio Damasio
• The Power of Mindset in Shaping Student Success
  Megan Webster & Nathalie Bossé

Click to read these and many other articles. Related blog post: "Exploring the brain in the Bay Area: Join us in February?"

Want to improve the brain-friendliness of CLE programs? Join me at ACLEA in New Orleans!

Come to New Orleans in January; join me and Continuing Legal Ed (CLE) professionals from near and far at ACLEA's 48th Mid-Year Meeting. I will present on designing brain-friendly CLE.

From the flyer:

Join us in New Orleans for the party of the year. Here’s a taste of what we’ve got planned:

• Tips on designing “brain-friendly” CLE that translates into real learning.
• Insights from “3 Geeks and a Law Blog” blogger Toby Brown.
• Effective strategies to make social media marketing work for you.
• Surprising success stories in CLE, publishing, and marketing—weird ideas that worked!
• Popular “hot topics” roundtable discussions so you can learn from your colleagues.
• Sessions that help you develop tomorrow’s leaders from within your organization or help you develop your own leadership potential.

And while you’re enjoying all that New Orleans has to offer, you’ll also be learning from the best minds in CLE and legal publishing.

This is one party you can’t afford to miss!

Will I see you there? Click to register now.

Free Video Lecture: Memory and the Brain

From the Web page at The Great Courses:

Taught by Jeanette Norden Vanderbilt University Ph.D., Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

It's almost impossible to accurately describe the power and importance of memory. Whether you're fondly reminiscing over an event from a childhood vacation, quickly memorizing a phone number or address, or learning a new skill on the job, memory is so interwoven into our everyday lives that we can sometimes take it for granted. So how does memory actually work?

Click to read the rest and download the video.

Interested in learning and the brain? You will want to attend this conference then

A fine lineup of speakers has been assembled by Learning & the Brain. See and hear them this November in Boston at "Preparing 21st Century Minds: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Skills for the Future." Are you attending?

Upcoming conference on cognitive and working memory training

The abstracts of the presentations that will be included at the conference being held in August indicate this will be an excellent event. Click to read them and to see the stellar lineup of speakers.

From the event page:

The University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) is hosting a 2½-day workshop that features a series of presentations and panel discussions by leading scientists, with participation from U.S. government stakeholders and interested parties from industry.
Topics for discussion include:

• Benefits of cognitive training across a range of measures, including intelligence, working memory, vision, learning, creativity, and language processing, in both healthy and special populations.
• Best practices in the field regarding methods, tools, designs, and uses for theoretical, computational, and applied purposes.
• Summaries of the workshop presentations, including what we have learned over the past few years and what remains to be learned about the advantages, uses, and even potential caveats of cognitive training. Dr. Nelson Cowan (University of Missouri-Columbia) and Dr. Robert Logie (The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom) have agreed to serve as expert commentators.

One major goal of the workshop is to produce, within a year, an edited volume with chapters authored by participants and their collaborators. We anticipate that such a book will be a key contribution to the field, coalescing a host of research efforts on cognitive training and cognitive plasticity into a single book, and that it will be accessible to researchers in the cognitive and neural sciences, practitioners, and students.

 

Autumn conference in Aspen - "Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning: Implications for Education"

Any of you coming to Colorado for this event? I'd like to hear (or hear again) some of these speakers . . .

From the event Web pages:

Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning: Implications for Education

September 22 - 24, 2011
The Aspen Institute

Presented by The New York Academy of Sciences and The Aspen Brain Forum Foundation

New discoveries in the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience hold great promise for improving current teaching methods. Yet there remains a significant gap between the scientific discoveries that could improve our education system and the application of this knowledge. This meeting will highlight cutting-edge developments in cognitive neuroscience that could improve current teaching methods and will include a careful review of the current obstacles to applying these methods in the classroom as well as the related emotional, sociological and environmental factors.

Click to see the roster of speakers.

This online book can serve as a good tool for mediators: BRAIN-BASED TEACHING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Learning is a part of dispute resolution (as I have discussed before at this blog) so learning about learning can be very helpful for conflict professionals. Here's a real treat for those of you interested in neuroscience and teaching/learning. Click to read Brain-Based Teaching in the Digital Age [pdf]. Even though the author is talking about the education of children, the book has value for us too, older kids that we are.

From the Introduction:

In Part 1 of the book, I tell you how digital technology is changing the brain and discuss what’s new and applicable from brain research. In this section, I also explain how some of the brain-based teaching principles apply in the digital world. In Part 2 of the book, I talk about the whole child, learning environments, and the importance of group learning. Part 3 covers music, mind mapping, and memory. In Part 4, I explore the topic of how to try to balance 21st century technological skills with people skills and look at some options for what future learning will be like. Each chapter includes “instant messages” with bits of useful information.

Throughout this book, we will focus on the need for our students to have emotional intelligence, creativity, and the ability to synthesize information to be successful in a world that is changing from an information age to a conceptual age. I ask you to consider the material presented here, whether you are a digital native or a digital immigrant. The brain is changing, and so can you.