Week 2 - The Brain and Learning

Resource #1:

I looked for some videos this week to help me understand how the brain works.

The first video/site is embedded below.

The video is narrated and the graphics are computer animated. The music at the beginning is a little boring, but the voice narration is done with an British accent. The video starts off showing the whole brain and then removes all parts leaving the base. One by one the other parts of the brain are added, named, and defined along with their believed uses.

What I found interesting was the idea that the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex is the part that make us who we are, or gives us our personalities. The video goes onto to later describe what the brain is made of. It states the brain is made up of cells called neurons. The various parts of the neurons are defined and shown in three dimensional animated computer graphics. The rest of the video shows how neurons use chemical interactions to communicate with each other.

The second video is embedded below.

This is a much higher quality produced video and contains a quick recap of what the first video describes. However, from there the video describes the brain as what is called the Triune Brain.

The first part of this Triune Brain is called the reptilian brain and is thought to control our autonomic functions like breathing, heart rate and hunger. The second part is called the mammalian or limbic brain and give us our ability to remember things, have emotions, bond and react. The last part is called the cerebral cortex and is used for most of our conscious actions like reading writing, art, thinking and performing skilled movements.

The human brain is further divided into two halves called the left and right hemispheres. In the frontal lobe of the brain, referred to as the smart brain, is where most of our learning is done. The video goes onto to describe how the left and right sides of the brain communicate through the corpus callosum which is a part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres.

The value of these videos is that they teach you how the brain is wired for learning and where learning takes place. However, knowing where learning takes place in the brain does not help much when you are trying to teach someone a subject when you are designing a instructional program. Knowing how to get a student to first obtain the subject matter, encode it and then later recall it is the key.

Resource #2:

The next resource is from the site http://www.brains.org/.

In it, Dr Kathie Nunley attempts to connects current psychological and neurological research to Education. The site is full of brain based learning information. Howeverm I have to admit that it may be a misnomer to call learning brain based. I feel that is a given since there is no other part the human body that I am aware of that learns except the brain. I think we would be well enough off to just assume that the brain is involved when we use the word "learning".

Nevertheless, the site does offer some great information and even a few videos about the learning process. Of particular interest to me was the video on attention deficit disorder. Check it out if you have the time.

The brain.org site picks up where the videos left off. Instead of showing you how the brain is wired and how learning is stored, it offers you a multitude of methods to effectively teach and train students.

Thanks and enjoy.

References

Brain-based learning, ideas, and materials. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.brains.org/