Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Brain Science: The Importance of Brain Fitness and Play
Educators are struggling to meet No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates and are searching for new ways to help students achieve the grade level proficiencies by 2014. Two ideas that can help educators reach these NCLB goals, are the old fashioned concept of unstructured play and new brain plasticity research.
Recent neuroscience research from Dr. Michael Merzenich highlights the theory of brain plasticity. This is the concept that the brain responds to circumstances, to new learning and it is not static. It was once believed that our memory was fixed. Through brain plasticity research it has been proven that the brain changes with learning and students and adults can experience significant learning gains.
Brain Plasticity theories can help to accelerate student learning. New approaches are needed, especially for students who may be struggling learners and need to make 2-3 years gains in learning in 1 year’s time. Brain plasticity strategies can help students rewire the connections in their brain. An analogy to help describe this theory is to imagine your brain using set of weights each day. If you work out and use the weights each day your brain will be stronger and stronger. This approach can also help adults maintain brain fitness and reduce forgetfulness. (Merzenich, 2008)
Over 30,000 schools have eliminated recess to extend academic classes to meet NCLB Mandates. Childhood obesity climbs, even though the number of students registered in youth sports has doubled. (Elkind, 2008)
Unstructured play is instrumental to both behavioral growth but to brain growth. A large body of research demonstrates the value of play for academic, social and emotional learning. Pre-schools that were academically focused verses play focused did not have significant gains in student achievement. Students in the academically focused pre-school often had greater levels of test anxiety and weaker problem solving skills. (Elkind, 2008)
Brain fitness and play can help increase student achievement and create life-long learners who will be happier and know how to have fun along the way.
Resources
Elkind, David. (2008, June 9). Cognitive and emotional development through play. Greater Good Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/06/09/cognitive-and-emotional-development-through-play/
Merzenich, Michael. (2008, April 16). About brain plasticity. On the Brain, Retrieved from http://merzenich.positscience.com/?page_id=143
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Cool Blogs for Instructional Design
Highlighted below are three cool blogs that will be helpful in my work in instructional design and e-learning.
The Tech and Learning Blog is a great online community for K-12 educators. It provides a wonderful advisor style tone and sharing of instructional design best practices, technology and policy. A great element of this blog is it includes postrank which is neat resource that let’s you quickly identify the most popular posts. This blog includes real time, meaningful perspectives of use of technology, sharing both the wows and the woes, strategies for effective instructional design, policy and funding concerns, and how to effectively use technology in classrooms to enhance instruction. Interesting posts this week included highlights of the new “Race to now where” documentary, how ipads are changing the classroom, new concept of Personal Learning Networks and 10 ways technology supports 21st Century learners to be self directed.
The American Society of Training and Development is the national association for training and development and hosts a comprehensive blog that includes vantage point of trends and needs of both the business and education sectors. I like this blog as it tags information into very helpful buckets such as education, schools, workplace, business news, reforms and public policy. For example, this week it had a key blog that HR managers are finding that training is a priority over recruitment. This blog can guide and help me plan for upcoming projects and the ever changing needs of the industry and be attune to areas of growth or crisis that may require training programs.
The Innovator Educator blog contains edgy content about keeping education real for students, parents and educators. I like that it has lots of activity and provides links to best teaching and learning practices and is looking at things from a cutting edge perspective. A sampling of a few of this weeks resources are listed below:
• iSchool – Read how the iSchool provides the Immunization to an Uninteresting Curriculum and how they Allow Today’s Students To Focus So They Become Tomorrow’s Experts at The iSchool
• Science Leadership Academy – Read how the Science Leadership Academy keeps it real here. Find out how they use Facebook to Strengthen the Student - Teacher Connection.
• The Island School – Read how You Can Get a Dalton Education at a NYC Public School at The Island School which is Preparing Students for Success by Helping Them Discover and Develop Their Passions both during and after school.
• Deer Hill School - Watch this video to see this school's approach to student engagement based on the Schoolwide Enrichment model. Each Wednesday afternoon every student can discover and develop their talents. It would be great if this type of learning wasn't only relegated to one afternoon a week.
• Unschooling – Unschooling is a method of learning from life or learning naturally. There are no mandated classes, schedules or tests.
In summary, the blogs above are powerful resources, that use postranks and tags which enable you to quickly and efficiently connect to content that is most meaningful to you. These blogs are terrific examples of professional learning communities that will enable me to remain abreast of the latest innovations and challenges.
-Michelle Cosner
Education reform for the 21st Century
The United States is no longer 1st it is now 12th in the world for the number of college graduates, infrastructure is 23rd, 27th in life expectancy, 18th in diabetes and first in obesity. (Time magazine, March 14, 2011)
How can we reform education and help America return to a #1 ranking for education instead of obesity?
How can we reform education and help America return to a #1 ranking for education instead of obesity?
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