A great website for Brain Games!

Brainist is a great website for exercising your brain! Games for Thinking, Memory, Strategy, Concentration, Optical Illusions, IQ Tests, Riddles, Puzzles, Building Speed Reading, Learning a Language, Mind and Body and even Trivia. All in one place and best of all Free!! http://brainist.com

Improve Your Memory

Great article on memory and your brain from Brain Connection website. Summarizes the work of Sue Halpern in her book Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Frontlines of Memory Research. Sue started her research to understand her fathers failing memory. Suggests eating brain healthy foods like fish and blueberries. Getting proper exercise both physically and mentally by doing activities that require using your brain. Memory loss is a natural part of aging but there are many ways we can help our brain to perform better as we age and lessen the effects.For more visit her website at http://www.suehalpern.net/.

Phi Delta Kappa article by Eric Jensen on Brain Based Education

http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v89/k0802jen.htm
It is great to see 20 years after Brain Based Education came on the scene that it is still a hot topic for educators. Eric Jensen a leader in the field has taken a fresh look into Brain Based learning and how it impacts our educational system.

Virtual Worlds and Your Mind...

Great article on Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds. Important article given the nature of our society today and the time young people will spend in virtual worlds. It is important to know how these activities affect our mind and thinking patterns.

Multiple Intelligences, Drawing and Kids Neuroscience..

Today I found several new items of interest one was a Kids site to explore Neuroscience! It would be great to use with your classes and teach study skills and ways to make their brain more effective! Another is a site on Multiple Intelligences. I have been facinated by the ways this can help teachers to reach their students on different levels, all teachers use some of these strategies but thinking about them as you plan lessons can really impact your teaching. And finally the third interesting thing I found today was to refute a poster on another website that thought coloring could be of no value to high school students. It is called Mindscaping A Learning and Thinking Skill for All Students!

Brain Fit for Life

Brain Fit for Life is a new book coming out on brain fitness. Its authors are experts in the field and have some interesting things to say on their blog. Today their post is about the link between childhood obesity and developing Alzheimer's later in life.

'Disruptive Innovation'

Excellent article online today about Disruptive Innovation This article is available online courtesy of EdWeek.org. Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson are the authors of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill, June 2008). The book applies the theories of disruptive innovation pioneered by Mr. Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, to the education sector.

Very interesting discussion on the implementation of technology to create individualized lessons for students. Highlights the need for technology integration in schools at all levels to serve students on their level. Two sites several of those that replied refer to are Hey Math used by 2/3 of the math students in Singapore and many U.S. schools and HeadSprout a phonics based program for reading instruction also mentioned.

Offline Processing...Wow I must be on overload!

I have been learning many things this summer in my Integrating Technology course, often I wonder will I remember them all. I have also noticed I am tired and sleeping more. Now I know why, I am processing all the incredible things I am learning.

Brain Collage

I found an interesting brain collage on Flickr that I wanted to post here. I emailed its creator Jason Ramsay and here is an exerpt from his letter to me.

Happy to let you use it for your blog. The photo is a
collage of images that I made using the program MRIcro. It
is a sequence of the same slice of white matter, taken from
a series of scans I made using diffusion tension imaging.

I think it is important for your blog, for these reasons:

1) People underestimate the importance of white matter in
learning. WM is the cable that connects all portions of the
brain.
2) If you lose cable, your brain starts to have to work
much harder to process information.
3) If you work past capacity, you start showing
neurocognitive deficits.
4) White matter can be eroded by chronic stress. Its
development can be hindered by chronic stress or neglect
(e.g., impoverished children).
5) I really think that intelligence is in large part
dictated by the robustness of the white matter.

All food for thought for your blog. If you want to learn
more about stress and the brain (or, for example, poverty
and its effects on the brain), check out the work of Robert
Sapolsky.

Quantum Learning...More food for thought!

Quantum Learning is another new perspective on learning. It is based on Brain Research that shows how the brain learns. It seeks to integrate research based methods to help students become life-long learners. Quantum learning focuses largely on the environment in which students learn and how best to shape that environment to make our students more productive. The focus is on building a dynamic learning environment for children to be successful!