Brain Friendly Learning

I am fascinated by our brains and love to apply the research to learning and life. A few days ago I attended a webinar on Brain Friendly Learning from Discovery Education. Ginny Washburne, the presenter, provided five instructional strategies based on brain research and tied those strategies to services from Discovery Streaming.

As an Instructional Technology Facilitator, I started thinking what technologies we have in addition to Discovery that educators can use in their classrooms. Here are my thoughts, please feel free to leave comments to add your ideas as well.

Strategy 1: Buy In (Start with Why) 
              We need to know the why before we know the how or what. According to Ms. Washburne, educators can get student buy in by using Hooks such as Stories, Enthusiasm, Mystery, Bigger Kid Challenge, and Meaning.
              Technology to use: Video clips, images, Mixbook, StoryJumper, Little Bird tales, and animation in SMART Notebook to slowly reveal hidden images or content.

Strategy 2: Emotions
              Google emotions and learning and you will get hits on many scholarly articles on how emotions trump reason. Providing student choice, goal setting, hope, and letting students know they matter play a huge role according to the brain research.
               Technology to use: Audio and video clips, Class Dojo.

http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/brain-figureines.jpg

Strategy 3: Movement & Brain Breaks
              Research shows our brains can only take so much direct instruction before our minds begin to wander. The time varies from five to eight minutes for K-2 students to fifteen to eighteen minutes for adults.
John Medina, author of Brain Rules, talks about the ten minute rule. Basically, you start your lesson with something that captures the brain's attention and then ten minutes in, you need to do something else to capture the brain's attention again. A great idea would be to build that ten minute rule into a slide in your SMART Notebook lesson. Get students up and moving, even if it is just walking around the room for 30 seconds!
             Technology to use: Interactive WhiteBoard (remember all those times I have said students need to be interacting with the content on the board?).
             Use centers some with technology options and some with hand-ons learning. For example, have stations for MP3 player to listen to stories, flipcams to do digital recording, desktop computer for publishing or interactive learning games.

Strategy 4: Play (Can't help but think of Daniel Pink's Whole New Mind)
             Even at my age, I love games! I love to be doing things. Ginny Washburne recommends including interactive games, virtual labs, digital storytelling, project based learning, learning centers, and experiments. (Sounds suspiciously like what the ITFs in Gaston County Schools recommend.)

Strategy 5: Feedback during learning process
             Technology to use: Student Response Systems can be used throughout the lesson, not just at the end!

If you think of others, please add!