A couple of days ago, at a Smartboard training here at our school, the trainer casually remarked, "You know, kids these days are different. Studies show their visual cortex is larger than ours," as a way of emphasizing the importance of using their product to present concepts visually.
I agree with making things visual -- it's one of the themes my partner CRT and I are looking at this semester (no pun intended) -- but the idea that kids' brains are physiologically different from those of the teachers who are teaching them... hmm, I'd need to see some hard scientific evidence of that. It seemed to be one of those throwaway lines that sounds good, but really... is that really true?
Personally, I'm guilty of drawing all sorts of conclusions about teaching and learning based on anecdotal evidence, or what sounds good or sounds popular. What I love about the idea of mixing it up with educators, scientists, neuropsychologists, and medical researchers at this conference is the prospect of applying objective scientific principles and academic research philosophy to the art and craft of teaching.
Along the way, I am hoping to find out more about the physiological differences in kids’ brains these days. Is there really a discernible difference? What about the idea of neuroplasticity: the brain that literally “rewires itself”? As we make more and more neural connections along specific pathways, can we strengthen those connections? Do our brains grow and change as we use them, in the way a muscle does? It’s another one o those theories that “makes sense” but is there any basis to it?
What about the “myth of multitasking”? Does multitasking exist, or is it really “many-tasking”, no more than dividing your attention at the expense of focus? Are our students better able then we are at learning from multiple resources simultaneously? When I taught fourth graders I observed that some of my kids with attention issues actually seemed more successful at web-based research their most of their counterparts. I always thought that it was because their ability to jump back and forth between threads was actually less of a hindrance online, where they would have a number of windows open (since Internet access was slow back then) and they seemed better able to keep track of multiple threads of information.
Lots os interesting stuff to investigate, and hopefully I'll come back with some good stuff to report.
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