Brain Research Blog Prompts Blog Post 1 (Deep Reading of Module 6)

Brain Research Blog Prompts Blog Post 1 (Deep Reading of Module 6)

Describe the big picture.  (How long should this ideally be?)

This module taught us about how the brain works and how it is studied. We learned the difference between neuroscience and educational psychology.

Did this make sense? What surprised you the most, or what did you find most interesting, and why? How does this reading connect your previous experiences with school or teaching? Discuss some of your unanswered questions about the reading for the class. Do you understand the material? What else do you want to know?

This module made a lot of sense based off what I have observed in myself and in others while growing up. It was very logical. I have to admit that I wouldn’t have thought about all of this without the chapter. The thing that surprised me the most was that neuroscience and educational psychology aren’t on the same level. I always think of both as credible. I can see why neuroscience would be more valuable though. The thing that I found most interesting was “a toddler’s brain has twice as many connections among its neurons as does the brain of a college student” (page 106). College students actually end up learning a lot of things they did not know before. I have to learn how to play piano for the first time and there are different techniques for singing to learn (along with the other classes.) While I admit that everything is new to a toddler, college students are learning a lot too and it helps to form connections to things you already know when learning.  This reading connects with my previous experiences with school or teaching because it really goes over things I have learned in the past. I know that teachers have to be informed consumers (for anything) (page 103). I learned about a lot of this in my two psychology classes at IU. One example would be parts of how the brain works (pages 103, 105, 106 etc.).  Another would be what an MRI and a CAT scan measure (page 104). The module talks about teaching using many pathways. I learned how to do this in MUS-E 232, but they also taught us this trick in elementary school to help us study. I know that “high anxiety can interfere with learning by distracting a student’s attention from the material to be learned: (page 114) because that’s what happened to me when I took honors geometry. I understand algebra just fine, but geometry (especially when it uses planes) does not make much sense to me. I do not really have any unanswered questions at this time. I assume that the brain pictures comparing the brains of a healthy child and a Fetal Alcohol Syndrome child were developed by looking at the brains of still births. I would like to have that thought confirmed or denied. I believe that I understand the material. I would like a way to store it better, but I understand it. I don’t really have anything else that I would like to know at this stage. Tricks for how to deal with the conditions discussed (in my area) would be helpful.

Learning means you can do something without many cues. You learn how to do things by/for yourself. Your brain develops synaptic connections between neurons when you learn something in order to store the new knowledge. You use different parts of your brain to experience different things.