Brain and Development Blog 2

In Tom Wujec’s presentation, he mentioned three ways to make ideas meaningful. The first is by making ideas clear by visualizing them. Creating images of words or ideas helps clarify them and make them easier to understand. The second is by making those images interactive and engaging. The final way is by creating visual persistence. We can best engage students’ brains by using these three ways in our teaching. For example, instead of using Power Points to convey a message, a teacher can create an activity that allows students to learn by doing and creating. The students can be the ones to come to the board and write down or draw what they believe is the outcome of the lesson. Another way is by integrating a variety of technology such as iPods, iPads, or SmartBoards. These tools are interactive and allow students to be engaged in their work. The apps on the iPads force students to pay attention to what they are looking at and require constant poking and prodding.

                Besides neural pathways to vision, a teacher can present information using a variety of the 5 senses. The brain is divided into four lobes, the parietal lobe, frontal lobe, occipital lobe, and temporal lobe. These lobes are responsible for different processes and functions. For example, when a student hears a teacher speaking or is listening to/watching a movie, that information is being processed in the temporal lobes.  By activating these lobes with the different senses, there are other pathways being created that will allow the information to be stored in the brain. Let’s say a teacher was trying to teach a student the difference between an apple and an orange, the teacher can show both fruits, which creates a pathway related to vision and gets processed in the occipital lobe. The teacher can also have the students taste and touch each fruit, which will activate the parietal lobe, the lobe responsible for taste and touch. By presenting a variety of ways to learn one thing, the brain can create different experiences and connections that help create multiple pathways. All kids have different experiences and different ways of learning; therefore, this is important because in order to ensure that students learn the most, information must be presented in different ways.