The Brain Post 2

We can best engage student's brains to help them better understand big ideas through three things. First, visual logic is the way that students can visually see something. They can visualize an image and take it in. This is done through the ventral stream part of the brain that Tom talks about. Next, in the dorsal stream, comparing and contrasting of the ideas, and helps enriches meaning. This allows the mind to see the images and understand them by viewing them and contrasting them to other images. In the limbic system, when you see motion and color and patterns, this is where we make meaning from seeing these things. The three systems focuses on three goals to make meanig. First use images to clarify images. Next, interact with images to create engagement, and third augment memory with persistent and evolving views.

A teacher could present information using more than one sense so that a student can learn the information other than visually. For example, when studying minerals and halite comes up, a teacher could get a sample of halite or rock salt for each one of the students. The students could observe it with touching, and smelling, and looking, but they can also go one step further with this mineral and taste it. By being able to use a sense like taste that is not used often in school, students gain more perspective and the brain takes on another sensory connection.