Rule #2: Evolution/Survival – The human brain evolved, too.
Rule #3: Wiring – Every brain is wired differently.
Rule #4: Attention – We don’t pay attention to boring things.
Rule #5: Short-Term Memory – Repeat to remember.
Rule #6: Long-Term Memory – Remember to repeat.
Rule #7: Sleep – Sleep well, think well.
Rule #8: Stress – Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
Rule #9: Sensory Integration – Stimulate more of the senses.
Rule #10: Vision – Vision trumps all other senses.
Rule #11: Gender – Male and female brains are different.
Rule #12: Exploration – We are powerful and natural explorers.
“How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge? Is it true that men and women have different brains?”
Following links from a TED Talk last week, I came across an interesting brain-hacking website for the book Brain Rules: Principles for Surviving and Thriving At Work, Home, and School, by John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant and director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University. What little I’ve read so far has been interesting and nicely bolsters some of my own inexpertly cobbled together theories on memory and learning. (Though nothing beats the annuals, journals and articles I regularly hunt down and devour. Science is yummy.) There’s twelve rules in all, and each rule has a corresponding tutorial page on the site that’s meant to reinforce the concepts in the books.
They, of course, recommend reading the chapters first, but this is the internet! Onward video!