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| Speaker/writer Dr. John Medina's best selling book, Brain Rules |
Dr. Medina was an animated, interesting speaker who discussed how the brain works in relation to learning explained in relatively simple terms, and it was a really useful seminar. Just like Chuck Ahern, another brain expert who gave a talk last year, Dr. Medina also talked about the importance of rest and down time. According to Dr. Medina, it is "pointless to do any thing but take a nap between 2-4pm"
because the way our sleep cycles are set up. As a matter of fact, he shared a study done by Mark Rosekind that found that if you give fighter pilots a nap for 26 minutes from the hours of 2-4 it improves their alertness by 34% ("alertness" was measured by a bunch of different tests).
A few other tidbits:
•ultimately assigning students individual schedules to fit their genetic "morning person" or "night owl" personality would be ideal.
•our brains are wired to survive in the wild not be in a conference room, cubicle or classroom
•exercise improves memory and alertness
•according to Dr. Medina the brain is not able to multitask and "fully" pay attention. For example, if you are drawing and listening at the same time, you're giving 50% to each one
•doing a project with interruptions in-between (text messaging, answering the phone) will take twice as long (not counting all of the interruptions) compared to if you did it without interruptions
•each and every brain learns information differently
•it takes 10 years from when you learn a piece of information to consolidate it into "true" long term memory.
Just to sum it up in one sentence: less is more, repetition (not over the course of days but actually throughout the day) is key to remembering new information, sleep cycles are directly linked to when people pay attention during the day and for how long, and that each and every brain learns differently.
Have a nice weekend!
Jed
