Yes, Multitasking is Changing Our Brains
Most of us
are in this class to learn how to change brains through learning. In the process
we are changing our brains, yes? What pulled me in was the by-line in 10
Things You Can Do to Literally Change Your Brain. I’ve never been a big fan
of being stuck with something so this intrigued me. The usual suspects appeared
– exercise, sleep, meditate, read, listen to music, and shinrin-yoku can make
positive changes to your brain. I’m on the fence about drinking coffee, but
sugar and multitasking didn’t come as a surprise. The tenth influence is “believing
you can change your brain,” which had a TedTalk
(my favorite), and a picture of a buton, receptor, and synapses (also one of my
favorite images from a physiology of behavior class in undergrad). The speaker
talked about grading students not as failures, but as “not yet” and embracing
the potential for growth and improvement. This resonated with my blog Go
Forth and Bury Dead Ideas about Learning, as one of the suggested ideas to
bury was grades.
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| ambition & balance by doist |
Just don’t know how this would mesh with performance evaluations of teachers, schools, districts, etc. How do we still provide our learners with the mindset that failure is good, learn from it, and still determine if we, as learning institutions, are failing our learners?
Taylor, M. (n.d.). 10 Things You Can Do to Literally Change Your Brain. Ambition & Balance by Doist. Retrieved June 26, 2021, from https://blog.doist.com/change-your-brain/?utm_campaign=newsletter_2021_jun_15_doist_blog&utm_medium=email&utm_source=blog_newsletter
This is a great topic! Really reminds me of when I was taking 5217 - Motivation last semester! One of the biggest arcs in that class was learning about Fixed vs Growth Mindsets. It seems to be a little more complicated as I believe for this to be effective, it has to be institutionalized that school assessments and evaluations to promote a growth mindset. At least in my country, the draws of meritocracy also unfortunately lead to a one track perception of success.
ReplyDeleteKelvyn, that sounds like a really interesting class, I will definitely have to put it on my list to take!
DeleteI definitely think that in general our perception of success is severely narrow and even beginning with grades being the only way of measuring success, we might be missing the point of learning. In 5601 we were looking over the different ID models and a few of them covered learner motivation. If students are only doing well enough to get a good grade or memorizing something just for a test and then forgetting it, they aren't actually learning! Taking away grades and the current standards of performance in a classroom could have such a significant impact on student motivation. Are student's brains literally changing when they work to make "good grades" or when they get to experience/explore a topic without pressure to perform?
Thanks for sharing this post, let's all go change our brains together! :)
Im totally with you when it comes to NOT YET, very insightful. I always take into consideration their efforts and motivation into learning new concepts and applying them in their daily lives. Thanks for sharing!
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