Patricia Greenfield on Media, Multitasking & Education

Patricia Greenfield, Director of the Children’s Digital Media Center at UCLA, was the second of three opening keynote speakers at the Learning & the Brain Conference. Well, she was the second speaker for the vast majority of us who were in the grand ballroom. This conference was so packed that there was an overflow room for each day’s keynotes. Initially my colleague (who was part of the overflow) and I thought that the keynote talks would be lived streamed to the overflow room. Instead, PIRI did something that I thought was rather clever – they circulated the three speakers through the ballroom and overflow room, so that everyone heard and saw a live talk. Perhaps more work for the speakers, but rather respectful of the attendees!

Greenfield discussed New Media, Multitasking and Education: The Effects of Technology on Learning. She pointed to three types of multitasking:

1. within a single medium (viewing multiple screens/windows on a computer or television)
2. between two or more media (such as a computer and a cell phone)
3. between media and real life (such as a kid texting while you are talking to them)

and noted that multitasking, in general, has both pros and cons. The benefits relate to work or career skills, where it may be helpful to juggle multiple tasks, such as is done by air traffic controllers or movie producers.The costs relate to possible negative impact on both cognitive skills, and social and emotional skills.

She related an experiment done with college students where they viewed CNN news broadcasts with and without the news crawl going across the screen. It turned out that the students retained more of the news when there was no crawl. I asked my 18 and a half year old about the news crawl, and he said he finds it highly distracting, as do I. (Has anyone in the States noticed the number of highway gas station stops that now have large television screens playing at the pumps? I find them highly distracting and irritating!)

I was particularly interested in Greenfield’s comment that “reading counteracts the cognitive cost of media multitasking”, and that “out-of-class reading during the college years is a statistical predictor of critical thinking skills.” This made me wonder about reading in general, and how secondary schools tend to assign so much content area reading that there is precious little time for students to read for the pure joy of reading.

The 448 pages of conference proceedings are packaged in a spiral bound book, one of the treasured benefits of full registration, as it provides information about all of the conference sessions. Included in the book are two articles related to Greenfield’s presentation, both available on UCLA’s Media Center site: Technology and Informal Education: What Is taught, What Is Learned, by Greenfield and Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically?, by Samuel Greengard.

In my early years of teaching I prided myself on being able to multitask while responding to questions from multiple people at the same time. With age has come the realization that I am no longer as facile with multi-responding, and trying to multi-respond actually makes me less effective. Indeed, that realization could be one answer to a question posed by Greenfield: Could each task have been done better if done alone? In a January post earlier this year I explored the idea of multitasking and it provoked an interesting discussion in the comments.

Boston on the Brain

Thoroughly enjoyed the Learning and the Brain Conference.
More about it in the next few posts.

Meanwhile…

1. view of Boston across the Charles River from the Hyatt
2. crew shells on the Charles, the next morning
3. MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, Wiesner Building
4. same door, different label
5. biker jacket gift from very cool Boston brother-in-law!

Allow me to introduce…

This weekend marks another round of the Learning and the Brain conference in Cambridge, MA. For the second time, I have the delight of introducing some of the speakers at Saturday afternoon’s sessions. I am looking forward to hearing all three speakers, and was tickled that they were all part of the same strand, Digital Brains, Technology & Learning. Here are the introductions.

David H. Rose, EdD

In 1984 – before his favorite application, Google Earth, was even imagined, and before IT folks began providing general support for assistive technologies – David Rose cofounded CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology. Both David’s and CAST’s focus is Universal Design for Learning. With the celebration of kids diversity as the backdrop, UDL aims to improve the accessibility of curriculum and materials for all types of learners.

David is on the faculty of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and has coauthored several books, including the forthcoming Learning in the Digital Age, which I eagerly await, and this one, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age, which was the impetus for my school’s opening professional development this past fall.

Please join me in welcoming Dr David Rose for his talk Searching with Google: New Directions in Universal Design for Online Learning.

Kenneth S. Kosik, MD

If you’ve attended this conference in the past, you may already associate Ken Kosik, as I do, with illuminating talks about Alzheimer’s. He is the Harriman Professor of Neuroscience Research, and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In his spare time, he is the Executive Director of the Center for Cognitive Fitness and Innovative Therapies, also in Santa Barbara, the mission of which is to help people with cognitive decline be able to age gracefully and live fully.

Students and teachers at my school make extensive use of wikis, so I am particularly eager to hear Ken talk about the wikification of knowledge.

And in the spirit of collaborative wikis, please collaborate with me on welcoming Dr Ken Kosik.

Kurt W. Fischer, PhD

The Mind, Brain and Education figure prominently in Kurt Fischer’s world. In addition to being the Charles Bigelow Professor of Education at Harvard, he is the Director of the Mind, Brain & Education program at the Graduate School of Education, the editor or co-editor of numerous Mind, Brain & Education publications, and the Director of the International Mind, Brain and Education Society.

In his capacity as Director of this society, Kurt is leading the movement to connect biology and cognitive science to education.

Please join me in welcoming Dr Kurt Fischer for his talk about Mind, Brain & Emerging Technology to Improve Robust Learning.

Its’ that time again…

It’s that time again – November is coming, and with it the annual Learning & the Brain conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The theme of this fall conference is Modern Brains: Enhancing Student Memory & Performance in this Distracted, Digital Age.


Given that I have been teaching about computers for 28 years, and given my interest in the brain and learning, I am pumped to see them come together, and most curious to hear what neuroscientists, doctors and educators will be sharing in terms of research and strategies. I am also excited to be introducing three of the speakers on Saturday afternoon. Perhaps this is the start of a trend!

Dyslexia – The Shaywitz’s morning talks

Go ahead, say the word out loud: Dyslexia. Dr. Sally Shaywitz says part of the problem in dealing with this learning difference is that people are reluctant to use the word. By using the term, the learning difference becomes something tangible that can be dealt with. Indeed, as a result of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), scientists have “taken a hidden disability and made it visible”.

What, exactly, is Dyslexia?
Most people I’ve spoken with tend to think of dyslexia as a difficulty with reading. They are correct, to a point, but there is more to the definition.

Dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty in reading, in relation to intelligence, motivation, education or professional status. (S. Shaywitz)

This “unexpected difficulty” is what makes life frustrating for children and adults who have dyslexia, because people with whom they interact – parents, teachers, colleagues – often do not understand dyslexia. A common response on the part of a parent or teacher is that the person [who has dyslexia] is not trying hard enough, or needs to do more work. Further complicating the issue is that dyslexics tend to be intelligent and can have a high IQ but a low reading score. Thus, someone who appears to be intelligent but not able to keep up with the work load is branded as being lazy or not interested. (The data for this comes from an ongoing longitudinal study, conducted by the Shaywitzs, that measures reading and IQ over time.)

What causes Dyslexia?
Dyslexia can be, but is not always, genetic. The odds are that if someone in a family has dyslexia, a parent, sibling or child may also have it. No one specific gene has been identified as the dyslexic gene, and it is thought that a number of genes each “contribute a tiny amount”. The result, as seen in countless fMRIs, is that specific areas of the brain are impacted by simply not turning on in the process of trying to read, and this “disruption of the posterior reading system is universal” across cultures and languages.

Humans are hard wired for speaking but not for reading. Someone with dyslexia can pick up information using modalities other than reading (hearing, seeing, touching…), process that information and learn from it, remix it, and make use of it. It is when they try to use reading as their source for taking in information that their difficulty manifests itself.

Our brains are plastic!
I’ve written extensively about brain plasticity. What it means is that our brains are able to change; indeed, they change as we learn. What this means for dyslexics is that intervention can change the brain of a dyslexic, and the earlier the intervention, the better. The process of reading is broken down into myriad steps, and there are specific programs designed that teach non-readers how to tap into these specific steps.

The parts of the brain that are impacted (“disrupted”, as the Shaywitzs call it) deal with being able to read rapidly, automatically, and engage in pronunciation, spelling, and meaning. These last three are in the occipito-temporal area, which is the rear left side of the brain. “Non-impaired readers tend to base their reading on sound; dyslexics base their reading on memory.” Just imagine how overtaxed your working memory would quickly become if you had to rely on it for the bulk of your reading. If you can imagine that, then you can begin to understand why intelligent people who are dyslexic can readily become wiped out from the process of reading, particularly within a demanding school environment.

Good teaching can change the brain the way neuroscience cannot – non-invasively. (B. Shaywitz)

Additional Resources provided on a conference handout by the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity:

• The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity
• Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz
•  The Dyslexia Knol by Dr. Sally Shaywitz
• Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
• Bookshare.org

• Professor Garfield – for kids
• Teachers’ Lounge at Professor Garfield
• SparkTop.org – for kids

• What Works Clearing House – “scientific evidence for what works in education”
• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)

• Parents Education Network – “coalition of parents collaborating with educators, students and the community to empower and bring academic success to students with learning and attention difficulties.”

Summer Sharing and Paring

It’s vacation, June 21, and officially the first day of summer. It’s also been an extremely rainy June, providing me more time indoors than at the pool. Last year by this time I was swimming daily half miles in our neighborhood pool; this year the weather has allowed just 3 swims since the pool opened on Memorial Day. It’s been somewhat likewise with our kayaking.

Rather than get frustrated, I have used the time to majorly clean up and out my files, papers, desk and email. There is something immensely satisfying in seeing my load get lighter, in overfilling a garbage pail, in organizing my Google Docs into folders, in paring down my collection of books. I like the act of organizing; heck, I volunteer to organize professional development at school!

So I’m starting the summer by paring down, but also by sharing. Here are some goodies to ponder for the summer.

HOW DID I GET INTO THIS PLACE?
In my experience, most tenth graders do not decide they’d like to write a book and then not only follow through with their plan but self-publish and have the book sell over 100 copies within hours. However, this young person is not your typical tenth grader. In fact, she is now a high school senior as of her last day of school a few weeks ago!

Back when she was in tenth grade, Kristi decided she wanted to pursue an independent study project as an eleventh grader, the project being to write a book that would serve as a guide for students with learning differences to help them navigate the world of high school.

While Kristi’s book is written for students at the school she attends, and where I teach, it is applicable to any student who has a learning difference and struggles with the process of school.

I had the privilege of being Kristi’s advisor throughout the process, which she initiated as a tenth grader, several months before her independent study proposal had even been submitted. The result of her fastidious organization and preparation is an 80 page book that is eminently readable and packed with useful content for both students and teachers. How Did I Get Into This Place? is available for purchase, which is exactly what my school did for all 170 faculty, staff and administrators as summer reading.

THE DANA ALLIANCE FOR BRAIN INITIATIVES
The Dana Foundation is located in New York City, at 745 Fifth Avenue. The Foundation provides resources, both in print and online, including The Dana Guide to Brain Health, a wiki that “is a practical family reference from medical experts.” In addition, the Foundation sponsors events such as the Learning and the Brain conference, “reports news, supports scientists, and supports arts education.” A senior project manager at Dana was most helpful in providing 40 copies each of two publications (Staying Sharp: Memory Loss and Aging, and Your Brain at Work) for me to hand out at the April CAIS conference at which I presented.

THE YALE CENTER FOR DYSLEXIA & CREATIVITY
Who knew this center even existed! A colleague first introduced me to Yale’s center sometime in the spring when the center advertised A Special Conference for K-8 Independent Schools – Dyslexia & Creativity: New Research & Implications. The conference registration filled up quickly, and my colleague and I wound up on the waiting list. The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity has a worthy mission “to uncover and illuminate the strengths of those with dyslexia, disseminate the latest innovations from scientific research and practical advice, and transform the treatment of children and adults with dyslexia.” I leave you with another part of the center’s mission:

Dyslexia is often spoken of as a hidden disability. What is not at all appreciated is that dyslexia can be also a hidden source of great abilities and frequently unrecognized powers.

p.s. Ah, the SUN is out and I am going to go for a swim!

6/22/09 UPDATE: I missed the swim – sun was only out briefly, but the “sun” was shining on the Yale Conference wait list, and it turns out my colleague and I will both be attending the conference!

Making the CAIS

Approximately 175 index cards filled with brainstormed ideas generated by 30 people. Wow!

After a first attempt at categorizing the cards by laying them out on the floor, I quickly realized what a wonderful potential activity they presented. What if the cards had been stickies, and every sticky was placed on a wall, easily available for large scale viewing. We could generate a sticky bar chart, a visual summary, a large-scale categorization, ideas that can be handled and readily rearranged.

For this first summary, all of the index cards were categorized so as to organize the number of related but differently worded entries. Each category was then labeled using one or two words. Next a list was created of the labels, with each label repeated on the list for as many times as there were index cards in that category. The resulting list was popped into wordle, which generated a visual summary. For those not familiar with wordle, the size of the words is determined by the number of times any given word is repeated. Larger words = repeated more often.

Later this week I’ll pop all of the cards, verbatim, into a Google Doc and share the URL in another post. Meanwhile, what ideas do you have about optimal conditions for getting adults to learn? Think: activities, conditions, venues. And remember, a good brainstorm includes all ideas, no matter how silly or ridiculous it sounds to you.

Cards from CAIS

Go ahead and brainstorm optimal conditions for getting adults to learn. Think: activities, conditions, venues…  And remember the rules for a good brainstorm: include all ideas, no matter how silly or ridiculous sounding.

Each person writes one item per card, using as many cards as possible.

At the end, collect the blank cards, and build a tower with the remaining ones. My apologies to the folks at the table – I boggled the picture when saving the rescaled image.

Voilá!

Next post will contain all the ideas generated by this brainstorm.

CAIS Tech Retreat

One week from today I will be in the Berkshire Mountains, participating in the CAIS (Connecticut Association of Independent Schools) Academic Tech Retreat at the Trinity Conference Center. I have the pleasure of speaking Thursday morning, and it seems a most fitting way to celebrate two years, to the month, of Neurons Firing! [Update May 15: The CAIS wiki includes a summary of the Retreat, as well as some additional links.]

I could tell you the topic of my session, but how much better if you try and figure it out from the list of resources below. After all, that’s a much better way to get your neurons firing!

Brain Bits
• Exercise grows neurons
• Ongoing learning strengthens memory
• Novelty fosters synapses and creativity
• Communities stimulate thinking

Videos
• Ben Zander – Davos Annual Meeting 2008 closing talk
• TED Talks – Tim Brown: The powerful link between creativity and play
• TED Talks – Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
• TED Talks – Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
• main page for all the amazing TED Talks

References
• Building Online Learning Communities by Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt
• Teaching with the brain in mind by Eric Jensen
• Learning & Memory: The Brain in Action by Marilee Sprenger
• Achieving Optimal Memory by Aaron P. Nelson with Susan Gilbert
• Brain Rules by John Medina, plus the website
• Neuroscience for Kids, perhaps the BEST site about the brain, and it’s not just for kids!
• SPARK, The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey with Eric Hagerman
• The Neuroscience of Adult Learning edited by Sandra Johnson and Kathleen Taylor
• The Art of Changing the Brain by James Zull

Staying Sharp Pamphlets, produced by The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives and NRTA: AARP’s Educator Community
• Your Brain at Work: Making the Science of Cognitive Fitness Work for You, 2008 (produced by the DANA Alliance and The Conference Board–Mature Workforce Initiative)
• Learning Throughout Life, 2006
• Memory Loss and Aging, 2006

National Center for Learning Disabilities
• Executive Function Fact Sheet
• Executive Function: A Quick Look

SharpBrains articles
• The brain virtues of physical exercise
• interview with Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg
• interview with Yaakov Stern – Build Your Cognitive Reserve
• 5 Tips on Lifelong Learning & the Adult Brain

Conferences
• Learning and the Brain conference, which takes place three times a year – February in San Francisco, May in Washington, D.C., and November in Cambridge, MA
• The Brain, Learning and Applications: CAIS Summer Institute, which takes place in August

Activities
• Writing Exercise
• sketching comes from the Tim Brown TED Talk (see above)
• all other activities provided by Candy, Middle School Learning Specialist

Thanks
• Dulcie, for patient tutelage
• Candy, for mentoring
• F and R, for listening, looking and suggesting
• Justine, for asking in the first place!

The slides for this presentation are available here, on SlideShare.

Brain Conferences

For the past four or five years I have been eagerly attending brain conferences. My husband says that I could probably attend such conferences for years to come, they would cost less money than a year of grad school, and I’d be exposed to  cutting edge information. He’s probably correct! You can read all of my posts about the conferences by clicking the Learning & the Brain conference tag. (SketchUp image by Fred. If you are curious about this image, watch the movie on his page of the Seussian model he created.)

LEARNING & THE BRAIN
The Learning & the Brain conference takes place three times a year, with the next one scheduled for this February in San Francisco, CA, the theme of which is Using Social Brain Research to Enhance Cognition & Achievement.  May’s conference in Washington, D.C. will focus on The Creative Brain: Using Creativity & The Arts Research To Enhance Learning. This is similar to the theme of the conference I had hoped to attend in November 2007, so you can bet I will try my best to attend this May conference. The third conference will take place November  20-22, 2009 in Cambridge, MA, with this year’s theme yet to be determined.

In addition to the conferences, there are two related summer institutes. 

June 22-25 at Lawrence Academy in Groton, MA – Making Connections: The Art & Science of Teaching

July 28-31 at University Park Campus, University of Southern California, Los Angeles – Teaching for Learning: Connecting Brain & Cognitive Science with the Classroom

BRAIN INSTITUTE
Robert Greenleaf’s name has come up a number of times in my posts. He has been a speaker at my school’s opening faculty meetings, and I participated in one of his brain workshops. Last summer I attended The Brain, Learning & Applications summer institute with which he is affiliated. Posts about last summer’s institute are accessible via the tag reference in my opening paragraph.

Greenleaf Learning, along with others, now present five institutes annually throughout the spring and summer, touching down in three different countries.

April 9-10, Frankfurt International School, Germany

April 19-20, Cary Academy, Cary, North Carolina. U.S.

June 25-26, Hillfield Strathallan College, Hamilton, Toronto, Canada

July 16-17, Albuquerque Academy, Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.

August 18-19, Avon Old Farms School, Avon, Connecticut, U.S.

As Lisa Rhodes, the organizer of the Albuquerque institute wrote, “The institutes offer incredible local opportunities to see nationally recognized speakers at extremely reasonable rates.”

SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE
I have no personal experience with the Society for Neuroscience, but they do have an annual meeting scheduled for October 17-21 in Chicago, Illinois. You can catch up with highlights of the 2008 meeting in this podcast by Ginger Campbell, MD. Ginger’s site, Brain Science Podcast, is chock full of book reviews and insightful interviews with neuroscientists.

OTHERS?
If any of you know of other brain related conferences, please share the information in a comment. Thanks!