Your brain deals with your world
This title is an exercise in the obvious. It would not be worth mentioning except for the educational practice of ignoring the obvious. Here are two statements from a list in Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm
5. Multi-sensory input is desired by our brains.
6. Learning involves the whole body.
Both of these statements express the proposition in the title. (I have earlier mentioned the inelegant formulation of item five, so I won’t labor that point.) The reason we have to hear about multi-sensory input is that we have moved into the world of talk. Words compartmentalize the world. Words can analyze the brain inputs into various senses. But in the real world, your brain does not analyze its inputs into various senses. It synthesizes the inputs into a consistent world model.
And, by the way, how many senses are there in multi-sensory input? You would need to know that if you were designing multi-sensory input for brain-based learning. Conventional word-based learning would tell us that there are five senses. Experience-based learning tells us that this anatomically-derived count is just the surface appearance.
Out of the auditory sense, for example, your brain easily computes such things as the direction of the source and the size of the room. Did you think of those things when you read the abstract phrase “multi-sensory input?” You would think of those things if you suppress the education-based compartmentalization of senses and start thinking of your brain as building world models. You would think of them if you were dealing in sound effects for radio or video. Or perhaps even if you were a skilled writer of fiction.
Yes, storytellers know very well how to use brain-based presentations to build a world for their stories. And they demonstrate that skillful story-telling can build a world out of whatever tools are available. Including the single-sensory input of a book. To test that claim, try J. K. Rowling or Jack London. (Intellectuals may prefer Hemmingway.)
Online learning does offer some advantages in this context. This may help educators who can’t write like Hemmingway. Perception improves with interaction. In the past, that aspect of learning was hard to provide outside of museums like the Exploratorium. Online instruction can easily let people interact with the subject. (Easily? That’s easy for me to say. I don’t have to write the code.)
I am still working on ways to use whole-body thinking into the Thinkerer. I recently added pages about semi-structured brainstorming. That includes the notion of brainstorming by walking around. Not only whole body, but whole room. What’s next? Whole earth brainstorming?
5. Multi-sensory input is desired by our brains.
6. Learning involves the whole body.
Both of these statements express the proposition in the title. (I have earlier mentioned the inelegant formulation of item five, so I won’t labor that point.) The reason we have to hear about multi-sensory input is that we have moved into the world of talk. Words compartmentalize the world. Words can analyze the brain inputs into various senses. But in the real world, your brain does not analyze its inputs into various senses. It synthesizes the inputs into a consistent world model.
And, by the way, how many senses are there in multi-sensory input? You would need to know that if you were designing multi-sensory input for brain-based learning. Conventional word-based learning would tell us that there are five senses. Experience-based learning tells us that this anatomically-derived count is just the surface appearance.
Out of the auditory sense, for example, your brain easily computes such things as the direction of the source and the size of the room. Did you think of those things when you read the abstract phrase “multi-sensory input?” You would think of those things if you suppress the education-based compartmentalization of senses and start thinking of your brain as building world models. You would think of them if you were dealing in sound effects for radio or video. Or perhaps even if you were a skilled writer of fiction.
Yes, storytellers know very well how to use brain-based presentations to build a world for their stories. And they demonstrate that skillful story-telling can build a world out of whatever tools are available. Including the single-sensory input of a book. To test that claim, try J. K. Rowling or Jack London. (Intellectuals may prefer Hemmingway.)
Online learning does offer some advantages in this context. This may help educators who can’t write like Hemmingway. Perception improves with interaction. In the past, that aspect of learning was hard to provide outside of museums like the Exploratorium. Online instruction can easily let people interact with the subject. (Easily? That’s easy for me to say. I don’t have to write the code.)
I am still working on ways to use whole-body thinking into the Thinkerer. I recently added pages about semi-structured brainstorming. That includes the notion of brainstorming by walking around. Not only whole body, but whole room. What’s next? Whole earth brainstorming?
posted by Selby Evans at 8:36 AM
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