Week 12: Neuroscience and Learning

Thanks for your OER neuroscience team. Overall I enjoyed your OER, but would have liked to see more of a focus on learning technology ventures based on neuroscience. I thought your research on Zondle was good, but the page could benefit from some other ventures and products. I wanted to come away from the OER with an understanding of how neuroscience driven learning technologies are impacting education, but I didn’t feel like that occurred. I did learn a lot however about neuroeducation and brain based teaching on the whole.

Hi Neuroscience group. I loved the Jeopardy-style game in the beginning, especially since we get to see all the proper answers whether we get a question wrong or not. I see how this area of interest is so important and I enjoyed your OER presentation as you have incorporated many interesting components to inform the viewers while having us being engaged throughout the process. Understanding neuroscience and applying it into the classroom makes such a big difference. Having worked at a special education private school that focused heavily on understanding learner's mentality and their natural behaviour really helped all the educators better understand why the individual behaves a certain way, or why and how they are developing both physically and intellectually, and how to teach and support each student as they all learn differently and requires personalized support. After browsing through your site I have learned about how much technology is evolving now to better understand neuroscience and how rapidly it's advancing to meet the current demands. My only concern is how well trained are educators now to be able to fully apply these technologies into their classroom and to use it to its full potential. With the cost of introducing these technologies, there much be a budget for training purposes. Will these likely to happen soon or do you think these sessions will only occur in schools that have a focus to better train their teachers in the area of neuroscience with learning?

Hello Neuroscience team. Thank you for your OER. I really enjoyed the section on neuromyths. I was thinking that perpetuated neuromyths really hurt the integration of neuroscience findings into education long-term. How many education fads do educators have to put up with in a year!? Like others, I found the infographic on the Educational Neuroscience impossible to read. Even on my desktop when I zoomed in the text was too blurry. I felt that most of the resources were too dated to be worth my time as neuroeducation is a new and quickly changing/developing field. Generally, I would have liked to learn more about the venture landscape for this field, what area would be a good investment and why? I also liked the interactivities where I could try out learning utilizing neuroscience findings. My favorite part was the paper on Zondle, it seemed authoritative, contemporary and balanced.

I found the section on the future of neuroscience and learning fascinating and I was curious if the team came across any research related to Elon Musk's new venture Neuralink? Musk is looking at creating a direct mind-machine interface, that would allow users to operate electronic devices with nothing more than their thoughts. Neuroscientists have begun to decode the electrochemical signals in the brain and can receive, write and deliver precise instructions directly to and from neurons and we have already progressed to the point where amputees using a prosthetic arm can "literally, biologically and neurologically, feels its wooden surface" (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/darpa-arati-prabhakar-humans-machines). An implant, called the Utah Slanted Electrode Array, allows amputees to control their robotic hand as if they were flexing and moving their original hand while allowing signals to be transmitted back to the subject’s nervous system, and according to one recipient named, Keven Walgamott, "When I went to grab something, I could feel myself grabbing it. When I thought about moving this or that finger, it would move almost right away,” Walgamott said. “I don’t know how to describe it except that it was like I had a hand again” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/11/15/new-robotic-hand-named-after-luke-skywalker-helps-amputee-touch-and-feel-again/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.94f0dfed8366). BrainGate – a consortium composed of Brown and Stanford University, along with the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Massachusetts General Hospital have just created an implant the size of a baby aspirin that allows people with full paralysis to operate a smartphone or tablet with their thoughts. Elon Musk thinks that the next step could be implanting information directly in the brain, where people could essentially download content knowledge. Musk argues: "Since computers are able to transmit information an exponentially quicker than humans, becoming “one” with them would allow humans to stay relevant in an age where automation and technology threaten our usefulness as organic organisms (https://futurism.com/elon-musks-and-the-need-for-symbiosis-with-machines). Just curious what others think of the future prospects of neural integration and what kind of impact could this have on education?

Thank you for a great OER. I enjoyed the pacing and the content was well curated. I think your team did a great job focusing in on a few key aspects, especially tying in the educational gaming. Bringing in a new interactivity with the jeopardy game was a great idea and kept on theme with the rest of the OER! I think one area that could use a little more attention was the neuroscience and technology component. As this course is focused on tech ventures, having more than one example of a company I think is a good idea. For example, I use Kahoot a lot and I've found the music and the layout of Kahoots are incredibly engaging and exciting for students. I feel like the same people who make the sound effects for slots machines designed the music for Kahoot, it really gets students hyped! There's definitely some neuroscience and psychology involved in the design. I appreciated the discussions prompts, they were rich and gave me a lot to think about as I was posting my discussions! Thanks again!

Hey Neuroscience team - thanks for the OER. I especially like the jeopardy game to drive interaction and thinking. Neuroscience is such a big, complex and wonderful topic. I appreciate the thoughtfulness that you put in the content (and references). Note that on the Neuroscience and technology page, the Zondle Team Play button didn't work for me (Safari). In wrapping up, I guess I wonder what your thoughts are on the future of neuroscience? Is this an area that has strong potential for creating a venture? I would suspect that based on the gaps in what we know, it would take significant funding and that this would be an especially risky proposition.

Hey Team! Thanks for creating a very informative OER on neuroscience, a topic that carries alot of misconceptions and mystery. I think every educator should have a understanding of the neuroscience of learning. In viewing this OER it helped me reflect on my own impactful learning experiences and why I have retained certain information from my childhood. I am also excited about the various possibilities of A.I. integrated learning and how it can tap into neuroscientifically advantageous practices. Being skeptical of the education system as a whole, I do believe that it will take a considerable of time for A.I. to become mainstream in education, but that doesn't mean educators who are curious about A.I. and it's affordances can't start to integrate it ourselves in order to see the benefits of tapping into neuroscience.

Hey Team! I really find this topic interesting and I especially like your section on myths and misconceptions. It is amazing how many of these persist and I have attended professional development sessions where many of these were promoted (learning styles, left brain vs right brain, etc). On a side note, as Basia already mentioned, the game has the answers crossed and you are deducted points for correct scores, and you gain points for incorrect scores. However, I love how you incorporated game-based learning.

Hi team, well done on your OER. Neuroscience is something I have weirdly spent a lot of time on, especially in relation to my work in a linguistic and behavioural early intervention centre for children with atypical tendencies. I think you did a very good overview of what it is and how/why it pertains to the educational world. I also didn’t even particularly mind the lack of information on the current neuroscience marketplace because it is still in it’s infancy and using an OER to speak more directly to innovators is actually a far more pragmatic endeavor at this point in time. You had good sections of information that were clear and easy to understand and the interactive questions and forums made sure that I was thinking about the content rather than just skim reading it. The referencing and sources for your content also seemed thorough so that makes your OER look pretty rock solid. Some technical notes: Your Neuroscience in the Classroom was also a very informative and explanatory section which may have been helpful as an introduction to the topic. This would have contextualized a lot of the content prior to it, such as neuromyths and neuroeducation. Secondly, text laid over images can make it difficult to focus and read. If you drop the opacity of your image, you will reduce this issue and you will make it easier for people to interact with your site. Lastly, your google slide Learning Activities were also two very different sizes, so part one was easy to interact with and part 2 you could hardly see because it was small. These are small tweaks though, and I really appreciated and enjoyed all your work. Thanks!

Hello Neuroscience Team! I enjoyed your OER. Like Basia, one of my comments would be on the background images you picked for the PAST and NEUROSCIENCE, you can still read the text because is a big font. However, I still thinks that if you had lowered the image’s contrast it might have been easier to read. 
I liked that game, it made me realize that there were some things that I thought they were true, these were actually myths. In the Neuroscience and technology section you mentioned Zondle. Are there any other examples? maybe you could compare between the different products that are out there. 
The video I really enjoyed was the memory capacity one. While I was watching that video I thought of Method of Loci, have you heard about it. I am assuming that there are many methods for memory retention. The videos were about children’s memory and brain. Did you consider putting examples of learners from different ages?