Neuroeducamente blog

Photo credit: Ochre Jelly via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA Sometimes I wish emoticons were valued in education. Although it has been stated that “we will never know how any other animal or any other human actually feels” (Davis & Panksepp, 2011, p. 1947), I think they are a direct route to our amygdalae giving us an opportunity to gauge our emotional memory and prepare us for the get-go.  This ‘impulse that induces action’ (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2016) is still very immaturely dealt within our society; no wonder when affective neuroscience is in its beginning (Davidson Films, 2010) and emotional intelligence is but a baby boomer. Whereas humans are still ahead in identifying emotions (Ekman, 1973 but Balkenius and Morin, 2001) but compete with other species in mirror neurons that fire for both action and observation modes (Gallese & Goldman, 1998), we still lack in cultivating emotional intelligence since infancy properly. It’s not a tradition to start the day by tal

Photo credit: Foter.com Our brain is a very organic and complex system much like a beehive. To begin with, it is in constant connection with its surroundings. From the environment, elements are filtered in and out of it, like the input that our sensorial channels capture from our surroundings to be filtered by our perception. Also, the beehive is densely packed, formed by cells that store food and nurture their colony. The same can be said about our brain, with its kilometer worth of gyruses set in intricate ridges made so in order to improve cognitive function (Burrows, 2016; Nuwer, 2013), populated by cells that store information and processes and nurture our 'self' (Damasio, 2010). Inside a beehive, there's also a basic architecture that runs from top down; polen, the rich produce of the beehive, is stored in the upper part, much like our pre frontal cortex houses cognition; below that, the pollen-storage cells, just like the associative networks betwee

What’s your take on big data and decision-making? Photo credit: Foter.com   Mine ranges from a very humane appeal, courtesy of Etlinger (2015) for the need to analyze data critically, to a call for appropriateness and validity, thanks to Gill, Borden & Halgren (2014) to the traps in decision-making, issued by Hammond, Keeney and Raiffa (1998); and still pass by an appeal for DDDM (Data-Driven Decision Making) to form teaching professionals for an informed instruction supplied by Mandinach (2012). The point made about data being useless if not carefully analyzed in a given setting with explicit understanding and preparedness seems uncontroversial. After all, numbers can be anything to anyone depending of the context in which they occur as numbers do not, and will not, mean something if deprived from the obvious but often times easily forgotten idea that they are translated and related to students that we have the power and the responsibility to form and inform as

Photo credit: shareski via Foter.com / CC BY-NC With great te aching, o ne does never ge t tired of o bserving the details...in a class plan of an adaptive expert teacher, i.e., a GREAT teacher (Hattie, 2012; Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014), it is clear for all to see the pre, while and po st teaching s teps that have been ca refully crafted fo r each stage. After all, "great teaching leaves nothing to chance" (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014) It is really adamant that we, teachers , consider where our st udents are (their previous knowledge), how to as sess that (diagnostic tools), where we want the class to go (objectives) and how to co nvey that to st udents (success criteria). After that, there ne eds to be a s tructured guidance so that students know what is ex pected of them, what th ey n eed to 'grab' along the w ay to perform the task and who th ey can count on every st ep of the w ay . This s tability in the fa ce of ch ange

Photo credit: Foter.com Attention & learning For learning to take place , attention and memory have to be in place (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014). As a teacher, we have to carefully plan by choosing topics or means that most effectively lead to the desired outcome. Sensorial input, especially with young learners, has to be cleverly used by designers so that the process of perception gets amplified (National Geographic, 2014). For success, count on “emotionally charged stimuli (to) capture attention” (Chun, Golomb & Turk-Browne, 2011, p. 89) and this is what a fellow teacher did when preparing a class on hot/cold concepts for a group of 2 year-olds learning English. T o capture their attention, she brought to class ice cubes and a hair drier. She presented the concepts unitarily using a different location corner in the room. Students felt the stimulus while the teacher enunciated the concept out loud many times (Ex.: Can you feel the cold? Is it too cold for you? Do yo

How to better memorize what you want to learn? Photo credit: Foter.com I subscribe to what William James once said “It is our attitude at the beginning of a task which, more than anything else, will determine its outcome.”  But positive attitude cannot counteract the substantive small amount of short term memory we have (Miller, 1956). So, I respect my cognitive load (De Jong, 2010) and take the time I need to absorb the material given. I explore it in my own time (be it more or less than the average) by breaking the content into small, manageable chunks that I can better manipulate in my working memory while I strengthen, through revision and repetition, the synapses I already had or create new ones that encode new memories (Vanderbilt, 2014). Once content is in my ‘hands’ I apply different strategies: cognitive, memory, compensation, communication, metacognitive, affective and social (Oxford and Crookall, 1989). Moreover, I do lots of testing: quizzes, retelling, wri

Photo credit: Foter.com Know thy self - How can you? What it takes to know oneself? Reflection, feedback and a great dose of patience (the mother of all virtues) to balance the learning process that defines life. So, whereas I can exert some control over my well-being, my quality of life is heavily influence by my age, my culture, my health and my values and how much I can control them. Factors that may constitute a cumulative risk in my life (Jenson & Fraser, 2015) have been controlled by my determination to cherish memories that feed my soul and to pay attention to what does me harm. That said, I do not pay heed to insults and leave gossip out of my attention radar. I maintain a brisk exercise routine for it gives my body the jolt it needs to face the challenges and I eliminated cable TV from my life. Now I am the one that exerts the choice of what, when and how to have pleasure out of a screen (with the help of Netflix). I also respect my circadian phenotype – I

Is there a culture of teaching? How do you know? Photo credit: followthethings.com via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA I’m a member of the culture of teaching. At least, I thought I was... and as such, I still vouch for the principles of openness, reciprocity, care and improvement. To me, being part of that culture meant that, notwithstanding the place one would come from, the language, beliefs, ideas and principles shared would unite and turn our practices into common ground for understanding and application. But, in a recent event I attended, 20 practitioners from all over the world came together to a country that was not native to any of them. That country provided us with the language and the services to be propagated by us in our respective countries. In the morning, we would attend the presentations and subsequently had to deliver parts of it as training for what we would do once back in our places of residence. At first I thought that our shared knowledge of the subje