Four more reasons to watch Sesame Street's 42nd season: S, T, E, and M!

Via John Eggerton at Broadcasting & Cable:

Taking its cue from the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curriculum being pushed by the Obama administration, the iconic show will add a "Murray's Science Experiments" and work investigation and experimentation into the episode themes.

The new theme of the season will be "Let's find Out."

 Very much looking forward to watching some of these with my son.

Challenge Based Learning

I'm attending Apple Academy this week, a pull-out-all-the-stops professional development event for small cohorts of education professionals.  I'm feeling extremely grateful to be here.  Yesterday was "Day 1", and for me the highlight was a presentation on Challenge Based Learning.  It's a new paradigm for student learning prompted by the limitations of traditional instruction and the exponentially increasing access to digital tools for consumption and creation:

Students today have instant access to information through technology and the web, manage their own acquisition of knowledge through informal learning, and have progressed beyond consumers of content to become producers and publishers. As a result, traditional teaching and learning methods are becoming less effective at engaging students and motivating them to achieve.

 So what is it?

Challenge Based Learning is an engaging multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages students to leverage the technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems. Challenge Based Learning is collaborative and hands-on, asking students to work with other students, their teachers, and experts in their communities and around the world to develop deeper knowledge of the subjects students are studying, accept and solve challenges, take action, share their experience, and enter into a global discussion about important issues.

We watched a video of some students and teachers from Australia who selected the big idea of "resilience" and took on the challenge of helping communities who'd been affected by a natural disaster. What struck me most was that these students, through this process, were empowered and passionate about making a difference in their world, learning their required bits along the way in the framework of the challenge they selected, the solutions they implemented, and the analysis and evaluation they engaged in along the way.  There's more information at this Challenge Based Learning section of Apple's website, including ideas for challenges and many other videos of student and teacher experiences.  We saw a data table that showed that students and teachers alike self-reported huge gains in many aspects of modern goals for learning, most particularly in the realm of leadership.  I have more to learn about this, but from what I've seen so far, it's a very compelling model - not only because students are learning "the material", but more so because it appears that they're learning to care!

What would school "look like" if our highest purpose was to help students learn that they can make a difference?

Hearing what we see: silent reading and direct speech

From Rebecca Greenfield at The Atlantic Wire on brain activity during silent reading:

People who imagine voices may not be so crazy after all. While glossing over dialogue in books, readers will speak the voices--as they imagine the speaker--in their heads, a Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience study finds. The transcript of an Obama speech features his deep cadence in your head. Or Hermione sounds like Emma Watson. That sort of thing.

First author on the work is Bo Yao, a postgraduate student working on his PhD in Psychology at the University of Glasgow.  The experimental design is unique and the conclusions are powerful: silent reading of direct speech causes a strong "top-down" activation of parts of the auditory cortex, giving rise to the sensation of an "inner voice" for the text during the reading process.  In other words, it is not unusual that we hear what we see when what we see are words that directly represent someone else's speech.  Sounds a bit like synesthesia, doesn't it?

STEM education dilemma infographic dilemma

I like graphs. A lot. I find beauty in simple-to-understand representations of complex data (for example, Horace Dediu's analysis at Asymco of the ongoing post-PC market transition).

So you can imagine how delighted I was to find the infographic at GOOD.is entitled "The STEM Dilemma". There are some nice representations there: the number of 9th graders that end up earning an undergraduate degree in a STEM field is only 6.1% (a tiny dot), and STEM-capable teachers earn only about 71% of the income that their peers do in other jobs (a much smaller pie).  I believe these visualizations can be important tools in our work to help get folks invested in working towards improving STEM education outcomes.

Given my role in high school education, I was particularly interested in the analysis of 12th grade U.S. students in terms interest in STEM and proficiency in math.  That is, until, I noticed that the percentages add up to 104.6.

An infographic without accurate information is just a pretty picture.

Teaching to change minds: what's the role of text?

So, what do you think are the best ways to help students learn challenging topics? Does text have a place in the modern classroom? Think about your own work as we - in the northern hemisphere, anyway - begin preparing for the upcoming 2011-2012 school year. Are your lessons hands-on, and is that enough?

You'll have a better understanding of why I'm asking you to think about your own answer to that question once you read Marie-Claire Shanahan's recent blog post (cross-posted to Scientific American) about the qualities of text that are most correlated with conceptual change.

Both Tippett and Guzzetti were able to look at several comparisons in how refutation texts were used: texts on their own, texts used with classroom discussions, texts read before and after classroom demonstrations, and texts used with writing activities. Given how powerful direct experiences can be, I was surprised that both of the reviews showed that the most effective strategies were always combinations that included text and that text on its own was more powerful that any of the other methods on their own (e.g., discussions and demos). This says a lot about the power of what we read.

Put another way...

You might think that hands-on activities and discussions are enough. But according to research, that's just not true. Best practices in teaching for conceptual change integrate quality texts with hands-on work to directly elicit, confront, and resolve misconceptions.


Great information to keep in mind as we head back to the classroom.

Big wave surfing in the information ocean

The other day while in the car I heard a piece on NPR noting Marshall McLuhan's 100th birthday. McLuhan's seminal "The Medium is the Massage" (1967) was a big influence on me during graduate school, particularly in the development of my thesis research. My favorite quote:

It is a matter of the greatest urgency that our educational institutions realize that we now have civil war among these environments created by media other than the printed word. The classroom is now in a vital struggle for survival with the immensely persuasive "outside" world created by new informational media. Education must shift from instruction, from imposing of stencils, to discovery--to probing and exploration and to the recognition of the language of forms.

Even though more than four decades have passed, the struggle continues between the classroom and the outside world. I believe that part of this struggle is self-made: schools are structured by the choices we make, and we have chosen a model for education that creates a boundary between the classroom and the outside world. With that said, I also see the establishment of a boundary as one of the key elements of vitality, in the living sense of the word; a membrane is a necessary structure for living things. How, then, does the cell manage the challenges of separation? It uses energy to make its membrane semi-permeable. With respect to the outside world, some aspects remain in balance, while others are actively included and others are actively excluded.

With this analogy in mind, the struggle between the classroom and the outside world can be re-framed. What informational media do we wish to maintain in balance? What informational media do we wish to include in greater proportion? What informational media do we wish to exclude? However, even if we can answer these questions, I believe that McLuhan's argument is that they are fundamentally less important than another question: how will we process the informational media that we bring into the classroom space?

In thinking about this question, I want to bring up another McLuhan reference: he was the first to use the word "surfing" to describe the way that people access and process the new and various forms of informational media he observed - in relatively small pieces, with rapid, multi-directional changes in motion. Although "surfing" is still a commonly-used term applied to how we access and process information waves, there's now a new type of in-water, sport surfing that wasn't possible during the time that McLuhan lived: big-wave surfing.

As legendary big-wave surfer Ken Bradshaw (seen above) described for the PBS program "Nature", big-wave surfing emerged in the 1990's as a result of the development of "true personal watercraft" that allow surfers to be towed-in, so as to catch these monstrous waves as they break (at speeds that made them previously uncatchable).  I hope you've watched the video, not only to see his accomplishment, nor simply to be in awe at the raw power of the ocean, but also to observe the movement of a big-wave surfer like Ken Bradshaw.  Unlike the small-wave surfers with moves that are short, quick, and multi-directional, big-wave surfers are powerful masters of holding a line, taking a direction, and harnessing the massive power of the wave behind them.

With this in mind, I believe that the development of true personal computers (smartphones and tablets) allows us to access information waves that are analogous to the monstrous swells of ocean water that big-wave surfers seek out. The problem, though, is that many people have jumped right into the big waves - email, web, texting, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and so many other sources of information on very agile devices.  Bradshaw notes that big-wave water surfers tend to be in their late twenties or in their thirties, with lots of experience and progression through varying levels of difficulty.  Yet while some big-wave information surfers have experience in smaller-wave information surfing on a desktop computer, or perhaps even larger-wave experience through having a laptop, many don't (or don't have much), and most have jumped right in rather than developing skills in progression. Even though information surfing is different from water surfing, water surfing isn't the only kind of surfing with negative risks.

The Economist, in the article "Too Much Information", notes some of the potential downsides of unsuccessful big-wave information surfing: anxiety, lowered creativity, and lowered productivity. Just as Bradshaw describes the danger of the "triple hold", this trifecta of risks is dangerous to both personal and professional well-being. Techniques suggested for successful big-wave information surfing include focusing, filtering, and forgetting. Successful big-wave water surfers practice their craft with training and thoughtfulness and appropriate rest; with the same approach we will be able to harness the power of these giant sources of information, and develop those same skills in students in our classroom. Wouldn't it be awe inspiring to see our graduates holding a line and mastering the force of such giant waves of information?

IEP meeting of the future: "Can I see that fMRI again?"

Nirvi Shah at Education Week's blog on Special Education notes the recent release of a report on the potential role that neuroscience could play in improving special education services.   Though much experimental work and analysis remains to ensure that ideas for improvement are supported by evidence before implementation, the potential shines through:

But when that research does catch up to the classroom, the results could be dramatic, said Monica Adler-Werner, who works at Ivymount School.

"My guess is that as much as what we're doing now is cutting edge, we'll look back in five years and see it as very primitive," she said. "We're at the beginning of a revolution in human understanding."

I can't wait for the first time I sit in an IEP meeting and read through a diagnosis that includes functional brain imagery!

(Also of note - I didn't know before reading Shah's post that George Washington University has a doctoral program that integrates neuroscience and special education. Her post provides the link if you're interested.)

100kin10 STEM teaching initiative

Jason Koebler at U.S. News and World Report's Education blog reports on the recently-formed 100kin10 coalition formed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York:

100kin10 will focus on three challenges of improving STEM education: increasing the supply of qualified teachers, keeping teachers in the classroom with incentive programs for top performers, and getting the public to realize that STEM education is an important issue.

I think increasing the capacity for communication and knowledge sharing among the many great minds working on STEM education issues will have a very positive impact on reaching our goals. I'll be sharing this networking opportunity with the STEM organizations I'm involved with - I hope you will, too!

Scary, lonely, and wicked hard

From "The educational value of creative disobedience" by Andrea Kuszewski at Scientific American:

The lucky few are the ones who are too stubborn to follow the rules arbitrarily. They suffer the consequences for their rebellion, but might have a supportive other (typically a teacher or non-family adult) that provides just enough encouragement to keep them on their path, even when it proves to be treacherous. Walking that path alone is scary, lonely, and wicked hard.

Let's not let these students walk the path alone. Take a few minutes to read the whole article - it's excellent.

The Compass of Pleasure

Via NPR's Fresh Air

From the excerpt:

It is now becoming clear that addiction is associated with long-lasting changes in the electrical, morphological, and biochemical functions of neurons and synaptic connections within the medial forebrain pleasure circuit. There are strong suggestions that these changes underlie many of the terrifying aspects of addiction, including tolerance (needing successively larger doses to get high), craving, withdrawal, and relapse. Provocatively, such persistent changes appear to be nearly identical to experience- and learning-driven changes in neural circuitry that are used to store memories in other brain regions. In this way, memory, pleasure, and addiction are closely intertwined.

Babble on...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/health/12klass.html

An easy and informative read on language development.  Of note:

Babies have to hear real language from real people to learn these skills. Television doesn’t do it, and neither do educational videos: recent research suggests that this learning is in part shaped by the quality and context of adult response.


I know it's somewhat dangerous to extrapolate findings from one research domain to another - but isn't it likely that all learning is mediated by the quality and context of the teacher's response?  I also like the author's bit at the end about how his exam room is his laboratory - I'd love to see more educators approach the classroom in the same light.

Don't forget step 2...

Getting from Here to There: The Roles of Policy Makers and Principals in Increasing Science Teacher Quality

Nothing says Sunday afternoon (for an education geek) like trolling through the Journal of Science Teacher Education for open-access articles to read. While I'm happy that this one is open, it's frustrating to read that the researchers note that a challenge leaders experience in improving STEM education is accessing formal science education research data. I'm assuming that the access issues are related to cost -- at $30 or so per article, this is no surprise. How great would it be (for educators, perhaps not for publishing companies) if research that was funded with public money had to be published openly on the web?

There are lots of good ideas in this article - it's worth a full read, but here are a few quips if you don't have time at the moment:

Potential collaboration opportunities include Web sites or blogs that promote information sharing between schools and policy makers, rotating positions for principals as state and federal policy consultants, short-term “internships” for policy makers in schools and principals in federal and state legislative offices, and professional development workshops involving policy makers at different levels in evidence-based debates regarding what is required to effectively teach science.

Policy makers in school, and school leaders making policy? That sounds so ... logical!

With access to more information than federal and state policy makers or principals in isolation in terms of pedagogical approaches and incentives for high quality instruction, principals can work together to generate effective policy strategies to improve science teaching in their unique school environments.

Sounds like a nice grant opportunity. In the mean-time, I'm using Twitter to build my own network of principals and teachers - as are many others.

Principal communities, and the use of technology to create communication channels among principals, policy makers, and science education researchers are promising mechanisms for generating effective policy at the federal, state, and school level.

The pieces and players are here -- step 2 = open access & knock down barriers. Go!

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, though...

The canary in the education reform movement's coal mine - Connecticut Post

Ricciotti seems almost giddy at the thought of Rhee's termination, a stance I see as it's own canary. The infighting within and politicization of education is, I worry, just as dangerous as flawed efforts like Rhee's (and others') to implement MBA-style education reform. Sure, measuring teacher quality with - and only with - a standardized test is a sure-fire way to stifle innovative teaching. However, it'd also be dangerous to have a knee-jerk reaction to this and lose sight of the research base that shows the strong causal relationship between teacher qualities and student learning. Measuring teacher qualities and student learning is important, and just because the current regime's methods are blunt and ill-used doesn't mean we should put a halt to our efforts to arrive at a better understanding of how education works.

Banned Books Week

ALA | Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week makes me think of Steven Pinker's work on language, in particular the concept of "word magic". He wrote a nice article for The Atlantic a couple of years ago called "Freedom's Curse" on government censorship of the media; it serves as a solid starting point for his argument, which is expanded in some of his scholarly works. While I'm not advocating for carpet-bombing the classroom with the f-word (even though Pinker's market argument would apply there for students & teachers just as much as it does on the radio or on TV), the slope is too slippery when books get banned. As Aristotle said, "it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Let's take this week as an opportunity to celebrate intellectual freedom and the important role that libraries and librarians play in protecting it.

Autism spectrum and education

Our professional development "kick-off" event this school year was a presentation from a local psychiatrist who specializes in working with children who are dysfunctional along the Austism spectrum. I've blogged in the past about the infrequent link between vaccination, mitochondrial disorders, and Autism-like symptoms (because this is such a controversial issue, please note: as stated previously, I am a strong proponent of vaccines and the large-scale research that demonstrates that vaccines do not cause Autism). I remain interested in the Autism spectrum because of the complexity of the problem from a research perspective, the potential benefits to education from discovering more information about causes of and treatments for the disorder, as well as my own growing experience in working with students who are dysfunctional to some degree along the spectrum.

The Autism spectrum is usually broken down into three regions: Autism, Asperger Syndrome, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Individuals in each of these regions of the spectrum have dysfunction in communication and processing skills, but it is the severity of their atypical function that drives classification into a specific region of the spectrum. Language skills are the most important difference between those classified as having Autism versus Asperger Syndrome. Individuals with Autism generally have no or very low-level language skills, while those with Asperger Syndrome can have language skills that are similar to others of the same age. However, there are some important differences in language use and processing in those with Asperger Syndrome, such understanding some of the subtleties of interpersonal communication like metaphor.

One of the new facts that I learned from our presenter that there is a strong coincidence of ADHD, OCD, and TS with Asperger Syndrome (AS). This piqued my interest a bit, because I'm somewhat familiar with the overlap in medications used to treat these disorders - many of them are antipsychotics that target the brain's dopamine receptors. I also learned from our presenter that individuals with AS often become focused on one "need", and that behavioral melt-downs are often triggered when that need is not met as quickly as the individual wants. Our presenter described this symptom, quite poetically I thought, as an "unbearable agony of unmet desire". Yet again this made me think of dopamine, because of it's frequent association with brain-based explanations of desire.

I started to wonder about dopamine's role in Autism spectrum disorders, and began doing some research. I've discovered that there are two medications that have been approved to treat the irritability mentioned by our presenter that is often associated with these disorders. The newest medication is called "Abilify", approved in 2009. "Risperidal" was approved in 2006 for the treatment of certain autism-related behaviors. Both medications are considered atypical antipsychotics because they target both dopamine and serotonin receptors. I also found some relatively new computational biology research proposing that dopaminergic processing is not reward-based, but expectation-based. If AS is caused, in part, by dopamine malfunction in the brain, this new research from computational biology certainly supports the urge from our presenter to avoid reward/punishment strategies with AS individuals, and to be as consistent as possible when they become focused on a particular need being met. Though not specifically tied to dopamine function, Alfie Kohn's article in the New York Times on conditional parenting is, in essence, a psychological debunking of reward and punishment as an effective strategy for influencing behavior, regardless of dysfunction along the Autism spectrum.

Perhaps Asperger Syndrome involves dopaminergic pathway disorder, but given that it is a spectral disorder, it's not surprising that medications that target other neurotransmitter pathways are able to treat - with some success - individuals with dysfunction along the spectrum. Research is also beginning to link the prosocial deficits associated with Autism with genetic and epigenetic oxytocin receptor abnormalities. Research in synapse formation is also emerging as a resource to help us understand the link between Autism and savantism, which, though rare, is 10 times more prevalent in those with dysfunction along the Autism spectrum. Learning more about the brain function of savants, given their amazing skills in many fields, clearly has great potential in helping us to understand how the non-savant brain learns and processes information.

Though the Autism spectrum is of interest from a brain research perspective because of the complexity involved and the potential gains in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and education, my feeling is that the most important lessons we can learn at this point in time are those that will help us to provide the best educational experience for our current students "on the spectrum". I'm particularly focused on those with AS, since they have language skills sufficient to be successful in a variety of classroom settings. It's clear to me that consistent expectations and interactions are important for these students, and others. Professionals also recommend that we should coordinate our work with others who have an impact on these students, such as parents, school nurses, psychologists / psychiatrists, and other teachers. Although I'm certainly biased by my interest in the brain and cognitive psychology, I recommend that other schools engage in professional development around the issue of working with students with Autism spectrum disorders. The lessons learned will improve your work with all students.

Listen to Music While Studying & Napping

Continuing on the theme of neuroscience and cognitive psychology researchers trying to understand better the function of sleep and dreaming, I've just read another really interesting article in the New York Times (I have an email alert set up for articles containing the term "brain").  The article, "Sounds During Sleep Aid Memory, Study Finds", reports on a study by Rudoy et. al. at Northwestern University that was recently published in the journal Science.  The findings suggest that individual memories can be improved when subjects hear sounds associated with those memories during a nap.

The memory task used in this study involved teaching subjects the correct location of 50 different icons on a computer screen.  Icons - small pictures of a cat or a tea kettle - were associated with relevant sounds (for example, a "meow" sound was played when the picture of the cat was on the screen).  The subjects then took a nap (less than 90 minutes of sleep), during which they were monitored via EEG to track their sleep stage.  During the nap, some subjects heard only white noise, while some other subjects were (unknowingly) exposed, during "slow-wave" sleep, to 25 of the sounds they'd heard during the picture location learning task.  After the nap, subjects were tested for their ability to place icons on the screen.

Subjects who, during their nap, had heard the sounds associated with the icons performed significantly better in the memory task than subjects who heard only white noise during the nap.  EEG patterns were measured between the two groups, and confirmed that there was a significant difference between the electrical activity of their brains.  Though not exhaustive, the researchers performed a variety of control experiments to determine whether or not the sounds played during slow-wave sleep were the causal factor in the improved performance of the subjects who heard them, and it seems reasonable to infer that they were.

I would like to see some continued research on the importance of icon-sound relevance relative to task performance post-nap.  In other words, would performance on the task be as improved if subjects had heard an "irrelevant" sound for each icon - say, a car horn honking when the icon of the cat was displayed?  Of course, it would also be great to see further research on different types of memory and learning tasks and potential improvements in performance by associating sensory experiences (sound, smells) during the learning process and during sleep following that learning experience.  I am also curious about the utility of listening to music while studying, and then listening to that same music while napping.  In the mean-time, so long as the music we choose doesn't distract from learning or from sleep, it would seem reasonable to suggest that memory task performance may increase as a result.

Cognitive Recovery Time

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have recently published findings in PLoS One that demonstrate the brain's need for a period of "down-time" after a challenging cognitive task in order to return to it's resting state. Barnes and colleagues continuously monitored their subjects' brain activity using fMRI, first having the subject relax for a bit more than 9 minutes, then having the subject perform a cognitive task for 9 minutes, and finally having the subject relax for almost 19 minutes. The cognitive task employed in this experiment was the widely used "n-back" memory game, in which subjects are shown two co-varying stimuli (generally a set of numbers that appear in different locations in a grid) and are challenged to respond correctly when the set of stimuli is a repeat of the set presented "n" times ago. In the version of "n-back" used here, the numbers ranged from 1 to 4 and appeared in a 4-quadrant grid; "n" was either 1 or 2 for different subjects.

Barnes et. al. found that the brain, like the heart, does not simply return to it's resting state immediately following activity. In this experimental design, the brain took approximately 6 minutes to return to its resting state following the task; although there was no statistically significant difference in recovery times between the n=1 and n=2 subjects, the data did indicate that the brain took more time to recover when the cognitive task was more demanding. As the researchers point out in the final paragraph of the discussion, these findings help to clarify further research questions, including testing the performance of subjects engaging in a new cognitively demanding task following a previous task, but before the brain returns to its resting state. For those of us involved in education as classroom teachers or as administrators in charge of the daily schedule of classes for students, this line of research should prompt us to reflect on how we structure the use of time within the classroom, as well as how much time we afford students to return to their resting state in between classes.

Barnes A, Bullmore ET, Suckling J, 2009 Endogenous Human Brain Dynamics Recover Slowly Following Cognitive Effort. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6626.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006626

New Child Concussion Treatment Recommendations

The New York Times reports that there is some controversy surrounding new recommendations on how to react when a young athlete is thought to have suffered a concussion. The new recommendations were developed and approved by a group at the 3rd International Conference on Concussion in Sport, sponsored by FIFA and held at their campus in Zurich in November of 2008. The British Journal of Sports Medicine published a supplement to their May 2009 issue devoted to concussion research (particularly that information shared at the aforementioned conference), though unfortunately the full text of the articles is only available to journal subscribers.

However, the abstracts are available for free, and as reported in the Times, the abstract of Purcell's "What are the most appropriate return-to-play guidelines for concussed child athletes?" states the the recommended practice is to wait at least one day before allowing children to return to play after they have suffered (or are suspected to have suffered) a concussion. Also identified as problematic in Purcell's abstract are the developmental influences on the psychometric assessment of child concussion, as well as the lack of child-specific assessment instruments. The Times suggests that Purcell's article also recommends that students avoid cognitive stress immediately following a concussion, including staying away from the classroom as well as technological stimulation.

Although there may be some merit to the potential for controversy surrounding these recommendations, specifically the concerns that players will not report concussion events to coaches / staff when they initially occur and therefore make it more likely for a severe second concussion to occur, I hope that these fears do not bear more weight for schools and athletic organizations as they develop policies for best practices surrounding children who suffer from concussions. We must develop child-specific instruments to assess cognitive changes following a suspected concussion, and we must err on the side of child safety and limit the athletic, scholastic, and other physical and cognitive demands on children who have suffered concussions - at least for one day, or until symptoms go away - so as to be sure to avoid dangerous back-to-back concussions. Given the mounting evidence of the short- and long-term damage done by concussions, it is imperative that we follow the advice of experts in protecting the brains of student athletes.

Webinar Series on PBS' "The New Science of Learning"

Scientific Learning Corporation, maker of education software, provider of education consulting services, and sponsor of PBS' recent special, "The New Science of Learning", is also sponsoring a series of free webinars   (registration required) on topics that may be of interest to readers of this blog.  I've registered for all three and would encourage you all to take advantage of this great opportunity to interact and learn with some of the leaders in the movement to integrate neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and pedagogy.

• Dr. Paula Tallal will host "How the Brain Learns: From the Laboratory to the Classroom" on May 27 at 1pm ET.
  
• Dr. Michael Merzenich will host "Brain Plasticity, Child Development, and Learning" on June 4 at 1pm ET.
  
• David Boulton will host "Stewarding the Health of our Children's Learning" on June 10 at 12pm ET and 4pm ET.
  

Dr. Merzenich gave a talk at TED in 2004 on neuroplasticity, which was recently posted online and I'm embedding here as a "sneak preview" of what we might have a chance to learn in June.

Attention and Multiple Intelligences Theory

I've endeavored over the past few months to exercise my "network literacy" (Will Richardson) and build a personal learning network with other educators using Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows users to post 140 character messages ("tweets"). Twitter users can follow each other and grow a personally-tuned information stream. Notably, each user's stream of tweets also gets an RSS feed, and Twitter also provides RSS feeds for searches - this is very powerful! Howard Rheingold recently posted a tweet seeking feedback on his blog post entitled "Attentional Literacy", a subject important to educators, psychologists, and neuroscientists alike. A debate ensued as to whether "literacy" was the appropriate word to describe attention, which prompted me to do some thinking (which is exactly why a personal learning network is so valuable).

Recently I've been reading about Howard Gardner's theory on Multiple Intelligences (MI). Gardner defines an intelligence as "a biopsychological potential of our species to process certain kinds of information in certain kinds of ways." There are a variety of reasons I find his work captivating:

• it fits with the modular model of the brain-mind
• it defines intelligence as a brain-based capacity
• it provides a model for instruction and assessment

Below are a few links to read through to get a sense of the past, present, and future of MI theory, as well as to see how it is being incorporated into education:

• Inside Higher Ed - Multiple Intelligences at 25
• Brain Leaders & Learners (Blog) - Target MI, Run From Lectures
• NY Teachers (Blog) - Incorporating MI Into Your Classroom
• Project Zero - Adult Multiple Intelligences
• Key Learning Community

In what I've read so far (only a small sample of Gardner's work, let alone all the related studies and critiques), it appears that the 8 intelligences he's identified so far do not exhibit a hierarchical pattern. Although this is valuable in terms of maintaining equity among the many ways of demonstrating intelligence (vs. the more traditional assessments that focus almost completely on verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical), a lack of such organization would be unusual if there is a strong relationship between the organization of the brain and the intelligences.

I jumped into the debate and suggested that, per Gardner's definition, that attention might be better labeled an "intelligence" than a "literacy". There is a lot of brain research happening to improve our understanding of the nature of attention, but there is no question that it is a biopsychological potential, and that it is related to information processing. Here are but a few examples of current literature on the neuroscience of attention:

• Electrical neuroimaging reveals timing of attentional control activity in human brain
• Defining a link between perceptual learning and attention
• Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources
• Learning to pay attention

As I thought more, I wonder if, in fact, attention may not be just an intelligence, but an example of a heirarchichal intelligence. I don't know if "meta" is the appropriate word to use here - is attention "above" and providing top-down influence on other intelligences, or is attention more of a foundation, lower-order intelligence which other intelligences must gain in order to activate? Perhaps as neuroscience research improves our understanding of the brain-based nature of intelligence, a clear picture of the intelligence heirarchy will emerge based on the brain structures involved and their relationship to information input / output patterns. However, whether the location is "above" or "below", it seems clear that attentional intelligence is on a different level than the others already identified.

I'm also now realizing that Will Richardson's "network literacy" could also be thought of as an example of Gardner's "interpersonal intelligence", though with the context shifted to the digital realm. What's also been on my mind as I learn more about MI theory is how it might be similar or different to other cognitive theories I've learned about in the past, particularly p-prims, facets, and cognitive resources. It's clear that educational systems have room for improvement with regard to instruction and assessment of all 8 intelligences. Thinking of attention as an intelligence within the MI theory also helped me to realize that we educators - except Howard! - tend not to provide direct instruction on how to develop and use intelligence. Regardless of whether it is accurate that attention is an intelligence or a literacy, Howard's point is well made that our increasingly multi-tasking and digital students will benefit greatly from direct instruction on how to pay attention.