These are raw notes as I take them during presentations. They have not been edited, but they will be in the next few weeks as I turn them into blog posts. They will not only be notes on the presentations, but they will be mixed with my own thoughts and reflections. I will try to note that so as not to misrepresent any speaker.
Keynote I: Extending the Mind Beyond the Brain: Connecting the Body and Movement to Learning and Thinking - Annie Murphy Paul, MS
Science writer who covers research in cognitive science
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?
We live in a brain-centric, brain-bound culture. The brain is deified in popular science writing, but the biological brain is a limited organ in what it can do on its own. We transcend those limits by using external resources to enhance our mental processes.
Interoception
- The capacity to sense our internal signals. (Gut feelings)
- Students who learn how to tune into internal cues can use them to make better decisions, muster more mental resilience, and exhibit greater emotional intelligence.
- Body scan (yoga practice) - direct non-judgmental attention to each part of the body
- Interoceptive journal
- Labeling your sensations reduces anxiety and distress
- Cognitive reappraisal - Am I nervous or excited? The sensations are the same.
- Body mapping - What are you feeling where
- Micromovements keep us alert and engaged - sitting still tells our body we are "at rest."
- Fidgeting can sharpen our focus, improve our mood, increase our creativity
- Embodied self-regulation
- Sweat before you sit. Take movement breaks instead of coffee breaks.
- Hypofrontality - Vigorous and sustained exercise temporarily inhibits the prefrontal cortex (the brain's taskmaster and critic). This allows more creative and original ideas to emerge.
- Act out abstract ideas - whole body movement allows us to commit knowledge more firmly to memory. (Actors wait until the scene is blocked to memorize the script because the movement allows them to attach the lines to the body.)
- Move as if you are the thing you are learning about.
- Physical metaphors: "On the one hand. On the other hand."
- Encourage gesture: Could you try moving your hands as you say that?
- Rehearse the gestures just as much as you would rehearse the words.
- Beat gestures (emphasis) and symbolic gestures (represent meaning)
- When choosing videos, choose those in which the hands are visible and gesturing.
- Pay attention to other people's gestures, especially if they are mismatched with the words they are saying. This may be the time when they are most ready to make a conceptual breakthrough.
- Provide objects for them to gesture toward (diagrams, charts, maps, lists, physical models)
- Have students stand up and improvise a description, prompting physical movements in the explanation.
- Give kids spatially-oriented toys and games.
- Pair a gesture with a concept and use it every time.
Keynote II: The Future of Smart: Creating Embodied, Human-Centered Education - Ulcca Joshi Hansen, PhD, JD
What are "human-centered" spaces? Why do they matter? What do we know about creating them?
They focus on relationship, relevance, and reintegration.
Context matters
- The world we will encounter has volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The human brain is not wired to like those things.
- Technology is changing at a pace that will make everyone need:
- the ability to manage ambiguity.
- knowledge of how to access new learning.
- discernment
- understanding of ethics and values
- Human development is hagged and highly individualized, especially in childhood.
- Adolescence is a time to develop the capacity for complex and purposeful thinking. They crave interdependence.
- Cognition involves the brain, the body, our situation, and social distribution.
- The conversations young kids have form their brains.
- The connections they make shape their brains.
- The way kids think grows their brains over time.
- Engagement with complex, real-world problems, and collaborating with diverse teams leads to transdisciplinary thinking.
- Instructional models start with purpose, which affects the design of curriculum and instruction and the systems we develop.
- Each of us is a constellation of cognitive skills, strengths, and weaknesses. None of those are good or bad. They are just different cognitive profiles (the context has labeled a narrow number of them as good and the rest as bad, but that's just about the context).
Definition of learning - attaching stuff they don't know yet to stuff they do know. We want it there for a long time and have it be really flexible (usually in a new and unanticipated circumstance).
Things that Influence Long-Term Memory - Constantly Interacting With Each Other
Sensory Input
Emotion
Motivation
Working Memory
Attention
I used to think I would come and the researcher would say, "Here's what we did and it worked." I would then go do that and it would work. I now know that is not true. It is context-specific.
Researchers should not tell teachers what to do. They should help teachers think about what we do in a different way. We must then adapt that to our contexts.
Don't Just Do This Thing! Think This Way!
Attention problems are substantially misunderstood. Once we understand it better, teachers usually have effective solutions.
Attention is not a unified mental process. It is a behavior that students do when three other mental processes are in sync.
- Alertness - alertness
- We don't always have control over the causes of alertness problems, but we can influence it somewhat.
- Movement can help, not just theirs.
- Classroom variety
- Visual novelty (throw in a high energy video demonstration)
- Orienting - perception of environmental stimuli (focus)
- We cannot perceive everything until we are oriented to it
- You do not notice the stimuli in the environment until it is made salient by someone pointing it out or it catches your attention in some way.
- We can help students orient by rebalancing classroom stimuli (can't control the snow, the spider, the sound a firetruck driving by). Those things we can control (like classroom decoration) should be thought about carefully.
- Executive Attention - effortful control of cognitive processes
- Color/word mismatch required control of executive attention.
- There is a difference between getting an answer wrong and thinking about the question the wrong way. The second is an executive attention problem.
- Manage working memory (write words related to today's lesson on the board until we get to a place where they don't need that). Choose the first question you ask to be about something typical, not a rare case.
Final Keynote: The Science of Brain Health: Leveraging Lifestyle Choices to Target Brain Health and Functionality - David Perlmutter, MD, FACN
About 74% of US teens are coffee drinkers, and 20.5% are drinking energy drinks. This, combined with screen time and other activities, is affecting their sleep.
How much and how well is a student sleeping?
They must have REM sleep to contextualize and consolidate their learning from the previous day.
Deep sleep is when it cleans itself up.
The impact of sleep deprivation on the prefrontal cortex, which integrates sleep, arousal, cognition, and emotion can cause inattention, emotional instability, and behavior issues in adolescents.
The prefrontal cortex is involved in
- Decision-making that considers future consequences.
- Planning complex behavior.
- Suppressing socially unacceptable urges
- Understanding good and bad
- Empathy
- Compassion
- Impulsivity without regard to consequences.
- Narcissism
- Shortsightedness
- Us vs. them
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