Hopefully this reads better than the draft. Thank you all for your helpful feedback.
Democracy, as we all know, sure is a powerful idea. Take the internet. Anyone with the time and the energy can contribute their voice to society by setting up a blog. The downside to this, of course, is that anyone can set up a blog and anyone can have voice. In giving everyone a stage on which to perform, one must be prepared to watch a lot of terrible stuff.
There are, however, a few noble souls who contribute a unique voice in a blogging world that can seem, at times, saturated with the ironic, cynical, self-involved chorus that characterizes the blogs of so many gen-x'ers. A site called "Neurons Firing" (http://neurons.wordpress.com), which the site's creator bills as "the graduate course I’d love to take if it existed as a program and was local to where I live," is just such a one.
Meet Laurie, a teacher who has been "teaching computer classes and facilitating the use of technology in schools" since 1982 and whose interests "revolve around the brain, graphic design, organizing and creating professional development for faculty, and changing education to make it more relevant, interesting and experiential for all involved." It's also an educational, visually exciting and easily navigable blog for anyone interested in how current neurological research can be applied to the classroom. And, as luck would have it, it's fun to read!
Indeed, Laurie's site reflects a dedicated educator's enthusiasm for learning. Her prose is always straight-forward without being clumsy or crudely oversimplified. Take, for instance, her posting of April 17, 2007, a posting devoted to the Cerebellum:
"Near the back and bottom of the brain, next to the brain stem, is the CEREBELLUM, a round, lumpy structure resembling cauliflower and about the size of a small fist. It handles motor patterns, coordinates muscle movement, and is responsible for maintaining bodily equilibrium such as posture and balance. It also handles cognitive patterns such as speaking, and automates certain repetitive tasks. Lastly, it is the section of our brains that responds to novelty. Like the rest of the brain, it has two hemispheres connected by a thick wad of nerves."
After reading this passage, we get a clear idea of what the Cerebellum is, what it does and a good image of how it looks, all in a clean and polished prose that gently teaches us without being overly didactic, a concern we all share in our careers as educators. Similar postings on nearly every part of the brain, from the amygdala and reticular formation to emotions and attention, pepper the blog and are always written with the same mix of easy-to-follow learnedness and bright-eyed enthusiasm. There is even a helpful section called "The Brain 101" which is a repository of all of Laurie's postings related to the brain for anyone interested in learning about the physical mechanisms
Like a good teacher, Laurie is very good at encouraging her audience to explore the current scientific discussion on brain science on their own terms. For example, in an entry on October 31, Laurie discusses neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran's work with mirror neurons, phantom limbs, prosopagnosia and synesthesia. She offers a brief synopsis of his work and provides a number of links to articles. She ends the entry with "Don't take my word for it – go listen to his talk!" and a link to an audio file of one of Ramachandran's lectures on the brain. Though some readers may find this lack of opining a bit coy, the author smartly removes herself from the discussion so that readers may learn for themselves.
But don't think that Laurie is not content to let this kind of knowledge rest on its own laurels. Between her more scientifically-minded entries, she has also posted a number of entries detailing her attempt to incorporate knowledge of the brain into her classroom practices. In a follow-up posting to her entry on the cerebellum - in which we learned that the cerebellum is responsible for motor patters and muscle movement - she builds on a quote by Robert K. Greenleaf and offers suggestions as to how we can incorporate movement into the classroom.
"Incorporating some form of movement or novelty into any presentation, especially if the audience has been sitting still for quite awhile or listening to a monotone, can be
quite
beneficial
since
movement and
novelty can wake up the brain and give it a link for remembering."
It may be cute, but it works! This is real knowledge with real application for real students and Laurie does a wonderful job of reminding us why we chose to enter this most sacred of professions in the first place. In her entry from December 2, she opens with a short discussion of how "movement, in general, and dance, in particular, is very healthy for our bodies and our minds." She then follows it up with a handful of links to articles discussing the importance of movement and dance to learning. Such entries are not only interesting and insightful, they also contain tips on how to apply the information in a classroom setting.
Laurie moves confidently from discussing the latest findings of neuroscientists like Giacomo Rizzolati and V.S. Ramachandran to offering tips on classroom organization and the importance of sleep in the learning process to a quick tutorial on RSS feeds, all of which centers on one question: how can we use this knowledge to better facilitate student learning? Brain research is neat, she seems to say, but it also has applications in the classroom. After all, this is not simply a blog about the brain (there are a number of sites out there devoted to just this topic). It's a well-written, visually stimulating and informative on-going record of one educator's ongoing attempt to incorporate neurological research in her approach to education.