Eclectic Technology

How do we learn? New research continues to inform us and we should help our learners discover that making some shifts in their practices may lead them to being more successful learners. This post provides "fifteen steps towards a better brain."

Four of the steps are below.

* Laughter boosts brain function.

* You can improve your memory with one simple step.

* Bilingual brains process information better.

* Higher vocab increases cognition

Some of the steps in this post may be new to you. Each is explained in more detail in the post, and every step includes at least one (or more) links to additional information.

As you read through think about what you can do in your classroom to help your learners and yourself "build a better brain."

What do creative people do that may be different from others. This post explores this stating:

'While there's no "typical" creative type, there are some tell-tale characteristics and behaviors of highly creative people.

The post shares 18 ideas, each of which are explained in detail if you click through...but five are listed below.
* They daydream

* They observe everything

* They turn life's obstacles around

* They ask the big questions

* They constantly shake things up

You may find that some of the ideas presented make you think of specific students in your classroom. As teachers are we recognizing that some of our students are more creative in their learning and may improve if we differentiate the instruction to help them engage their creativity?

Quandary, a free online game for players ages 8 - 14, won the Game of the Year Honors at the 2013 Games for Change Confernce. This game provides players an opportunity to help shape a new society "while learning how to recognize ethical issues and deal with challenging situations in their own lives."

The websites goes on to state "Players develop skills such as critical thinking, perspective-taking and decision-making. Quandary provides a framework for how to approach ethical decision-making without telling players what to think."

Why use Quandary with your students? This game is designed to help students learn skills in:

* Problem solving

* Communication

* Information literacy

* Global awarenes

* Collaboration

* Creative thinking

There is a teachers page available which provides additional resources including a Game Guide, a sample lesson plan, an opinion tracker as well information on how the learning outcomes match to standards in both the Common Core and the Partnership for the 21st Century.

This post provides a look at seven principles of creative thinking. Each is described in some detail. Three of the principles are below (without explanations).

* You are creative

* Creative thinking is work

* You must go through the motions

If you would like to see a different version of the same seven principles you can head over to Sean Junkins twitter account and see an infographic that he put together that is based on the Edutopia article. As far as I can tell the shift he made was to create the infographic. It appears that all text is from the article (and the infographic gives credit to Sean Junkins).

Where do we begin when we want rigor to be a component of our courses?

With standards - if your state is using Common Core they have been recognized as rigorous...so what comes next?

With curriculum - if using a text is it rigorous? If creating your own have you thought of rigor as you created your curriculum. This post will help with that as it provides 5 guiding questions for you to ask to evaluate the rigor in curriculum...as well as an example.