Next week's field trip to the Corcoran

Edward Burtynsky: Oil from Corcoran Gallery of Art on Vimeo.

Learning and the Brain

Mara and I are just back (at 11 pm last night) from the Learning and the Brain Conference at MIT, where we spent three solid days in workshops. We not only learned about cognitive overload, we experienced it! As I unpack my notes I'll have more to say, but three big take-aways for our practice as teachers, students, parents, and humans, are:
-our brains need quiet time, away from the noise and stimulation of our culture, in order to solidify memory and learning,
-sleep is critical to our ongoing brain development,
-the neural structure of our brains is changed by our cultural stimulation, for which the best antidote is reading (books, not screens),

I'll have more, but right now I have to dig out from three days of missed emails! But later today I promise myself that I'll take a two-minute meditation break.

Schroedinger's Cameraman

From Chicago Public Radio's "This American Life."

If you can't see this, the direct link is here.