COMP. 1-BLOG PURPOSE AND POST

6/12/2007 - 11:50:07 AM


B1 BLOG PURPOSE
This blog will be used for posting assignments, called competencies, related to TWU Library Science course Information Storage and Retrieval, 5013. The content will be related to teaching in the high school library using brain-based learning strategies (my subject, focus, interest) as a teacher librarian. Eric Jensen and others have taken the findings from neuroscience and suggested understandings, strategies, and activities that can be used to increase and enhance learning when used in classroom and library settings. As a teacher-librarian, I desire to create a library atmosphere, and use teaching strategies that implement the most current data from these brain based learning strategies.

B2 BLOG POST
On the third page of Google Blog Search, I found a site called Eide Neurolearning at this address: http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2005/03/brain-of-blogger_03.html.

I love how this site connects brain science with learning, and how it relates to this competeency, which is blogging. Blogging clearly requires higher level thinking skills, and I can not wait to get students involved in it during their time with me in the library. A huge and constant issue in education, one hears it during every staff development, is how to get students to think at a higher level. Here is an answer:

"What effect is all this blogging having on the brains of bloggers?Why ask this question? The primary reason can be found in one of the central tenets of modern neuroscience: "The neurons that fire together, wire together." What this basically means is that our mental activities actually cause changes in the structures of our brains--not only what we think, but how we think as well. Given such activity-directed change, it always makes sense to ask whenever large numbers of people start using their brains in new and different ways, what effects these new activities are likely to have on brain structure and function. Blogging, which only seems to be accelerating in popularity, is a prime candidate for such investigation. After surveying the general range of materials that the blogosphere has to offer, we believe the following basic largely supportive conclusions are warranted: . . ."
The conclusions contain absolutely fascinating information about how much more analytical blogs are than playing video games. And that many, many people are involved--I MUST figure out how to get students interested. I am wondering if blogging will become a new descriptor of the educated.