John Medina's "Brain Rules"

John Medina - source: John Medina's web site

"Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It's (sic) text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads — all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones."

Amended 22/2/2009 and 2/3/2009

I enjoyed John Medina's excellently implemented, thoroughly referenced, browsable and entertaining  Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School partly because it complemented some of my prejudices. 

I did my teacher-training in 1976-1977, and the proportion of the 1-year full time course devoted to the science of learning was small. (Sure, 30 years ago less was known about the subject than is the case now.)

Medina's web site could not have been produced in 1976 (either technically, or from the point of view of its science), but one would hope that teachers and others will be making a point of using it now, whilst retaining plenty of the natural scepticism we evolved for life as hunter gatherers. (One of Medina's points is that our brains and bodies evolved to make us fitted for life as hunter gatherers, and his 12 "rules" are built on that assumption.)  One thing Medina's slick web site would benefit from, though it would be costly to manage, is some space for (peer reviewed) challenges to the science that underpins his "rules". For a 2 March 2009 overview of Medina's site see this post by Donald Clark.

Related posts:

•  9 September 2006 Come dance with me, whispers the neuroscientist to the teacher;
• 12 March 2007 Useful terse articles by Itiel Dror about the science of learning;
• 14 March 2007 The bandwidth of consciousness;
• 4 January 2008 Baboon Metaphysics. The Evolution of the Social Mind.
  

Comments

[Donald Clark]

Teacher training is all about teaching not learning - and that's a problem. It's like engineers knowing nothing about maths and physics. To be frank, it's a disgrace.

Professor Frank Coffield describes the revulsion his primary school teachers have to any course with the word 'psychology' in it, and teacher training continues to deliver in the lecture format. It's all wrong.

Medina's book is an excellent primer, his website is superb and his YouTube stuff is free. Chances of teachers watching - almost nil!