An official welcome to our newest group of bloggers! This current session will run from 1/24/08 until our face-to-face meeting on 4/3/08.
I'm very excited about the mix of people joining the book study. I hope you've been able to buy or borrow the book so we can get started with our online portion. The face-to-face session at IV covered some basic logistics, but now the real fun can begin.
I'd like to start by asking you to add your comment to this post related to this basic question: What have you read so far that really grabbed your attention?
An idea/concept you really resonate with; a statement that got you thinking; or maybe something you disagree with or wonder about.
Click the comment link below this post and let's get a conversation started as we begin the book together.
PS - I haven't explored much of Daniel Pink's site, but I thought it might have some nice resources for us as we learn together.
7 comments:
I find all this talk of the brain and how it functions fascinating (big surprise coming from a science teacher!). What’s really interesting is that scientists have determined that the human brain isn’t fully developed until sometime in a person’s 20’s. That’s good news especially for those of us teaching secondary students. For one thing it helps to explain why the reasoning of some of our students seems so off sometimes. I read an interesting article about the adolescent brain (http://www.sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename=brainBriefings_Adolescent_brain), which said that things like planning and decision making really aren’t developed to their fullest until after the high school years. What implication does that have for making students choose a high school pathway or a college major?
The other piece of good news, as I see it, is that all through the secondary years, we as teachers still have the opportunity to help students develop their brains through various activities that include both left and right directed thinking. For example, I use mind maps with my 9th graders and I think that encourages seeing the big picture of a unit…right brain! When they ask why they need to do this particular activity, I can say….right brain development! (Not sure that will satisfy them, but oh, well.)
I agree with Karen F. I have lived with my brain for 36 years and yet I have never taken the time or interest to think about! It is amazing how technology has allowed scientists to study the brain and find out exactly how the brain works. When Daniel Pink talks about being "strapped down on a table being pulsed by electromagnetic waves" I was a bit freaked, but when he expained the results of his test, I was amazed. To actually see how and when we use parts of the brain is truely amazing. I found Pink's oldie but goodie joke, "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe that everything can be divided into two categories-and ther rest of you", very true. We really do see things in contrasting pairs and now it makes more sense to me as to why.
peggy d.
I just purchased the book, and am excited to read it. I truly believe we only use a small percent of our brains. I hope I can learn some information to expand my students and my brain. I took a course this summer called, Multiple Intelligences and I found it very interesting because it really showed how we can have different intelligences that are all important. I guess the challenge is to identify our strengths and utilize them in our life.
From the introduction of the book during our group session, I'm excited to find out how it might apply to my daughter. She is a senior in high school with plans to go to college in the fall. We go through the major of the month. She has so many interests she can't make up her mind! I've been concerned about how she is going to support herself when she finishes school when her choices of major have been drama, art, history. Lately with the presidential primaries she thinking of political science and Spanish. Maybe this book will help me rethink that parent's view of "go with something practical". Oh, and she absolutely doesn't want to teach. Fortunately she doesn't have to decide right away. It would be nice for her to have a major that she loves AND can pay the rent and loan payments.
Now you see why I thought this "non-educational" book would be so fitting for educators to read and discuss! The implications for us as we design learning to help our students find 21st century success are both daunting and exciting. Thanks for sharing your thoughts so far...
After reading the Intro and Chapter 1, I've been pondering two ideas. First, it's not just the left-brain, analytical, "we are humans, hear us calculate" that makes us unique as beings, but it's also the right-brain emotional response that, in some ways, makes us more like one another. The quote from the researcher, Paul Ekman, who developed the set of images used by Pink during his brain scan, reminded me of how small the world is. He wrote, "There has never been an instance in which the majority in two cultures ascribes a different emotion to the same expression."
This leads me to my next thought (can you see my HIGHLY sequential tendencies!) I have never been a letter-writer and that may be due to the lack of "prosody" as Pink calls it. I also struggle with email for important communications. I miss the "face to face, hear the inflections in the voice, get a read on what the person is saying" that is lacking in impersonal email.
I also enjoy Pink's humor and found myself laughing out loud in some instances. I think I'm gonna enjoy this book . . . and I'm sure I'm going to learn much.
I think the comment that most surprised me, considering it came from a book about right brained thinkers, was "In other words, leading a happy, healthy, successful life depends on both hemispheres of your brain." Since I have only made it through the first chapter, I am interested to see how this plays out through the rest of the book. Are we wrong to look at things as "left brained" or "right brained?" Since the lefties have dominated for so long, is it now the righties turn? Will it ultimately even out, and we'll dispense with the labels? However it ends, this book certainly has major implications for how we think about education.
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