This article is fascinating! If you consider yourself to be one who finishes a task and then moves along to another, please read the article at the link above. If you're a multitasker, read, make notes, move around, check your Facebook, your SMS and then let's talk.
Why, you wonder, do I care about this neuroscience stuff anyway? The answer, friends, is that an artist communicates, eh? And, if an artist is a communicator, then it behooves the artist to know how the brain works, whether digital learning and stimuli changes brain functions, whether we are retaining the information that bombards us, etc ... You see. Not boring at all. In fact, it's fascinating and by paying attention to this information, we may become better communicators.
The added bonus for me is that I really appreciate the work of N. Katherine Hayles, a scholar and practitioner whose work I studied and cited in my MFA portfolio, the e-version of which is here. I agree with her observation, "One of the basic tenets of good teaching is that you have to start where the students are. And once you find out where they are, a good teacher can lead them almost anywhere. Students today don't start in deep attention. They start in hyper attention. And our pedagogical challenge will be to combine hyper attention with deep attention and to cultivate both. And we can't do that if we start by stigmatizing hyper attention as inferior thinking."
I agree with Hayles because, as a teacher, I've abandoned syllabi to "start where the students are." It's been a great experience for me, and, I think, judging by student feedback, for them as well.
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