Another Angle on Learning
Kathy Sierra got the jump on me in her weblog Creating Passionate Users. While this weblog is aimed at software developers, she has a lot to say that I find valuable from an educational perspective.
Her post today is called Brain Death by Cubicle, and it’s her take on a great article called The Reinvention of the Self in the February print issue of Seed Magazine. It’s unfortunately not available online yet, but should be next month. The article looks at the concept of mammalian brains (including ours) growing new cells, or neurogenesis. Up until the very recent past it has been a commonly accepted fact that mammalian brains do not grow new cells, and that as we age we just simply lose them a little each day. Gad, how depressing!
Well, it turns out this isn’t true. A researcher named Elizabeth Gould is profiled in the article, and she has demonstrated that we do indeed grow new brain cells - unless we are stressed, or kept in dull, boring settings. In the latter settings, brain cell growth ceases. (This is why earlier researchers never found evidence of neurogenesis - all of their lab animals were kept in sterile cages.) Play and active learning create increased brain cell growth.
Kathy looks at this from the perspective of the office worker stuck in a cubicle. What are we doing to employees when we prevent them from having visually stimulating workplaces?
And as far as education is concerned, I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. If we know that uninteresting settings inhibit brain cell growth, and active, engaging settings increase brain cell growth, we have another piece of evidence for the value of activity-based, technology-rich learning environments. The kind of intense engagement that students experience not only “entertains” them, it literally changes the physical structure of their brains for the better. (The flip side is that uninteresting, dull settings change the brain, too - for the worse.)
It’s always satisfying to have science demonstrate what we knew all along - play and active learning are good for you! Read Kathy’s full post for a more in-depth discussion of the article, and then try to track down the original as well. There’s a lot of implications of this research that are worth considering at great length.