Brain Based Learning

Social media seems to hold great potential for learners to collaborate and communicate. But it also makes a lot of people nervous about it being such a public platform. Is it appropriate for kids to be using social media? Is it appropriate for it to be used in schools? Is it appropriate for teachers to communicate with students outside of school, using social media?

Digital Humanities Quarterly has an interesting article on “The New Economy of Attention” . It discusses the effect of technology and specifically Social Media on students’ attention to a lecture and whether a “distraction” really takes away from learning. Perhaps focused, relevant distraction can actually help a student to learn better. The article suggests that it is human nature for attention to wander, even when interested in a topic, simply because that is how we learn best – by taking in everything in a learning environment, not just the lecture …