September 18 - Mirror Neurons, and other thoughts

The danger in becoming complacent:

Some monumental theorists have been so good in their arguments that all of the sudden everyone who wanted credibility had to refer to the ideas of these men. The problem was we were marching forward, but looking backward at these theories.

Thorndike – very influential theorist in educational psychology

Gagne – very influential theorist in instructional theory

** The best ideas don’t always have a powerful advocate. Be careful to not get caught in a paradigm – there is no secure argument that sums up the whole world at once.

Gospel relation – in eternity we will keep learning and learning – we can’t encapsulate it all in one theory – the second we think we have it figured out, we are wrong.

The learning social ladder:

Social scientists are at a disadvantage when they study because when physicists or chemist research they can separate whatever they are studying from the rest of the world. Social scientists cannot – they are dealing with humans, they are complex, they are irrational, and they can’t be taken from the world.

There is a hierarchy of snobs in the academic world – they physicists are at the top while we are at the bottom with the sociologists. We can’t back up our findings the same way they can so we get pushed to the bottom.

Technology doesn’t try to figure out what happens naturally – they try to figure out how humans change what happens for their own purposes.

A possible problem we have today is that we are spewing forth a chain of meaningless research that isn’t answering the big questions – people are just playing off of each other and supporting each other’s research while avoiding the big topics.

Mirror Neurons

When we see something happen certain neurons fire in our brain – these same neurons fire when we perform the same action ourselves. This is especially applicable when we teach things like language, motor skills, etc.

Focus on demonstrations – creating an opportunity for them to ‘experience’ something before they ever do it. They will be more comfortable if they have already seen something happen before – as you do it they will be visualizing themselves do it as well.

**This is so true – I have had this experience at the MTC many times – there are few things that I can do as a teacher that will be as effective as modeling for them what I would like them to do. They watch me do it, they imagine themselves do it, they visualize it as I do it, and then they are more comfortable practicing it themselves.

**This was my experience in ASL – there is no other way to learn it than to see it done. It’s just not effective to learn ASL from a book – you need to watch someone do it and then you need to do it again yourself.

**Think of movies – you can experience so many emotions while watching a movie – even if you aren’t experiencing it yourself, it’s as if you are still having those emotions and that experience.