"Learning" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by CollegeDegrees360
Thinking back to school, do you also have memories of boring lessons where you could hardly stay awake, and just wished for the clock to move faster and release your from the boredom. Well, I do, and I hated it. How can we learn anything when we are bored out of our skulls?
That is the Old School way of teaching (no pun intended), also known as "talk n' chalk" - a teacher just talking and chalking on the board in front of half sleeping students. Blablablablablablablah... Yawn!
Well I'm here to tell you, that way of teaching is simply wrong! It is inefficient and a waste of time. No wonder we need some 15 years just to make kids able to handle simple everyday life!
The New School of teaching is based on stimulation. Stimulating the brain makes it much more prone to remember and it all has to do with what is called the Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor[1], also known as BDNF, is a protein generated in the brain. BDNF has many functions. It's helping to support the survival of existing neurons, and encourage the growth and differentiation of new neurons and synapses and is important for long-term memory. In other words, it makes you smarter. The more BDNF you can generate in your brain, the better you will be able to thing, learn and remember.
Exercise![2] One of the most significant effects of exercise on the brain is the increased synthesis and expression of BDNF. Certain types of physical exercise have been shown to threefold increase BDNF synthesis in the human brain. If you exercise, you actually create new brain cells and improve your cognitive function, persistently. Some of these long-term effects include:
Exercise improve academic performance in children and college students, improve adult productivity, preserve cognitive function in old age, prevent or treat certain neurological disorders, and improve overall quality of life.
Apart from literally dosing our brains with smart-drugs, moving stimulates the nervous system, gets blood pumping, gets oxygen into our brains, activates our muscle memory and give us better health.
We must reform our classrooms! No more tables and chairs, no more sitting down - sitting down tells your body it's time to sleep.
Instead students should stand and move as much as possible while studying. Perhaps only having stand-up desks for cooperative tasks.
The teacher is only faced with the task of harnessing the energy of the students and channeling it into creative and constructive ways. There are many techniques for doing this, and I will discuss several of them. When used a few times these techniques become second nature, and the teacher will be rewarded with students learning at least three times as well as before.
[1]: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor
[2]: Neurobiological effects of physical exercise
Original post
