Thank you to all who joined us during our lively webinar about how the brain learns, part of our special report on multiple intelligences. We hope you walked away from it with ideas and inspiration to bring the very best to your classroom, your school district, or your community.
As is often the case, the number of questions from our community far exceeded our allotted time, but we've put together the following resources to help you get the most out of our Edutopia webinars:
- View the archive: You can now view the complete archive of the webinar. You can also download it to your mobile device through iTunes U.
- Join the discussion: If you had a question we didn't get to during the webinar, ask the experts and your fellow Edutopia readers at large. Please continue the lively discussion below.
- Find more Edutopia resources: Check out our brain-based learning resource roundup page or Judy Willis' blog for Edutopia on neuro-logical learning.
About the Panelists
Grace Rubenstein
Grace Rubenstein is a staff writer and multimedia producer with Edutopia magazine and Edutopia.org. Prior to joining The George Lucas Educational Foundation in 2005, she was an education reporter at the Lawrence, Massachusetts, Eagle-Tribune and a Boston Globe correspondent. She has won awards from the New England Press Association and the New England Associated Press News Executives Association.
Judy Willis
Dr. Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist and a middle school teacher in Santa Barbara, California, combined her training in neuroscience and neuroimaging with her teacher-education training and years of classroom experience and became an authority in learning-centered brain research and classroom strategies derived from this research. Visit RADTeach.com for a list of books and articles she has written.
Useful Web Sites for Parents and Educators
Neuroscience for Kids
This site is for all students and teachers who would like to learn about the nervous system. Discover the exciting world of the brain, the spinal cord, neurons, and the senses. Use the experiments, activities, and games to help you learn about the nervous system. For example, on Sounds of Neuroscience, watch and hear feedback from the electricity of information transmission through brain cells. Check out news briefs, an e-newsletter, and a television program, as well; there are also plenty of links to other Web sites for you to explore.
The Hawn Foundation
I am on the Hawn Foundation's board of directors, and I consulted with the organization on the curriculum for its classroom and home program, designed to enhance students' self-awareness, focused attention, problem-solving abilities, self-regulation, stress reduction, and pro-social behaviors.
GreatSchools: Your Child with Learning Difficulties
This section of GreatSchools is for parents and teachers about practical strategies for strategies for academic and social success and to inform about children's learning difficulties, including those that can be diagnosed -- learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism and Asperger's syndrome -- and other difficulties without a diagnosis. The home page links to resources by grade; these materials cover topics such as Media and Your Child.
Discovery Channel
The Discovery Channel's Web site, which demonstrates the learning strategies I discussed in the webinar, has games, videos, text, and photos featuring science organized by topic and age. For example, Volcano Explorer takes you inside a volcano and is interactive so you control the viscosity and gas settings and see the effect on the shape and explosiveness of the volcano.
Unit Conversion
In the simple but effective game on this site, the visitor fills in missing numbers in metric unit-conversion equations; correct answers place a stick figure into a seat of a Ferris wheel, and the wheel moves smoothly and music plays when all the seats are filled.