What do brains have to do with it?
A friend of my wife asked for some recommendations on books about the brain. Here are three.
Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonas Lehrer is a wonderful romp about how we perceive reality, told in a series of stories about artists who perceived how brains work fifty to a hundred years ahead of the scientists themselves. I read this in Sicily, a great backdrop for thinking deeply about memory, perception, language, art, and taste. The findings made my head spin.
While a great book on how the mind works, Proust is not a how-to manual. It’s for opening your own mind to new possibilities.
My friend Alvaro Fernandez’s The SharpBrains Guide to Brainfitness is a practical guide to what you should do for yourself: exercise the mind and body. Eat right, don’t stress, take on new challenges.
John Medina’s Brain Rules covers the latest scientific explanation of wetware through folksy, human stories. John is a masterful science writer. I am mid-way through Brain Rules. As I read, I jot down notes on how to inject its lessons into the cloud learning environments I call Learnscapes:
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心得感想:
文中作者提到了在距今50~100年前的藝術家透過自己的察覺，了解大腦是怎麼運作的。雖然他們的觀點與現今科學家所觀察到的不一定相同，但是他們透過他們發達的右腦(感性&非線性思考)，為那時的義大利西西里島帶來更多的藝術&語言豐富的資產。
這讓我不禁想到在以往的台灣社會中，"重科技&輕人文"的價值觀，導致學校長期的教學都比較偏重我們左腦的開發，造成學生的創造性和直觀能力逐漸衰退，實在是太可惜了。不過現在在企業和教學上都開始注重所謂的「創新」(innovation)，使得在企業的內訓(training)中也都開始著重員工的創意思考能力(敏覺力、流暢力、變通力、獨創力及精密力)，以期為公司&學校教學帶來更多的突破&發展潛力，這也顯示了右腦開發的重要性!
此外，Jay Cross在文中也提出所謂的學習景觀(learnscapes)一詞，將上述大腦的研究加入雲端學習的環境中，分別為教學非設計(Instructional un-design)、成人學習理論(Adult learning theory)、文化改變(Culture change)、大腦科學(Brain science)這四項。透過Jay Cross的另類思維帶領，讓我們得以一窺e-learning的豐富面貌!
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