March 10, 2004
A brief survey of the audience by David Stubbs (CHIFOO President) during the introduction of Jane M. Healy gave a clear indication of the wide range of attendees and interests represented. Over 200 teachers, parents, technology professionals and others came to Marylhurst University to hear Healy's presentation entitled "Connecting or Disconnecting: The Growing Brain and Digital Technologies."
Healy began her presentation by discussing how technologies address learning. According to Dr. Healy, engineers often tackle problems they shouldn't when developing learning technologies. From the beginning of her presentation she emphasized that there isn't a great deal of research to support the technology aspects of her talk, but that there is a lot of supporting brain research. Throughout the lecture, she would often point out areas that needed increased research.
Some of the questions she began with were:
- What happens in the brain when we use learning technology?
- What is childhood all about?
- What does the future hold and what skills will be needed?
Healy questioned whether children have any time to have a mind of their own because they are so overwhelmed by external stimulation. As an example, she told of a recent exchange she had with an unnamed manufacturer of children's education technology. They were creating an education product and they wanted her input. According to Healy, the company had determined that 20% of a child's time was spent in containment and according to this company that was just wasted time.
Healy feels the concept of rewarding learning behavior with lights and sounds is too much. Because the electronic rewards turn off a child's intrinsic motivation to learn, they start reducing their level of effort. This, in turn, causes creativity to drop.
She then asked the question "What ages are appropriate for this technology?"
She pointed out the title of this year's CHIFOO series "Chalk v. Pixel."
"It shouldn't be chalk versus pixel, chalk and pixels should be used in all kinds of learning. But what is appropriate?" she said. "What can we do with educational technologies that we never could before?"
She pointed to a study of 6th, 7th and 8th graders that showed good simulations could improve abilities to grasp vast, deep topics like velocity.
As the machine/human line becomes blurred, we are going to be constantly confronted with new questions and ideas. Today's children will need to define the new limits of being human. She hypothesized that within the next century, we might be able to put our grey matter in a hard drive.
Because of these issues, today's children will need deep, philosophical minds. Minds that are based on language and creative play ...not gadgetry.
The presentation began with a slide titled "Reflections on childhood in an electronic age." To illustrate the changes in what is considered childhood, Healy juxtaposed a Norman Rockwell image from the 1940's which showed a playful, freckled boy hanging upside down with an image of a group of boys who were outdoors in Little League uniforms. The group of boys were playing together, but with hand-held, wireless gaming devices so they were not looking at each other or really even facing each other.
She then went on to illustrate how important direct interaction is to developing brains. She pointed to the vast amount of research that supports books over electronics in developing infants. The brain develops through what she referred to as scaffolded interaction.
Healy then asked the question, "What is childhood about? Is it a process or a product?" She then moved into some facts about the growing brain.
The brain is plastic and develops throughout the course of our lives. She mentioned a study entitled "Motion Related Activations." The point she seemed to be making was that the brain adapts to input.
She then pointed out how dyslexics read with what she called "maladaptive circuitry." To illustrate, Healy showed a photo of a brain scan from Jack Fletcher's University of Texas study. In the study, he worked with dyslexics to re-teach their brains to activate areas that they did not activate normally. The study suggested that the brain could be re-trained.
One of the more telling, spontaneous moments of the evening was when she presented a slide that showed a series of 3D image puzzles and then asked the group to complete the spatial puzzle. While everyone was looking at the slide trying to solve the puzzle she asked the audience a question and nobody responded because they were concentrating on solving the problem. Healy was very excited and pointed out how it was a perfect example of how dominant the visual is over the auditory.
Healy then began to describe how the brain has different needs at different ages and there are critical periods that occur throughout childhood.
In terms of brain development, timing is everything. She described the building blocks of thought as Abstract, Symbolic and Concrete. By putting children on visual media too soon, we can short-circuit the concrete and symbolic connections. This can prevent children from developing their own symbols, making it difficult to problem-solve and think abstractly.
The brain learns best when input is meaningful. She then pointed out that you can have great software, but it is meaningless without great teachers -- a point that drew loud applause from the many educators present. She also pointed out that a study showed it takes 5 years for teachers to become fluent with the technology.
Eye contact, gestures, attention, motivation, social interactions and development of "self" are all parts of the Emotional Brain. Attention Deficit Disorder is an example of an under-developed emotional brain. The development period is one of the areas she felt needed more study because it has been proven that exciting video games increase blood pressure and increase stress response. She also pointed out the amount of television in a child's environment in the preschool years directly correlates with ADD later on.
In addition to pharmaceuticals, language can help children with ADD gain attention skills. She emphasized, especially with young children, the importance of "Language, Listening and Expression" in managing the growth of the mind.
She ended the presentation by pointing out the importance of simply sitting and pondering.
Below are some of the questions and paraphrased answers from the Q & A session.
Q - Does it get too late to change dyslexia?
A- Not sure, but it seems most cognitive skills can be developed. The question is that the emotional brain is not so easy to recover if it has been underdeveloped. She also pointed out that the parts of the emotional brain that are used are deeper physically in the brain. She pointed to an example of some friends that adopted Romanian children that had been in sub-human conditions. A lot of these children have learning disabilities and haven't recovered the social and emotional skills because of the way they suffered during their critical periods of brain development for those areas.
Q - What effect does the content of the medium have?
A - Violence begets violence. Kids model what they see.
Q - You said Dyslexia may be advantageous in the future. What did you mean by that?
A - Dyslexics don't employ language the same way. Research has shown they use some areas of the brain the same and other areas more intensely. They tend to be very smart, with high IQ's. They also tend to come at problems more intuitively and are more apt to gravitate to tactile motor skill activities. A lot of surgeons are dyslexics. They also tend to be visual artists and out of the box type thinkers. She hypothesized that dyslexia could be an evolutionary adaptation - a type of intelligence that has evolved due to technology. "Maybe they are here for a reason," she said. She then pointed out that ADD and dyslexia often go hand in hand. She encouraged everyone to keep an open-mind when thinking about these issues.
Q - What is the right age for TV? What about videos and Sesame Street?
A - Children under age 2 should have no screen time. Above 2, they should have maybe an hour a day. It relates to the building blocks she mentioned earlier in the presentation. Specifically, the Symbolic brain tends to come out in play. Age 7 is a good time to start computers, but not before. Form ages 5-7 there is a shift in development and at age 7 children move more into abstract thinking.
|
