5130: Brain Rules!

I really enjoyed reading our chapters from John Medina’s Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. First, his style of writing and explaining things was very appealing. Medina uses various story-like examples to explain the principles he is presenting. One that stuck with me was the example of him as a boy walking into a store where the front door had several handles at different heights so taller or shorter people could get in with ease. He used this example to explain the idea of putting information into our brains with several “handles” so it can be recalled with ease. Each way you put the information in puts another handle on the door for later retrieval. I try to use this in my classroom by giving students visuals as they listen to my lectures or give them various other assignments, but this reading has helped me want to be very conscious of how I try to put the information into their brains so they learn it better.