Contact Information:
Dr. Leslie Owen Wilson, School of Education
E-mail: lwilson@uwsp.edu

Required Texts:
1.Sousa, David A (2011) How the brain learns 4th edition. Thousands Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Also available in an e-book edition. 
2. Brain Facts is a great book from the Society of Neuroscience. It is free to the public in PDF and in Audio form. Please go to the website and download the PDF file onto your hard drive or onto a disc so you can read it. Or read it online, or print it. However, please note that printed it is about 73 pages long.

---

Introduction: No water a real nightmare 
In the summer of 2007 I was awakened by a bad dream. I was in junior high and had just walked a little over 2 miles to school and was rushing to get to class for a test. I needed a drink of water badly, but every fountain was blocked by these harpy-like creatures that pecked at my hands and face when I tried to get to a drink. I was confused and couldn't think and was desperately thirsty, plus I was very agitated and anxious about taking a test of some sort. I woke up mad and quite frustrated. 

Obviously it doesn't take Freud to analyze what was probably going on was that I was thirsty and needed to wake up and get a drink. But as I gulped down several glasses of cool water from my bathroom tap, it occurred to me that this was not a just a fantasy nightmare, but rather something born from the memory of a deeper truth. This was a repressed memory of something that was a common occurrence during my entire secondary school career --  limited or blocked access to water. And yet we know now that adequate water is absolutely necessary to maximize the electrical functions of the brain, and we know that kids in schools need to have drinks of water to perform at optimal levels. Boy, how things have changed!

During this course some of you will find out that you are already doing brain-based education. If you are using things like learning styles, multi-modal learning, multiple intelligences, experiential learning, holistic learning, or melding head, hand, and heart, then you are already using aspects of brain-based learning. If you are concerned with the effectiveness of the climate of your classroom, teaching your students to problem solve, or think at creative and critical levels, teaching the art of mindfulness or reflectivity, if you are offering students real choices, then you have a head start and this course should offer some reassurance that you are already a brain-friendly teacher.

                                                                                            Leslie

---

Description and Overview:  
By Presidential Proclamation #6158 the 1990s was declared The Decade of the Brain. As such, an enormous amount of time, funding, and research were dedicated to understanding how the brain works and to uncovering the relationships between and connections to new advances to areas such as behavior, clinical medicine, human-computer interaction and interface, and education. Implications of recent advances in brain studies can have a significant impact on how teachers teach by understanding how the mind learns, organizes, stores, retrieves, and processes information.

Through this course we aim to address the relevance and importance of brain research to practicing, professional educators. Participants will enter into the world of modern cognitive neuroscience. This will be done  by way of readings, brainquests (webquests), personal research, internet explorations, activities, and discussions designed to provide participants with opportunities to consider the potential impact of new knowledge and active research to the practices of education for both mainstream and special needs students. 

Topics:
Participants will be provided the opportunities to explore the following topics in relation to the practice of professional education. The following listings are not meant to be all inclusive or sequential as our exploration will lead us to weave in and out of these topics:

• An Overview of Basic Brain Development

•  Hemispheric Functional Specialization

•  Information Processing in the Brain

•  Memory and Learning

•  Thinking Skills and Transfer

•  Understanding Gender Differences  

•  Techniques and Classroom Applications   

---

My teaching philosophy is driven by the following assumptions:

• THAT LEARNING IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT.
• That teaching is NOT telling.
• That professional adults are capable of articulating their personal, professional and academic needs.
• That in order for learning to be meaningful, it must be relevant to the learner.
• That I cannot teach another person directly; I can only facilitate and help monitor his/her learning.
• That the ideas of "closure" or of "overriding universal truths" are becoming unheard of phenomena in an Information Age and should not be expected.
• That professional educators are capable of, not only being involved in the curriculum development process, but they can become innovators in curriculum planning and design.
• That professional educators are capable of academic and scholarly self-direction.
• That everything except death and human dignity is negotiable.

---

Expectations and Grades:
Please read the following carefully.  At the end of the course, you will be asked to self-evaluate in light of the following expectations.
An A graduate student: 

1. Willingly sets his/her own goals and objectives.
2. Actively participates and raises new questions, has insightful observations, and discusses them intelligently.
3. Provides evidence of having perused the assigned readings and readily shares interpretations with the rest of the class.
4. Regularly checks posts and e-mails.
5. Willingly cooperates with the instructors and with the class interactive experiences and discussions.
6. Hands in assignments in a timely manner. Assignments, projects, and/or presentations are expected to be professional, and demonstrate evidence of original  thought and the ability to synthesize, analyze and evaluate.
7. Is responsible for initiating personal requests for help or assistance, and for devising alternative assignments that may be more personally meaningful.

****Please Note: Online learning is the ultimate constructivist learning experience. If you are not intrinsically motivated, self-regulatory, and very inquisitive, then online learning may not be for you.