Dr. John Medina, the author of Brain Rules, is a developmental molecular biologist focused on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders. In Brain Rules Medina shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work.
In the following Youtube video at about 4:15 minutes in Medina explains that:
the brain has appears to be have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in near constant motion…If you wanted to design a learning environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was really good at doing you would design something like a modern classroom.
Medina also asserts that if we really want to re-engineer learning environments we are going to have to tear down a few things and start over.
[youtube]IK1nMQq67VI[/youtube]
Medina has an excellent site called “brain rules“that provides and overview of his book. The video clips and related resources are much more polished that the above youtube clip but you have to see Medina in a lecture to appreciate his passion and character.
