LINK: https://zoom.us/j/2229292406
MEETING ID: 222 929 2406
Through fMRI research, Matthew Lieberman discovered a large network in our brain devoted to figuring out other people’s thoughts and intentions: the mentalizing network. The social brain is also important for learning and is active anytime the working memory network, which we use for analytical thinking, is not. Lieberman calls it our Superpower, but he also defines our Kryptonite: traditional education. Educators tend to see the social aspect of learning as a frivolity, or ignore it altogether. For designing rich online classes, synchronous or not, the social brain has much to teach us, including why we experience “Zoom fatigue.”
This event will have games, quizzes, discussion, tasks, or other surprises, so folks will have to participate actively.
CURTIS KELLY (Ed.D.) founded the JALT Mind, Brain, and Education SIG and is currently the producer of the MindBrainEd Think Tanks, a magazine connecting brain sciences to language teaching. He is a Professor of English at Kansai University in Japan. He has written over 30 books, including the Cambridge Writing from Withinseries, and given over 400 presentations. His life mission is “to relieve the suffering of the classroom.”
AMANDA GILLIS-FURUTAKA (Ph.D) is a professor in the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Kyoto Sangyo University. She has researched and written on various topics (bilingualism, international education, extensive reading, popular music and culture) and in recent years has found a common underlying link to all of this – the brain! So these days she is eagerly learning about how the brain develops and functions and how these findings can be applied to the language classroom.
