.jpg)
This article reports on research that surfing Google and other Internet searches can enhance brain functioning.
It has long been this Examiner’s opinion that Google is the ultimate learning tool. Google, Yahoo, and the many other search engine services provide a unique, and extremely helpful, service.
The Internet is comparative to the knowledge sharing wonders of past generations, the phone book and the calculator. The phone book made it possible to teach a tool rather than an overwhelming list of phone numbers to find information about people at the time of need. The calculator allowed people to do complicated mathematical computations with a few keystroke entries.
The Internet make reams of knowledge available. And, although you have to sift the information carefully for truth, anything you need to find out -- anywhere in the world -- is likely to be available at the type of a few words.
Like the phone book and calculator before them, the search engines free up brain storage by providing information to be learned when that information is needed. For that reason, Google is the ultimate learning tool, relevant, timely and specific information on call, 24 hours a day.
This Examiner thought that was the extent of Google’s learning functionality … until today. A study, conducted by three UCLA researchers -- Dr. Gary Small, Teena D. Moody, Ph.D., and Susan Y. Bookheimer, Ph.D. – and soon to appear in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, will report that use of an Internet search function fires more brain neurons.
The researchers, as stated on the UCLA web site, discovered that during Web searching volunteers with prior experience registered a two-fold increase in brain activation when compared with those with little Internet experience.
They explained, “Mental stimulation similar to the stimulation that occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information.”
According to Small, “Internet searches require the brain to retain important information in working memory and to comprehend the displayed graphics and words, thus having to fire more brain neurons."
Moody added, “The results suggest that searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults.”
So, apparently, Google and the other search engines can make our learners smarter.
Perhaps we should encourage their use in the classroom.
Please use your PDAs and iPhones in hthe classroom
Ice breakers are harmful to the learning process
How the brain experiences learning
We feel before we think
How to use color to make presentations more effective
Why students do not like to learn
That guy should have talked some more
Facts and fun
Eight show-biz secrets to effective learning
Visit Lenn on line at www.OffbeatTraining.com or follow Lenn on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Offbeat Online.
Comments