{"id":15,"date":"2007-10-07T15:17:52","date_gmt":"2007-10-07T22:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.techtied.net\/?p=15"},"modified":"2007-10-07T15:17:52","modified_gmt":"2007-10-07T22:17:52","slug":"with-the-mind-in-mindevolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/?p=15","title":{"rendered":"With the Mind in Mind\u2026Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

I won’t pretend to be a lead scholar on this topic and will, where appropriate, link you to the authors that are leading thinkers in this area.\u00a0 The premise reads like this:<\/p>\n

At a recent conference on technology tools for educational use, the statement was made that we “must come to grips with the evolution of the human brain.”\u00a0 This stirred some controversy in the crowd to say the least.\u00a0 How can you call this evolution?\u00a0 What about the studies that point out how the brain can’t handle multi-tasking without giving up long term memory?\u00a0 What about ….?\u00a0 Haven’t you gone too far with this…..?”\u00a0\u00a0 etc. etc. etc.<\/p>\n

So I consulted my handy search engine and found a couple of links to share and will conclude with\u00a0 my thoughts.<\/p>\n

First, from one of the leading theorists of brain research, I lead with the work of Dr. William Calvin and his book A Brief History of the Mind<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 His concepts of how the brain has developed over time are interesting and although he lays out a belief that the brain has some catching up\u00a0to do with regards to biological evolution, he has laid a framework for the next wave of brain “evolution” that is likely now that we have generally gotten ahead of ourselves.<\/p>\n

Speaking of frameworks, no discussion of the brain can happen if you haven’t watched the TED video of the speech by Jeff Hawkins – Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing<\/a>.\u00a0 Jeff postulates that current theories of brain science lack a framework and, thus, we really know very little about the brain and it’s adaptability – but we are about to see a significant shift in our understanding because of his recent work in this area.<\/p>\n

So, the question remains – Is the brain evolving as we get smarter and understand more and more about our world and everything around us?\u00a0 I can’t answer that question, but I can’t help but look at history and conclude that it seems that the brain is always catching up with our own creativity.\u00a0 Similar to the classroom, we have people that reach across a spectrum of brain “capability” and those that are at the front of the line are creating a world of increasing complexity.\u00a0 If we accept the Darwinian concept of “survival of the fittest,” we must accept that these leading thinkers will propel us down a path of increasing brain capability.<\/p>\n

The educational connection here is not about whether or not the brain is actually evolving.\u00a0 I think it is a forgone conclusion that the brain will continue to develop and pass on genetic enhancements over long spans of time.\u00a0 The real question is how to deal with the growing changes in the world and how to best prepare children to live in this world where brain capacity will determine survival.\u00a0 If we can’t accept that the mind is changing – and likely faster than other biological aspects of the human species – then aren’t we doomed to delivering another unprepared generation onto society?<\/p>\n

Even if we can’t agree on evolution (and don’t get me started on the creationist debates at the root of this), can we at least agree that the challenge of education is the preparation for what is clearly on the horizon rather than what we remember?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I won’t pretend to be a lead scholar on this topic and will, where appropriate, link you to the authors that are leading thinkers in this area.\u00a0 The premise reads like this: At a recent conference on technology tools for educational use, the statement was made that we “must come to grips with the evolution […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","category-farside","category-leadership1"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimplicity.hopto.org\/techtied\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}