Educause 2008 conference – Dr. Ramachandran

Yesterday, the general session speaker sure captured my attention with his idea of mirror therapy and how they help amputees to move their phantom limbs.  Poor the interpreters, they were not expecting all medical terms and, they did a VERY good job interpreting Dr. Ramachandran (how do you say his name?!?).  One part, he said that human beings depend on visual cues heavily and it makes us to wonder, what about deaf population who have some kind of brain injury and could not recognize the people, what about them?  They would not recognize their voice, for obvious reason.  It makes me to think how brain works, especially in deaf population, where the auditory part of brain doesn’t work.  Anyway, the speaker had a sense of humor which made the presentation really fascinating.

However, how does this presentation has to do with education/learning?  I do realize that we can manipulate our brain into learning different domains.  As he said, children are exposed to different kind of multimedia, which is true, now children is more multitasking more than before.  When I was young, I need a space that is quiet and without any distractions to do my homework or do my term paper, but today, students need those distractions to focus on their assignments and papers.  Your thoughts?