Brain Rule #4: Stressed Brains Don’t Learn the Same way.

This chapter of Brain Rules provides an overview of the way that our brains handle stress. I was very interested in the idea of “learned helplessness.” I had heard of the experiments on the dogs before in undergrad psychology class. However, with more life experience, I see how this concept can easily be applied to people living in low income communities and ghettos. The “perception of inescapability and its associated cognitive collapse” is often seen in students from low income communities, who feel that no matter what they do they will never escape or have access to better. Many of them may feel that they do not deserve better.

There are different types of stress. Some stress can actually boost learning. Because an aroused state is shown in stress pleasure, it can be difficult to distinguish stress. Jeansok Kim and David Dimond came up with a three part definition to aid in telling if a person is stressed. They identified the following:
    •    A measurable psychological response: “aroused physiological response to the stress, and it must be measurable to an outside party”
    •    A desire to avoid the situation: “perceived as aversive”
    •    A loss of control: “person must not feel in control of the stressor”

We’re built for stress that only last seconds. Adrenaline  and cortisol work together to respond to and wipe out the response to stress. Prolonged stress negatively affects our bodies and minds. Too much adrenaline scars the index of blood vessels, which can lead to heart attack or stroke. Chronic stress reduces the number of white-blood cells and impacts the immune system. Stress also impacts memory. Prolonged stress can also lead to depression

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http://prezi.com/dckwsg7f5z_s/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

For this weeks BR/NL NoteTaking Challenge, I decided to use Prezi. I am very familiar with Prezi. I have used it to make presentations, but I have never used it for notes. I am a fan of Prezi because it is easy to use, allows a lot of freedom and creativity, and is easy to share.

Prezi allowed me to do similar things I would have done if writing my notes, such as making bulleted or numbered lists, underlining, or color-coding. Prezi allowed me to take a step further and make visual connections between the ideas with lines and arrows. The ability to put frames/boxes around the content also made it easier to group similar ideas together. For these notes, I went through each section of the chapter and took out the main points. It was easy to go from section to section, create a bubble, type the text, and move on to the next point/section.

I cannot think of anything that Prezi prevented me from doing. I considered adding images and video to the notes, but I didn’t because this chapter on Stress was pretty clear-cut and to the point. I did add a link to the Brain Rules website in the presentation. In regards to using this in a class, I have had my students make Prezi’s for class presentations because they are so easy to access. It cuts out the confusion of logging into emails and using thumb drives. For a text like Brain Rules, which is presented in short chunks of text and bulleted lists, Prezi is perfect because it allows visualization. It is not quite an info graphic, but I am sure there is a template similar to an info graphic. If not, one can start from a blank template and create just about anything.

I’ve realized from doing this NoteTaking Challenges that I really like technology that is easy to use and allows freedom. So far, I am still a big fan of Prezi and Popplet. I have not enjoyed using any of the other technologies. Both offer simple formats with a good amount of freedom (within the context of the application).

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