CAIS Tech Retreat
April 2009

The kids are fine; it’s the
teachers who need fixing.
RCDS Student, 1990

Excerpt from:
TED Talk: Tim Brown on creativity and play

30 seconds to
draw your
neighbor

#1
List 2 facts about the brain.

#2
What changes have you
noticed in your own brain
as you have matured?

#3
How do you learn best?

#4
What is the best way for
someone to convince you
to change?

#5
What are the differences
between learning, memory,
and understanding?

Brain Quiz

Excerpt from:
TED Talk: Jill Bolte Taylor on her stroke of insight

…as a rule, the
ability to maintain
focused attention
declines with
age…
Aaron Nelson

As you age, you
accumulate more
and more
information that
remains
“unrecalled” for
longer and longer
periods of time.
Aaron Nelson

Discussion:
What changes have you
noticed in your own brain
as you have matured?

Working Memory Activity

Discussion:
What would have made
that activity easier for you?

movement
novelty

Movement can be
an effective
cognitive strategy movement
novelty
to (1) strengthen
learning, (2)
improve memory and retrieval, and
(3) enhance learner motivation
and morale. Eric Jensen

…emotional
stimulus and
novelty are the two movement
novelty
biggest attention
getters. Novelty is
appealing to the brain…When
anything is perceived as unusual, it
releases norepinephrine to wake
up the brain. Marilee Sprenger

Brainstorm: Learning

Discussion:
Optimizing Adult Learning –
activities, venues, conditions

reason
control
safe
prior
emotion
experiential
reflection

EXERCISE

LEARNING

NOVELTY

NOVELTY
COMMUNITY

experience
test out reflection
impact

…collaborative learning and
reflective practice are necessary for
transformative learning to occur.
Rena Palloff & Keith Pratt

Transformative learning moves a
student from someone who takes in
information to a reflective
practitioner involved with the
creation of knowledge.
Rena Palloff & Keith Pratt

• guidance
• encouragement
taps into prior knowledge • a manageable
challenge
Zone of on the
frontier
Proximal of new
Development learning

Comprehension Activity

Once upon a time, in a country called
Clarita, there lived a gadious bemple
named Chup. Chup lasied Mormie and
together they goppered and morted
throughout the dotter of Clarita.
Clarita was a rablited fott. From every
Wesson and vaxter, Chup and Mormie
could hetter numally. It was a duffours
webbe!

Discussion:
How do we handle change?

If colleagues can’t learn
the way we teach, maybe
we should teach the way
they learn.
CAIS Brain Institute

Excerpt from:
Ben Zander Davos Talk

Excerpt from:
TED Talk: Ken Robinson – Do schools kill creativity?

Visualization Activity

If the balloons popped, the sound would not be
able to carry since everything would be too far
away from the correct floor. A closed window
would also prevent the sound from carrying since
most buildings tend to be well insulated. Since the
whole operation depends on a steady flow of
electricity, a break in the middle of the wire would
also cause problems. Of course the additional
problem is that a string could break on the
instrument. Then there could be no accompaniment
to the message. It is clear that the best situation
would involve less distance. Then there would be
fewer potential problems. With face to face
contact, the least number of things could go wrong.

Discussion:
What would have made
that activity easier for you?

Text

reason
control
safe
prior
emotion
experiential
reflection

Excerpt from:
Ben Zander Davos Talk

…those of us who are trying to
get colleagues to identify and
question their assumptions, or
to look at their practice through
different lenses, must do the
same…
STEPHEN BROOKFIELD

Final Activity • {poetry}

CAIS Tech Retreat
April 2009
Laurie Bartels
Resources/References