Two great "Brain" sites

www.brainrules.net
This site is by John Medina. He is a New York Times Bestseller of “Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School”. John Medina, molecular biologist, shares his perspective on how the brain actually learns and how that should influence the way we teach and work. As instructional designers we should all have a grasp on how the brain processes learning and how we each should keep this in mind when designing instructional resources. Some of his more interesting points include how exercise improves cognition, that we are all designed to be life-long learners and how stress impacts the way we learn to name a few. He interweaves all of his principles into his website and print material. Please take the time to check the website out or better yet read the book.

Here is a list of his 12 principles:

Rule 1: Exercise boosts brain power.
Rule 2: The human brain evolved, too.
Rule 3: Every brain is wired differently.
Rule 4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.
Rule 5: Repeat to remember.
Rule 6: Remember to repeat.
Rule 7: Sleep well, think well.
Rule 8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
Rule 9: Stimulate more of the senses.
Rule 10: Vision trumps all other senses.
Rule 11: Male and female brains are different.
Rule 12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

Brainconnection.com
This site provides a wealth of information on how the brain works and how people learn. They note that discovers of being made that relate to the human brain including memory, behavior and aging to name a few. Here you will find practical tools for teaching and learning. (As a disclosure this site is resource from Postit Science Corporation who sells brain games and the like….although the ads aren’t as obtrusive as I would have expected.) There is an “Education Connection” section of the site that provides information that we can all utilize to better understand how the brain operates. Through a better understanding of how the brain actually processes information, we can all become better IDs. You can also opt to view pages specifically devoted to early reading, bilingual education and reading skills to name a few. They have fun interesting facts throughout the site. And the incorporate outside resources and often provide book summaries. It’s a great clearinghouse of information that will help use to better understand the process of thinking and how the brain operates. Surely we can all find something to enrich our understanding of the brain and what we should include in ID to help our learners learn.