Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

Two recent items caught my eye this weekend.

In Scotland playing a daily computer game apparently improves children’s mathematics and concentration. Thirty children from St Columba’s primary school in Dundee, aged nine and ten, played Dr Kawashima’s More Brain Training game on a Nintendo DS console every morning before lessons for about 15 minutes. A second group from a similar socio-economic background used a method called Brain Gym for three to four days a week over the same ten week period, while a third control group had no access to either methods. All three groups were given a maths test at the start and end of the project. While all achieved better scores, the biggest improvement was with the group using the Nintendo DS game.

Ririan, in his blog, the Ririan Project, provides 8 little known ways to think more effectively. A student from Bucharest, Ririan suggests similar activities to, “shift your brain into a higher gear” including watching two television channels at the same time then concentrating on one, and growing a big brain by playing computer games. Similarly, according to Dr. Russell Poldrack, associate professor of psychology at UCLA:

“Results are always worse when you multitask, but in some areas they’re especially compromised … Our research shows that if you try to master something while splitting your attention, brain activity switches regions; from memory building to short-term habit making.” Israeli Air Force cadets trained to pay attention to specific aspects of a video game performed better in actual flight than others who just played the game, one study showed. “Focusing on each task’s relative importance allows you to allocate your resources for maximum efficiency,” says Poldrack.

So what does this tell us? According to René Marois, PhD, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Vanderbilt University and co-author of the study.

“Tech-dexterous teenagers are probably no better wired to ace computer games than the rest of us; they’ve just spent more time practicing with their gadgets.”

It’s simple really, “researchers believe that if you repeat a set of skills over and over in exactly the same order and way, you will get noticeably better.“

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