Using the Right Side of Your Brain in Education
Today I found an article in the New York Times titled, Let Computers Compute. It’s the Age of the Right Brain. This is article was quite interesting to me. The author discusses how we need to use the right side of our brains more than we have been doing. In essence, she says that our computers can do many of those left-brained tasks, so lets focus our attention to the creative/innovative right side of our brains.
Now our assignment for my social media class was to find an article on using Wikipedia in education, and that article probably doesn’t sound like I have nailed the topic…and I haven’t really with that article. However, this New York Times article was linked to another article titled, In Age of Right Brain, Wikis Hold Key to Success. This article was quite short, but the author hit on an important point. Janet discusses how blogs are good for the right brain. They don’t focus on the left side of the brain, but rather, allow people to engage in creative and thoughtful writing. I think more of this type of writing is needed in education. Oftentimes, students are confined in their writing, whether that entails restrictions on page length, subject matter, due date, voice or style of writing, etc. Blogs allow for freedom of expression, and it’s very simple to make a post.
Of course I recognize that some constraints need to be in place, but spending a little more time working with that right side of the blog could bring forth some new, innovative, useful, and life-changing ideas to the field of education.
To read more about differences between the right and left sides of your brain, click here.