IAE Blog

My recent book, Brain Science for Educators and Parents, has already proven to be one of the most popular of all of my books (Moursund, 2015). I try to write books that will have lasting value. This is much easier to do in some subject areas than others. For example, my first book, published in 1967, was about uses of computers to solve the types of math problems that majors in engineering encountered as undergraduates (Moursund & Duris, 1967). The book is still in print!

Since completing Brain Science for Educators and Parents this past year, I have been collecting recent references that are applicable to the book’s content. Already, some pieces of the book are beginning to look dated. Clearly, the book will not have the long-lasting value as my first math book.

A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. Such courses have received a lot of attention during the past four years, and huge amounts of money have been spent in their development. Quoting from Ellen Wexler’s article, MOOCs Are Still Rising, at Least in Numbers (Wexler, 10/19/2015):

Parkinson’s disease is devastating to the people who have it, and to their families and other loved ones. However, significant progress is occurring in the treatment of this disease.

Quoting from a Mayo Clinic Staff website (2015):

My colleague Bob Albrecht says that he appreciates my recent free book on Brain Science for Educators and Parents (Moursund, August, 2015). However, he notes the book would be strengthened by the addition of practical, down-to-earth brain science content that teachers can teach to students and/or use at various grade levels and in various disciplines.

He is certainly correct. I don’t know what typical first graders know about their brains. Nor do I know what typical first grade teachers know about the brains of first graders and what they want first graders to know about their own brains. Furthermore, there appears to be little published literature on effective uses of brain science in the teaching and learning of the various disciplines taught at PreK-12 grade levels. For example, do teachers of social studies need and use the same brain science knowledge as teachers of mathematics or music?

I recently published a free online book, Brain Science for Educators and Parents (Moursund, August, 2015). Chapter 10 in this book focuses on brain science applications to math education, while chapter 8 focuses on a variety of currently available types of brain scans used both in research and diagnosis.

Today I encountered an article on the use of MRI and fMRI to try to forecast how well a child will do in math education (Fox, 8/19/2015). The article reports on Stanford University researchers who used a combination of MRI and fMRI to provide a picture of various regions of the brain and their activity as the brain works on a variety of tasks. Quoting from the first part of the article: