Brain Behavior Institute 2008 - Session 2

1. The following is a good site for interactive lessons for children. It is great for intermediate students:

http://www.linkslearning.org/Kids/1_Math/2_Illustrated_Lessons/6_Weight_and_Capacity/index.html

2. This science site is ideal for middle school students or advanced students at the intermediate level:

http://www.linkslearning.org/Teachers/3_Science/4_Classroom_Ready/2_Middle_School/index.html

http://www.linkslearning.org/Teachers/3_Science/_images.html#

http://www.education.com/activity/all-grades/all-grades/science/?cid=57000.0009&s_kwcid=ContentNetwork|1444006405

If we use only a small fraction of our brain capacity, what happens to the rest? Is it that we don't really need it or it's just there to give room for future evolutionary development in the human race?

What has the size got to do with intelligence? In short, if you have a large brain size, does it correlate to high level IQ?

Excellent site for illusions!

Look up or down

http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/illusion/illusions.htm

http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/split-brain/splitbrainexp.html

I found an interesting game that will help your students play and draw conclusions about the brain. Even set up research proposals with funding.

After a couple of aborted attempts at finding new and interesting sites, I decided to try my own list of sites -- the one I give to my students.  While most of these are aimed at high achool chemistry students, I thought that some might satisfy this assignment.  I think I found a couple.

You might want to start at:  http://bronstein.home.comcast.net/~bronstein/websites.htm

 I found that http://www.nettrekker.com/ is very useful since it has a number of exercises for kids to follow up on. 

Alsd good is:  http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/

 http://www.funsci.com/texts/index_en.htm

This site can get kids thinking about alternative uses for everyday items, which admittedly can be dangerous:  http://www.wackyuses.com/uses.html

Some other sites might be of interest, but the above ones, I think, most closely satisfy the assignment.

Monkey memory test:  who has a better memory you or a monkey?

Play this game:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/charlesartbr/monkey-memory

Now watch a chimp play

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ravykEih1rE

Who did better?

Yes, he IS laughing at YOU

Here are a couple that I have used in the past:  

·         Mind Habits –  this is interesting site that is based on the idea that certain psychological responses can be conditioned by game play.  The site has several games which teach people to focus on the positive as opposed to the negative.  It raises some interesting questions. Should we be training people this way? Are the games any good?  What www.mindhabits.com

·         Change Blindness: This is a fun and simple classic from the world of psychology.  Watch the video first then run it with your students  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4&feature=related

·         Emotional recognition:  This is a nutty idea that I’ve had in the past. I still haven’t had the chance to run it.

·         First start off with a basic facial emotion recognition game:

·         http://www.do2learn.com/games/feelingsgame/index.htm

·         Have students test themselves on the recognition of emotions. Have students learn how to make the expressions – have a student volunteer to make the emotional faces and see if the other students can guess what emotion they are doing (perhaps we can find good drama games that do this even better?)Can you recognize Human emotions? (Here are some additional resources)

·         http://www.face-and-emotion.com/dataface/general/guide.jsp 

·         http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/recognizing.htm

·         After we test animal emotions have students try to recognize the emotions being felt by monkeys in the following pictures: http://www.paulkopeikingallery.com/artists/greenberg/index2.htm

·         Do humans and monkeys have similar facial emotion features? - We can go lots of places from here (:

Monkey