HOW THE BRAIN DECIDES WHAT TO LEARN
In order to learn about the world, an animal needs to do more than just pay attention to its surroundings. It also needs to learn which sights, sounds and sensations in its environment are the most important and monitor how the importance of those details change over time. Yet how humans and other animals track those details has remained a mystery. Now, Stanford biologists report October 26 in Science, they think they've figured out how animals sort through the details. A part of the brain called the paraventricular thalamus, or PVT, serves as a kind of gatekeeper, making sure that the brain identifies and tracks the most salient details of a situation. Although the research, funded in part by the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute's Neurochoice Initiative, is confined to mice for now, the results could one day help researchers better understand how humans learn or even help treat drug addiction, said senior author Xiaoke Chen, an assistant professor of biology. In its most basic form, learning comes down to feedback. For example, if you have a headache and take a drug, you expect the drug will make your headache go away. If you're right, you'll take that drug the next time you have a headache. If you're wrong, you'll try something else. Psychologists and neuroscientists have studied this aspect of learning extensively and even traced it to specific parts of the brain that process feedback and drive learning.

ARE OUR BRAINS TO BLAME FOR OUR INACTIVITY?
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have published a report indicating that our brains may be wired towards laziness. They note, "Our brains may be innately attracted to sedentary behavior. Electroencephalograms showed that test subjects had to summon extra brain resources when trying to avoid physical inactivity. The research findings, published recently in Neuropsychologia, suggest that our brains may simply be wired to prefer lying on the couch. "Conserving energy has been essential for humans' survival, as it allowed us to be more efficient in searching for food and shelter, competing for sexual partners, and avoiding predators,"said Dr. Matthieu Boisgontie.

HOW TO BUILD RAPPORT WITH YOUR STUDENTS
How do we get the best out of our students? By building a rapport with them. We hear that over and over again, but do we really know what that looks like or what that means? It’s not about preaching to them or trying to make them better people. It’s about learning who they are, accepting and celebrating their uniqueness, and really listening to them. Helen Boyd offers her suggestions for strategies to build trust.

From Science Daily: Study shows for first time that a free, online course can change students' mindsets towards their mathematical abilities, leading to increased academic achievement. A free 'massive, open, online course' (MOOC) designed to change students' attitudes towards mathematics makes them more engaged in class -- leading to significantly higher test scores. Published in open-access journal Frontiers in Education, these findings go against the discouraging results of previous studies. It is the first of its kind to show the impact of an online course in changing students' mindsets and beliefs about mathematics and their achievement, with the potential for more widespread dissemination. Continue reading here.

From Faculty Focus: So much of what determines the overall success or failure of a course takes place well in advance of the first day of class. It’s the thoughtful contemplation of your vision for the course — from what you want your students to learn, to selecting the instructional activities, assignments, and materials that will fuel that learning, to determining how you will measure learning outcomes

From Univ. of Washington's The Daily: With all the recent advancement in science, from virtual reality to genetic editing to artificial intelligence, one issue that still plagues society is how best to teach students how these things work. Dr. Carl Wieman, one of the world’s leading thinkers on science education, spoke to a sizeable crowd at Kane Hall on Thursday, April 26 to outline techniques for finding more effective teaching tactics. Wieman holds a joint appointment as professor of physics and of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He won the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his research in atomic and optical physics. Wieman, 67, argued for a shift away from lecture-style teaching toward what he calls an “active learning” process where students spend more time working with their peers than being talked to by professors. In his physics classes, Wieman isn’t just teaching material, he is teaching his students to become physicists through classroom activities, tests, and critical reasoning.

From Education Week: Contrary to popular stereotypes, many young people are acutely concerned about online privacy, spending significant time managing how they present themselves on social media and worrying about what happens to the digital trails they leave behind. That's the takeaway, at least, from new research presented here Sunday at the annual conference of the American Association of Educational Research by Claire Fontaine. As part of a small study, Fontaine and colleagues interviewed 28 teens and young adults, ranging from 16 to 26 years old. All were low-income New Yorkers, all owned a smartphone or similar mobile device, and all regularly used at least one social media platform.