Week 2 The Brain and Learning

This week I've been asked to find two online resources regarding this weeks topic, The brain and learning. Below are the two resources as well as the value I perceived from these resources.



Resource 1:    Learning & The Brain

Learning & the Brain is a great resource when learning about how the brain learns information. The article I found was called, "Working Memory Cheat Sheet".  I really enjoyed this read. One thing I've always struggled with was remembering things shortly after I've been told them. It was interesting to learn how my brain works and different ways to try to get better at remembering things.




Resource 2:  Simply Psychology

Simply Psychology is a great resource for all things Psychology. In the link above, I found an article that talks about Information Processing Theory. In this article it explains how our brain processes inforamation and how it determines what store in our short term memory and what is eventually in our long term memory. One thing that I found interesting in this article, is that when recalling information, we are only seeing very little of what we have stored in long term memory. Long term memory has unlimited storage so we will always be able to store memories and information there to recall at a later time.

Instructional Design Blogs

Week 1: Blog,

I am currently enrolled in Walden University in the master’s program for Instructional Design and technology. In this blog, you will find information I find and other things regarding Instructional Design.

This week I was tasked with finding three blogs that I can reference for ideas and tips on how to be a better trainer. The first blog I found was  Elucidat. 

The post I found titled, Learners are distracted and impatient. Here are 5 ideas to help you motivate learners in 2016. This was a great article and had some very great points. A point made is we need to focus on the learning and make it useful. Too many times we are trained on things and shown how to make it useful. I my mind, this means we won't internalize the training and eventually we will be trained on it again in the future. It amazes me how much technology is a part of our lives. We are constantly checking our phones for messages or notifications from our apps. This has caused our brains to always be multi-tasking. 

Another blog I found was Articulate. I really like this blog as it is focused on e-learning. With technology become the main source of training, I think that learning all we can about it will help us in our career as instructional designers. An article I found that I enjoyed was, motivate your with these 5 simple steps. This was like the first blog I found but this pertained specifically to e-learning. One of the 5 steps is rewarding your learners. This can really help motivate your learners and they will work hard to remember what you have taught to win a prize or whatever reward you are able to give.

The third one I found was from Training Mag. This site has a ton of resources to help with learning development and ideas. This site is dedicated to professional development. The article I found interesting is called, TALENT TIPS: MOTIVATING LEARNERS TO LEARN. One of the tips in this article is answering the question, what’s in this for me? When delivering a training we need to answer that question so that the learner will be engaged in learning because they see what they should get from the training.

I really enjoyed learning from these blogs and will continue checking back with them to learn not only while in my current class but throughout my career.