Getting our brains in gear for Coffee Morning
mike.jpg
Originally uploaded by digitalagency’s.
I thought more of the Edinburgh Coffee Morners would know about the DS Lite and things like Dr Kawashima’s brain training. They didn’t and, as you can see, our Godfather Mike needs a bit more training before his mental age comes down from the 80s. Oh dear. There are some
Derek has been setting up (and filming this week) trials of different DS games in various Dundee primaries to see if they really do impact on teaching and learning. I’m looking forward to seeing the material on a blog near you soon… I was suggesting to some of the dads there this morning that it might be one way to help with the spelling and maths of their offspring - worth a try anyway until the research comes in.
As a language teacher by trade I’ve been really interested to see what the effect of playing the game bilingually will be over the next few months. I’ve set up three profiles in which I will record the results in three languages: English, French (in which I am supposedly bilingual) and Dutch (which I don’t really speak at all). I’ll rotate the order in which I attempt the brain age testing and practice so that each language gets an equal crack at the whip, give or take a margin of error of one day. Over four months or so I’m interested to see what I end up being more intelligent in.
I can already say that it’s really hard to do in French. For me the English has maybe had more practice from previous trials of the machine and the Dutch is merely codes for me - the words hold no deep mental relationships and the instructions, since I know them in English already, are providing an entertaining way to learn the grammar of the language.
I’ll post here on whether I’d be better off writing in Dutch than English…
