For today’s class, you read the “Stress” chapter from John Medina’s Brain Rules. Spend the first ten minutes of class summarizing what you remember from the reading in your notebooks. Before our class on Monday, you will want to type and save copies of your summaries for today’s reading and the previous one on the “Sleep” chapter. Then, copy-and-paste your summary on “Stress” as a comment to this blog post, and copy-and-paste your summary of “Sleep” to the previous blog post that is specifically about that chapter. You will not receive credit for putting your work in the wrong place. Read the blog posts carefully and post your work accordingly. This is building your digital literacy and professional attention to detail. Your summaries for both chapters are due before we come into class on Monday.

During the first ten minutes of class today, let’s continue your regular writing and summarization practice. In class, write a summary of your reading of the Sleep chapter from John Medina’s Brain Rules. After class, type up your summary, save it, and copy-and-paste it into a comment to this blog post. You have until class on Monday next week to complete this. As you write your summary, you can write about how the reading relates to things that you have experienced, learned, or read before.

During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of today’s assigned reading from John Medina’s Brain Rules: “Exercise.” Before we meet again next week, type up your summary, save it someplace safe, and copy-and-paste it into a comment to this blog post.

Some questions to consider: What is the relationship between exercise and cognitive function? What are some of the ways exercise help us think better than if we are inactive? How convinced are you by Medina’s argument (and of course, explain why he is or is not convincing to you)?

During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading from the “Introduction” to John Medina’s Brain Rules in your notebooks. Before we meet again on Monday, type and edit your summary. Then, copy-and-paste your summary into a comment posted to this blog post.

Also, I would like to remind you of the companion website for Brain Rules, which you should check out for references and explanatory videos: http://brainrules.net/.

During the first ten minutes of today’s class, write a summary in your notebooks of the two readings assigned for today’s class: Seven, “12 Rules to Boost Your Brainpower,” http://goo.gl/ZjfGyu, and Medina, “About the Author,” http://www.johnmedina.com/index.php?q=bio.

Before our next class, type up your handwritten summary, save it some place safe (e.g., the Cloud, flash storage, email, etc.), and copy-and-paste it into a comment added to this blog post. Moving forward this semester, these beginning of class writing assignments from one week are due before the first class of the following week. This gives you ample time to type and post your daily writing to OpenLab.

During the first ten minutes of class, I would like you to use your own notebook paper to write a brief essay of introduction. Tell me your name, your major, what you hope to make your career, and some things tell me something unique about you (clubs, hobbies, interests, activities, etc.). The important thing about this and all beginning of class assignments is that you use the full ten minutes of time for writing. Unlike your future beginning of class writing assignments, which you will post here on OpenLab, I will collect this assignment when the ten minutes are up.