Today, we wrap up John Medina’s Brain Rules with the chapter on Exploration. During the first ten minutes of class, write your summary of the chapter and write about the things that you enjoy exploring–the things that excite your curiosity. Post your writing here as a comment. This will conclude our beginning-of-class writing assignments for the semester. Well done!

During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading from the Gender chapter of John Medina’s Brain Rules. Also, write about how what Medina tells us corresponds with Gottschall and your own experiences. However, you have to beware of stereotypes or lore that figure into your thinking.

During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary in your notebooks of today’s reading: Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, The Future of Story. Also, write about what you think is the future of story. What kinds of stories would you like to experience in the future? How would you like to experience those stories?

For today’s class, you read John Medina’s Brain Rules, Music. Spend the first ten minutes summarizing your reading in your notebook, and write about the importance (or lack of importance) music plays in your life. Remember to type up your response and post it as a comment to this blog entry before our next class.

During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, Life Stories. Also, think about what we’ve discussed regarding how the brain fills in the gaps when something is missing. According to Medina and Gottschall, our brain does this with our memories, too. Have you had an experience where your memory or recollection of yourself or something that you have done did not match what others remember? Borrowing from Gottschall, have you experienced a time when we might not be the heroes we think we are in our own epics?

During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading from John Medina’s Brain Rules, Vision chapter. Before our next class, type up your summary and post it as a comment to this blog entry.

During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, Ink People Change the World. Also, write about the “ink people” who have made a difference to your life and thinking. Post your summary as a comment this this blog entry.

Welcome back from spring recess!

Now, let’s get back to work and complete the semester with a strong finish.

During the first fifteen minutes, write summaries of the two readings that we had for today’s class: Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, The Moral of the Story, and John Medina’s Brain Rules, Sensory Integration. To get us back on track with the readings, spend about seven minutes on each reading. I will let you know when seven minutes have passed. After you have written your summaries in your notebooks, type them up and post them as a single comment to this blog post (one comment will include both summaries).

On Wednesday, April 1, we will meet outside the entrance to the library on the 4th floor of the Atrium during our class time. One of our expert librarians will introduce the library and its useful research resources to you.

During the orientation to the library, we will have some time set aside to use the research tools that the librarian demonstrates to you. Your task during this part of class will be to use the Academic Search Complete database accessible from http://library.citytech.cuny.edu to look at articles relating to your field of study and your future career. Find at least one article that you would like to return to and read in detail as part of your research. In your notebook, write down information that will help you find the article again: it’s title, an author’s name, the journal’s title, the issue number, the date, and the page numbers. If you have time, you can download the article and attach it to an email to yourself for safe keeping, too. Before our next meeting, write a 250 word summary of the article (or perhaps another that you find through further research in the database) in your own words followed by an MLA-formatted bibliographic entry using the guide available on the Purdue OWL website (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/07/).

During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of John Medina’s Brain Rules, Memory chapter. To help guide your summary, consider the difference between short term and long term memory. How long does it take for memories to form?

Remember to type up your summary and post it as a comment to this blog entry.