The brain changes both physically and physiologically as we age. At this point, I'm hoping that my mother is an indication that my brain will remain youthful indefinitely. At 94 years of age, she is has a sharp mind.
However, I walk in to a room knowing before I stepped through the door what I was entering to get, and past the threshold, completely forget. As my Aggie son would say...YIKES!
I'm 64 years old! Research says that the brain begins a downward path after age 50. In fact, the decline begins as early age at 20 or 30. It hadn't occurred to me that I wasn't as productive as I was when younger.
I have been proud of my ability to come up with ideas, but how long will this last? Or maybe, I haven't realized that innovation was left behind some years ago?
As an educator, being creative and a critical thinker are essential. These entries will serve as an experiment, an opportunity to document the ideas I have to help prepare future science educators. Hopefully, this is also a way to collect data about myself and my ways of thinking. Possibly, through this exercise improve my instructional design and delivery.
Making it a point to find the time to put words on this blog is going to be difficult; although I certainly feel that it's a worthwhile endeavor. A little time spent in the morning, periods of down time, and the evening will be used as opportunities to write. What has to be done is making writing like finding time to eat. Eating has alarms and writing doesn't. So when the stomach growls or the need to satisfy hunger comes to mind, the stimulation causes one to stop and eat. Writing doesn't have this "dinner bell effect", but I'll think of something.
We are educators from a different era preparing teachers to teach in a different one. Even the teachers that we're preparing have not experienced the changes in technology that the students they teach already know about. Many of my students never grew up without a television. Remember those first TV sets were black and white. They have never heard or seen a 33.3 or 45 rpm plastic disc, a transistor radio or an eight track cassette player. Everything now is digital. The children our current teachers teach have never seen a rotary phone.
Times are changing, but are we? Today educators must continuously keep up with changes in technology. Unfortunately, human minds resist change. To be innovative we must continue to learn. Although dinosaurs became extinct, some dinosaurs exist today in our classrooms. It's time to get off our butts and discover new ideas around the other side of the bend.
I started this blog for my own personal growth, but also for the purpose of improving my ability to think, learn, and innovate. Others reading this blog may want to take stock of their personal situation and consider the good and bad of what is written. Comments and ideas or welcome! So use this venue and visit often.
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