The title of the webinar I decided to watch is called, The Motivated Brain: Using the Seeking System to Improve Student Attention, Engagement, and Perseverance. This webinar was presented by Gayle Gregory and Martha Kaufeldt. The reason why I chose this webinar was because as a future educator, I worry that I won’t be able to keep my kids engaged in all the activities and learning that we do. Since I’m a student myself, I have experienced the struggle of trying to stay motivated and get excited to learn about certain topics. This is especially hard when I am just sitting in a classroom being lectured instead of being engaged. Luckily for me, Millersville’s education program has professors that know engagement is a key factor in learning, so
…show more content…
With that said, the presenters did make a conscious effort to highlight their keys ideas which helped me decide. The first key idea is that students already have motivation. Many educators, myself included, feel like it is up to us to get kids motivated to learn. Turns out, motivation is already there; it’s just our job to put it into action. The seeking system is an instinctual drive that urges seek (wanting). Dopamine is released when we think we are about to learn something, and usually we aren’t even aware of it. This leads me into the next key point of the webinar, which is that we feel good when doing a task, not necessarily when we complete it. The old theory was that the reward system is triggered when we accomplish the goal. The third key idea is that there are three parts of the brain, the subcortical, upper limbic, and tertiary, which are responsible for different processes of learning. The subcortical part of the brain is responsible of the anticipation of learning something new. The upper limbic portion of the brain is in affect when students are linking information and using their prior knowledge. Finally, the tertiary portion of the brain is responsible for higher order of thinking, which includes: predicating, hypothesizing, and thinking outside of the
With that said, the presenters did make a conscious effort to highlight their keys ideas which helped me decide. The first key idea is that students already have motivation. Many educators, myself included, feel like it is up to us to get kids motivated to learn. Turns out, motivation is already there; it’s just our job to put it into action. The seeking system is an instinctual drive that urges seek (wanting). Dopamine is released when we think we are about to learn something, and usually we aren’t even aware of it. This leads me into the next key point of the webinar, which is that we feel good when doing a task, not necessarily when we complete it. The old theory was that the reward system is triggered when we accomplish the goal. The third key idea is that there are three parts of the brain, the subcortical, upper limbic, and tertiary, which are responsible for different processes of learning. The subcortical part of the brain is responsible of the anticipation of learning something new. The upper limbic portion of the brain is in affect when students are linking information and using their prior knowledge. Finally, the tertiary portion of the brain is responsible for higher order of thinking, which includes: predicating, hypothesizing, and thinking outside of the