'Technology to suit the brain'

I enjoyed the British Computer Society's 'Technology to Suit the Brain' article, which is a very quick overview of some of basic issues that are worth thinking about when developing electronic learning resources.

This article is based on a presentation by Dr Itiel Dror from Southampton University who is Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience. It talks about things such as the amount of items that the brain can process at once and the fact that sometimes technology distracts the students' brains from what you want the students to learn. This reminds me of a presentation by Patrick Crispen about how to use PowerPoint to aid learning (also well worth a read) where he talks about research that says students recall less from lectures where PowerPoint's "bells and whistles" (movement, fancy backgrounds, pictures that decorate rather than enforcing learning, etc) are used.

If you want to explore Dr Dror's ideas further Clive Shephard's 'The Science of Learning' article might help you get started, as might the audio interview at kineo.com and the links on his home page.