Brian Nierman’s Updates

  • Update 7: Community and Learning: The Power of Peer Pressure

    Students-particularly high school aged- want to fit in with their peers. While they are struggling with etching out their own concept of identity and taking the first steps for a self-actualized self, they are infantile when it comes to their social...More

  • Update 6: Collective Inteligence and Group Dynamics

    Collective Inteligence is the idea that cognition and colloboration can yield a group inteligence. It is the notion that learning and skills acquisition occurs through the collective grappling of concepts and then resting on the laurels of people's...More

  • Update 5: Social Learning and Teacher Evaluation

    I find that social learning is becoming increasing important as schools begin to adapt the Danielson Method of Evaluation of teachers. This is evident in the various standards that stress the importance of students in thinking about their own thinki...More

  • Update 4: The Brain is a Muscle

    I think anytime "how something works" is made accessible, performance is boosted. For example, I had the hardest time learning how to drive a manual transmission. I misused the clutch because I was focusing too much on the MPH readings on the dash...More

  • Update 3: Brain Breaks and Releasing Pressure

     I found the subjects this week to be enlightening especially when the content covers how these pressures and anxieties effect learning. From my experience, when these students matriculate into our schools they have a hard time becoming enfranchised...More

  • Update 2: Student Centered Learning

    This is a very interesting update. It reminds me of my own journey as an educator. I was a teacher in a very traditional building and was lauded for great classroom management that was centered on students diligently taking notes to my engaging lect...More

  • Update 1: Operational Conditioning With At-Risk Students

    Update 1: Operational Conditioning with At-Risk Students Students that are at-risk who don't enjoy the ability to rest on their innate laurels of what it means to succeed in school, do respond to operational conditioning. I have found that when pos...More