 So, the last principle that we're going to look at has to do with the idea that memory systems and attention systems in the brain are vital to learning. So there were several groupings of questions, again a lot about the research, but also several questions that had to do with how does the combination of attention and memory work to lead to learning. So what are the different ways that they interact in the brain? So we're going to get to that in a second. And other people who asked questions that had to do with this idea of, you know, is this really true? Because is it safe to say that without memory you're always starting from the beginning? Basically, the way your brain takes in information, sensory perception, and then reviewing information first. What do I already know about this topic before deciding to spend the energy to do new learning does indeed mean that if you don't have anything to latch on to as a reference point for new information, an old memory that actually serves to help you learn something new, then your brain will have to actually start from scratch. So it is very much as you're saying that unless there is something that we already know about the topic, unless we do find a memory that we can hook onto, it is starting from scratch. So this is why it's key in educational settings to help students to trigger or to stimulate that recognition of prior memories or prior experiences that are related to the new concepts. There were also a small group of questions that had to do with what are the differences between this whole learning process between genders, doing age, and right and left brain functions? First of all, there is no difference between genders. The memory processing systems and attention systems in the brain are very similar given the natural uniqueness of all brains. But there is no difference between genders based on attention systems and memory systems in the brain. Similarly, the main difference by age has a lot more to do with the level of experience. So we know that novice brains look like they're very active compared to expert brains. So brains that have rehearsed something a long time use a lot less energy for that same task. So over time, with age, if something was learned correctly, then there's less energy used in the brain. But the memory systems and attention systems are identical. And then this last point about differences between right and left brain functions, we really don't make that distinction anymore because the neural imaging we have now is really so precise that it shows us there's really nothing that is just isolated to one hemisphere of the brain. We're always talking about complex neural networks that cross the hemispheres and that have key hubs. So we're not talking about localizationalism. So there's not a specific functions that happen in left brain or right brain. You have one brain, and it's not like you're logical and creative. Those things are myths. Could be that you have key nodes, key areas of the brain that are important in one hemisphere or another. But it's not that they're different functions, complete functions. For example, even something, for example, like language that we thought was very much a left hemisphere function. We now see that humor interpretation intonation, far greater nodes located in the right hemisphere. But it's a total network process, not just in a single location. OK? So this first person really taps into a very important point about understanding risk and protective factors. What are the barriers to attention? And what are the barriers to processing long-term memory? And it might sound like a cop-out, but the truth of the matter is almost all questions and education can be answered with, it depends. It depends on the individual. It depends on how well-developed those attentional networks are already. It depends on his prior experiences. So the barriers depend on the individual. At a more global level, you can say the fight for attention. Your brain has a limited amount of attention. It can pay to different things. So a barrier to attention could be distractions, for example. But what distracts one person doesn't necessarily distract another. OK? Also, barriers to processing long-term memory. We may have mentioned before, and I think it's really worth emphasizing again, that memory gets from short to long term really based on three global criteria. It can get into from short to long term really fast, like even just one experience with a concept can get into your brain really fast if it has survival values. So if you stick your fork into a light socket, you know, you learn really quickly that that's not something you should do, right? So survival value is one thing. The second thing that we rely on mostly in schools has to do with association. So if something new, for example, if I'm going to teach you subtraction and you already know addition, then if it's easily easy to associate the new idea with the old idea, then that facilitates movement from short term to long term, right? Or finally, the third point and something that we don't use enough in school is taking advantage of the emotional pull. If you are interested, you learn really quickly. If there's something that really draws your attention, you learn really quickly. So those three criteria are things that actually can be barriers or they can be facilitators of getting information into long term memory. The second question has to do with how do these two systems interact? When we understand the subsystems of memory, right? Short, working long, the subsystems of attention, alerting, orienting, sustaining, executive decisions. When we understand these subsystems, what's really important to note is that many, many times working memory as well as the alerting and sustaining systems are often confused. They seem very similar in behavioral things. So when somebody seems to be lost with a concept, you really have to ask yourself, is this a question of memory or is this a question of attention? Without knowing exactly the precise subsystem that's weak, it's very hard to remediate that. And this last person mentions, you know, okay, memory and attention are two main requirements for learning, but what about experiencing? And this is a really great observation. So anything that you experience in your world, the key idea here is it's automatically impaired with prior knowledge. You know, what do I already know about this? But your experience is also you pay attention only to a fraction of everything that's going on in your life, right? So experiences are very heavily connected to this idea of memory and attention. So very good observation there. The second person here also taps into another very important relationship, and that has to do with motivation. This person writes, I'm very interested in this topic, would be interested in having more conversations around attention and motivation. So motivation is an extremely important factor in learning, but one of the most difficult things to study because what motivates one individual doesn't necessarily motivate other individuals, and that's what's really difficult. We do know that there's a direct correlation, though, between high levels of motivation. You do pay attention to that, obviously, but then you also spend more time rehearsing whatever that skill set is, which means that it enhances memory as well. So motivation is directly connected to memory and attention and does play a huge role in learning. So this teacher, and I think it looks like a group of teachers have just really taken the time to identify that there's a specific student that has some difficulties with attention and with working memory difficulties. So this is phenomenal. If this group of teachers has really reached this level of diagnosis of understanding specifically that there are working memory difficulties that need to be attended to and specific types of attention problems, fantastic, because diagnosis is half of the solution. Once you know what types of problems need remediation, then you can make very specific recommendations. Some research that I was doing for a book that I'm writing has to do with these things of brain training or cognitive interventions. Do these really work? There are many types of brain training that work on subsystems of memory and subsystems of attention. For example, this particular intervention works only on working memory. That's great. It doesn't help general cognition, it helps working memory. But since working memory, since memory itself is important for learning, this is an element of learning. This one does inhibitory control. This one focuses on kids with ADHD and other one on decision making. So there are different types of interventions for different subset problems of memory and attention. So this group is phenomenal. If you can really have a clear diagnosis that that's exactly what the difficulty is, then there are very specific recommendations for what that kid can do to enhance working memory, for example. A key here though is that oftentimes there can be a misdiagnosis. For example, we know that some physiological states, for example, not sleeping well, can make you look like you have attention and working memory problems. So it's really, really important to hone in to make sure that the diagnosis is clear before suggesting an intervention. Again, here the teacher seemed to note that it's attention and working memory, but it could be one or the other. So it's really important to figure out what the kid really needs because you can assign different types of interventions for that kid, but it can also be frustrating for the child because one thing might not serve him at all because that isn't addressing his real key problems. So understanding what subsystem of memory or what subsystem of attention is actually causing the problem with the learning is really key to deciding what types of interventions are gonna be most effective. This teacher is called attention, what's the difference between needing memory and rejecting memorization? That is a wonderful observation because we have this real difficulty right now where a lot of us are against this idea of general rote memorization. Why make kids memorize, for example, the multiplication tables if he has no idea what that means? That is a really good observation and we know that general criticisms of memoristic work are clear and justified. It doesn't mean a lot that the kid can just pair it back information. So we are not for rote memorization in that sense. However, having said that, you do need to memorize things to be able to discuss them further. For example, if you don't know all the amendments to the Constitution, it's really hard to make reference and talk about the content there. Or to memorize that multiplication table. Without knowing that, it's very difficult to then to go into deeper learning. So I think the main idea is to reject general rote memorization as an end in itself, but to appreciate it as a means to getting to deeper learning. His last two teachers targeted that there's a student that has some difficulties with attention and or with memory networks. And the key here is to understand which of these attention networks is causing the difficulty. And there are many people who are saying, give me some actual research. What is really happening in the field in these areas? I'd like to highly recommend, for those of you with an interest for more clearly understanding attentional networks, Michael Posner is probably the God of attentional networks. He's written more than 200 articles and only focuses on this particular question. And most recently, he looked and made past judgment on certain brain training structures. Can you actually enhance? How do you enhance attentional networks in the brain? Step number one is to understand these different attentional networks, the alerting and orienting system. So, for example, you get a sound and you refocus your vision towards that particular area. But then there's the sustaining system. So basically, how do you pay attention for a long period of time? For example, to be able to read a chapter in a book, that is sustained attention. But he also described something called the executive network, which is making that decision that even though I have something calling on my alerting system in the window, the kids playing outside, I can make a decision that I'm going to pay attention to what I'm reading, for example. So what he has measured and shown that these are very different systems in the brain, they are traveling different neural networks. And so teachers need to understand that when they think the class is being unruly and they clap their hands or they flick the light switch on and off, they're actually enhancing the alerting system. The kids will now, their alerting system is on high, they'll pay attention for that moment. But that doesn't mean that they're going to sustain that attention for the length of the class lesson. So he talks about different ways to enhance that and I'd really like to motivate you to look into his research here. He has quite a lot of scholarly articles, especially this one summary article that was written looking at this. He's been studying this for more than 25 years now about attentional networks in the brain and has really been a pioneer in this area. So if you're interested in some concrete research about attentional systems, I highly recommend you look at Michael Posner's work. Similarly, if you're interested in understanding neural networks of the brain related to memory systems, especially in childhood, some real geniuses in the field, you know, Larry Squire is phenomenal. The work by Klingburg is excellent. So Brian Butterworth has spent a lot of time looking at working memory systems for mathematical interventions. So depending on which memory system, depending on the information, the basic information that you're looking for, what types of memory system, there are different authors that would be recommended. One of the most challenging questions here is, you know, what is the research that backs up this point? But the point is multiple and I guess that's the real difficulty in citing specific people to look at because it depends on which aspect of the statement we're looking at. As we mentioned in the general observations, these short statements, they're useful because they're easy to memorize but they can be really troublesome because once they're really unpacked, there's so many pieces to them that it really is difficult to respond to a request for what's a good activity for enhancing memory. Again, the answer is it depends. It depends on what the prior knowledge is of that individual, what kind of memory system you want to enhance, what is the subject area at hand. So there's many different angles to this. So depending on that individual that we're talking about though, there's gonna be different answers. So for the global answer about how does the brain process memory and attention and how does that lead to learning, please look at those initial videos that I mentioned to you about neuroanatomy and also about plasticity that will give you a global overview and then we can begin to refine the questions about what specific elements or sub elements of memory and attention we wanna focus on. Then it would be easier to show you the specific evidence based on the specific angle. For example, if you're saying, I know that this kid has working memory problems and I suspect he has dyscalculia, I'll say genius in this field, Brian Butterworth, Shashank Varma, read their work. So the more precise the question, the easier it is to find a specific author because most of the work in neuroscience is really, really refined to extremely specific questions. For example, how and to what extent is the sustaining attention network in the brain enhanced by daily reading practice? Something really clear like that, we have answers to that. But saying how do you enhance attention is a lot more difficult as a question. So I'd like to motivate you to please look at the global overview videos that have been shared with you now and then we can talk about specific memory strategies for a particular case. Then it's far easier to show you the concrete evidence for that particular question. Another person asked about the role of homework. Does homework really enhance these systems or enhance learning? Homework can be a really controversial topic, but homework is really useful for those kids who need to repeat specific information. This means for a kid who might have gaps in prior knowledge, homework can really help to fill in those gaps. However, if a kid has an attention problem, homework is not likely going to contribute to that. So depending on which angle of learning that we're looking at, is it memory, is it attention? Then we can decide whether or not more homework would be a key contributor to his success or not. And again, we have several questions more generally. What kind of attention techniques work? What kind of memory exercises work? It's very hard to address them more globally, but I can highly recommend. Doug Fisher has done a great job in this new book, just came out a couple months ago that focuses on using the information from John Hattie's work related to attentional systems as well and keeping kids engaged. What does that mean? So what are some specific techniques that keep students engaged, which is directly related to attention networks? And a lot of these also have to do with personalizing this learning experience. Getting attention means kids are actually motivated to learn, but they're motivated to learn because they're engaged in the topic or they want to learn. So his whole take on this is on the development of learning environments more than anything habituated practices within classrooms that actually enhance the probability of that engagement which in turn leads to better attention, which because of the amount of time on task enhances memory systems, so learning is enhanced. So these are things that I could recommend generally, but as I said previously, to get more specific literature, especially from the neurosciences, if we can hone in on precisely which memory systems and which attention systems, then it's easier to recommend the literature. This first feature is pointing out something that's really wonderful and deep reflection. I especially want to learn about how to coach students to improve their ability to attend to a subject or activity that they don't find as inherently interesting as the things that give them pleasure. So there's some things that kids are naturally gravitated to that they enjoy and other things that they just have to learn, right? And this teacher reflects, is this really just building willpower? Is willpower like a muscle? Should I just strengthen this? And the teacher ends by saying a lot of my work is in coaching students with an executive function weaknesses. So I'm interested in attention within that context. A wonderful identification when you say executive function weaknesses, executive functions on the global level are just three things, right? That's working memory, inhibitory control, which is attention, right? Deciding on what to pay attention to and cognitive flexibility. Good executive functioning systems will lead to other things like problem solving skills and all the rest of that. But these three are the measurable networks in the brain that we can say, okay, this can be enhanced with executive function training, right? So you're talking about one of those three things, which is memory and attention basically. Anyways, this question gets down to, I think that there's two big reflections here. One is that from an angle, you can philosophically tell your kids, you love what you do or you learn from it. And if you're lucky, you can do both. I think that that's a great motto to sort of live with. You're gonna love what you do or you're gonna learn from it. And sometimes there are things that you have to do and learn that might not be as fun. That's one way to go about doing this, but it could be even more efficient if we look at, again, going back to the motivational systems. I think we've talked about this a couple times before. Motivation is extremely complex and it's most limited stage. We can express things as sort of saying there's two key pairs of motivators, right? You're either intrinsically motivated or extrinsically motivated. Do you wanna do things because you wanna do them or because other people are forcing you to do that? Okay. And on the other side, there's positive motivation or negative motivation. The difficulty with going to this idea of we're gonna have to just develop this willpower. Something you just have to work all the way through and you'll get to the other side of it. That is possible, but it can be taken by some kids as being extrinsic and negative as a motivator. Having said that, there are real benefits to learning that life isn't always about just what you find fun, right? Building up resiliency, building up the ability to bounce back or to take on challenges that you weren't always crazy about or the possibility of celebrating failure and then moving on. You're just sort of building up the resistance to something. So there are benefits to getting kids to pay attention to things that they might not always find fun and just life lessons there. That's great. But there are also benefits in implicitly grabbing onto their own attention systems by finding a way that the new information actually is something of interest to them. So it might sound sort of sneaky, but getting to one objective through a secondary source is not always all bad. I remember that when my kids were little, I wanted them to read more in German for pleasure. They normally would choose books in English for pleasure, but I was able to find something that they already liked, which was the Guinness Book of World Records. They love that. But I brought it home in German and they said, can I brought the Guinness Book of World Records? Yay, and it's like, it's in German. We don't care, just give us the book, right? So we know that there's other ways that you can also hook students into things that they don't necessarily inherently find pleasing or easy to do by linking it to something that they already like or want to do. Obviously this changes with every single context, every single individual kid. So it's really hard to sort of blanketly respond to this, but you're definitely onto something. This could definitely work. Building a willpower is definitely one way to go about doing this. Another way might be to try to find other benefits of learning that information that the kid values that might not be the subject matter itself, but what he can gain or she can gain through the actual learning as well. So multiple ways of getting to the school. By getting to the second part of this question, which talks about helping kids with executive function weaknesses, the main key thing here is that you cannot measure executive function in the brain, like generically. When you look at studies in neuroscience about executive function measurement, key to remember is that you can't really measure executive functions in the brain. You have to be looking at one of these sub-network systems. For example, this one measures executive function as it relates to inhibitory control. This other study just looks at how executive functions relate to working memory. So basically all studies that look at executive functions with the exception of bilingual studies, bilingual studies actually show that all three elements, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility are enhanced. But otherwise, in general, most studies that you'll find when you look at executive functions will cover only one of these sub-areas. So when we talk about enhancing or improving executive function weaknesses, as we mentioned before, one of the best things is to really break the standard to its smaller parts. Which element of the executive functions, the memory function or attention function, does it have to do with working memory? Does it have to do with inhibitory control? Or is it this cognitive flexibility which has to do with this combination of both these? But which of these are you trying to improve in that student? And then when we know that, then it's really a lot easier to make recommendations of specific literature or concrete studies that document that in growing brains depending on the age of the individual as well, right? This last teacher points to a really common problem. I've been frustrated by the lack of memory my students have from one year to the next, they don't remember core concepts. I'd like to use a sample that I put in a previous video that had to do with this spiral reflection, this idea of returning to core concepts multiple times over the lifespan of a kid in learning contexts. This works beautifully when you have mastery learning goals that go through, you know, kindergarten through 12th grade. We have a very coherent vision of this and everybody is reinforcing those key elements all the time so that we're building off of core concepts but also reinforcing them. It's down to this core concept of neuroconstructivism, you know how you reinforce learning from one base level to a higher level order. Combined with Ruer's work back in the 70s and 80s where he basically said there's a spiral curriculum. If we can work in a way that we can reinforce core concepts over time, then their retrieval is going to be easier. But why, if you look at this from a neuroscientific perspective, it's because you are increasing, enhancing this smiling teeth around these links so that the speed of retrieval is much faster. The difficulty comes in as this teacher is pointing out, you know, why can't they remember core concepts is oftentimes they're not rehearsed enough. We do tend in our educational systems to have a chapter on algebra then we move right on to geometry. We don't link the ideas. So one way that we can aid teachers and reduce the level of frustration on all parts is that to enhance this level of repetition and also the authentic learning that is attached to this. So students pay attention to things that have an impact in their real life and then they memorize things. They are able to pay attention to them when they rehearse that same concept over and over. But sometimes, and especially in the sciences, there are oftentimes concepts that are intangible and very difficult for students to have a real life experience with. So unless we use things like analogies to show links between concepts and unless we reinforce those over time multiple times, the students won't be able to draw on that information. But there are school systems that do an excellent job of this to a German school system, which to this date, I think that my kids could tell you any math concept they ever learned because they did use this repetitive spiral learning in which they oftentimes return to the concept over and over and over again so that it became second nature. They used that same math concept so many times in second grade, third grade, fourth grade, 10th grade, that it was really cemented there into their brain. But this has to do with looking, having a longer term vision of our entire curriculum and how we reinforce concepts within classroom settings. If you're interested in looking at this idea of mastery concepts, especially in science, please do send me an email and I'll give you some specific literature related to that. And this first teacher here, I love this positive nature here. It's like, I'd love to learn strategies or scaffolding to help students to maintain and sustain their sustenance and strengthen their ability to remember skills and concepts so that they can continually build and connect to others and expand their knowledge. And this could be life changing, having a variety of strategies could allow more students to feel empowered and self-managed and self-monitoring and to add this to their own toolkit and to develop this overall general can do mindset. So what are these things that we can do as a habituated practice within our classroom settings that help students first think to themselves, okay, what do I already know about this subject? Okay, now what do I want to know about this subject to help maintain the attention is caught there? Okay, so once you've focused on what you already know about the information and why it's important to you to learn, that's the combination for a great motivation to continue on to learning. I admire this goal here, it's a wonderful observation and I think it connects back to several points made in earlier videos. And that is, it really does help if the students understand this, if they understand how important it is to have enough repetition to establish, if they can have the right attitude towards their own learning, how all of that will facilitate their learning. It also helps for them to reflect on the general risk and protective factors that they might have as if they've just locked down, I've never liked art, I've never been good at it and I never will be that kind of a mindset, that very fixed and closed mindset. If they learn how that actually is a self-fulfilling prophecy, if they learn that they've just set up their own circumstances for failure, maybe they can take steps towards remediating that. So helping kids understand how these systems work in their own brains is also a big step towards helping them take control of their own learning. This teacher had a long and deep reflection about the time that we spend in our class with the students is really valuable time and there's a lot of things we spend time on, for example, memorizing formulas with the kids or doing things that are Google-able knowledge. I think that the recommendation here is that can we, front-load information, dates, facts, figures, formulas, things that are just factual-based and have that sent to the student before they come to the actual face-to-face class so that when we're together, we can actually pull that apart, we can actually use that information, we can make it into usable knowledge that they actually see the direct application within their own context. So the idea here is to not get rid of general memorization or learning of facts, that's vital to learning, right? The idea is that how do we proportion out the time that we have face-to-face with those students? Could our face-to-face time be best used, doing certain things, and then could homework time or online learning time be used in another way? So can you leverage, for example, the technology to say, here's a quick quiz, here are the basic vocabulary words. Do this quiz until you get 100 and then come to class. Then you in the class and the students themselves, we can say, okay, we all share this fundamental definitions and then now we can build on that. So we're not spending time in the class going through certain core concepts, but we're using them in the class so we get to deeper knowledge. And that in and of itself is a way to keep the students' attention and to make sure that they have memorized the core concepts necessary off of which we can build new ideas or deeper ideas when we're together. Again, there are requests for more specific information. How does this really work in a high school teaching? Again, I go back and I'm gonna tell you it depends. It depends on what your class is and what you think the difficulty is. Is it memory problems, is it attention problems? For example, if you think it has to do with authentic learning, the kids aren't paying attention because they don't see the utility of information, or you might look at some of the studies by Yeager, that's very important. If you wanna look at the impacts of things that are external to, for example, sleep times, the policy that your school has about what time you start school, there's a lot of great research being done by Carcasson, also by Walts from other people. Or if you wanna look at the neural networks of attention, for example, I mentioned that Michael Posner has done some wonderful work. His research on attending to learn school subjects and high school students is fascinating. Or if you wanna look at specific modalities of learning, what is the attention level when you integrate video instruction into your general class? So some people look at modalities, other people look at things like the fascinating research that's being done around the world to look at how brains actually are getting in sync with each other depending on different teaching techniques. There's wonderful research being done in Queensland Brain Institute, for example, in which they have actual science classrooms for middle and high school students. They keep them there for six, seven weeks where they do their classes, but they're totally wired up. And so they see what types of interactions have what effects on the general stress levels of students in the classroom. But it really, really depends on the age group, the topic, whether or not we're talking about memory or whether or not we're talking about attention. So finally, I wanna see how the emerging research intersects with long-standing practices in arts education. If you're talking about using arts to facilitate the learning of other domain area, for example, using arts and learn math, or if you're talking about teaching arts within school, and what does that have to do with memory and attention? The first one, like using arts integration into other subject areas, Mary-Elle Hardiman is really a wonderful expert in this. She also runs the mind brain and teaching program at Johns Hopkins University, and her whole focus is on creativity, the arts, and what this does to the changing and maturing brain. So I would really recommend that. If it's more on specific aspects of arts education, it'd be good to know which sub-element. So is it music education or is it painting? Because there are different studies that exist that can be recommended. So if you can give me some more details about that, I'd be very happy to try to recommend some additional readings. The second question about helping a student who has ADHD learn Chinese, important to know that basically learning, Chinese are learning any other foreign language. I'm not sure though if this is somebody who is a native Chinese speaker who's needing to improve Chinese, or if this is an English speaker going into Chinese, but there are multiple suggestions about using technology to support interventions with students with learning disabilities. There are specific studies on ADHD and language learning in general. There are other studies that are culturally bound talking about Chinese teacher expectations of American students. So it sort of depends on the angle of the question. So if you have the chance to clarify that a bit more, I'll be very happy to suggest some other specific research in this area. ADHD and the brain and studies in general are fascinating. Really point to the idea that we are over diagnosing a lot of things that tend to look like attentional problems, but they may be other types of behavioral problems, things related to sleep and other things like that. But kids who really do have ADHD, there is a lot of research going on now about what is this slightly different rewiring and what can we do about this? So if you're interested in more the ADHD angle to it, that's great. Or if you wanna know more about the language angle, please let me know so that I can be more specific in the literature that I'm recommending. There's another question from the language department about whether mechanical drills, and I'd like to extend this beyond the language department, do mechanical drills in learning have a place in today's teaching? Again, the answer is it depends. What is your objective? If your objective is that they pair it back, you say something, they say something, you say something, they say something. If that's your objective that they can respond, then go for it. But most people have higher order objectives that don't have to do with just regurgitating information. So depending on the objective that you have, you can say there's a place or not for mechanical drills. We know that there is a place for memory. So we know that sometimes memory can be enhanced through mechanical drills, but not at the high level we want. You can memorize the multiplication tables, but we need to get together to understand the conceptual understanding. You can memorize the poem, but we need to get together and discuss whether or not you can analyze that poem, right? So the quick answer is it depends on what your objectives are, but then you have this counterargument that doing things mechanically does not enhance attention. So you might be in increasing memory systems, but you definitely like getting them to pay attention when it's mechanistic. And so we have to think about this question in a more global way. It depends on your objective. You can achieve things through mechanical drills, but I would say that we have much higher expectations of students in schools now than just to pair it back the information that's been given to them. This last person is mentioning a similar challenge that the physics teacher had a couple of questions ago which had to do with long-term attention of information. And I go back to this idea of this spiral learning. If it's not used, it won't be remembered. So use it or lose it, right? So part of the difficulty is that information can be hunkered down somewhere in these neural connections, but unless they were rehearsed frequently, retrieval is slowed. So unless the information is used with a certain frequency, it won't be recalled easily. This first question is languages learned passively and for the most part, not intentionally, how do we foster students in language class where language learning is very intentional and also requires a lot of attention and also a lot of use of memory? So this gets to an interesting split between what is explicit instruction, what is implicit instruction and what is a passive understanding of information versus an active use of that information, right? And so that's a really fascinating question, but it gets to the very first point we had about memory and attention and that's that there are multiple subsystems. It's not just memory and attention. It's that there are multiple subsystems within each of these and they're stimulated by different types of activities in the classroom. So fluid use of language might not necessarily seem like it's based on an explicit instruction, but it is definitely based on memory systems so that that person has those certain sentence patterns rehearsed in their minds so that they can easily and fluidly use that information. And to pay attention to what is the subject matter, be able to respond is definitely something that is incorporated, whether it's passive or active use of the language, right? Really beautiful and subtle observation there, but if we expand the definitions of what we mean by memory and attention, I think you'll see that it's the not contradictory ideas, passive learning versus intentionality and learning. Language is so important as it mediates everything that we do, all learning that we do is mediated by this understanding of language. So your point is really important and I think it's important to recognize that passive use or being able to use language fluidly without necessarily reaching this level of expertise that you can incorporate things that were learned passively into your active use of language is not contradictory to intentional learning objectives in language classrooms. And this last point gets to asking about current research on effective scaffolding and online interactions. This is key to another point that we mentioned earlier about using perhaps your online Canvas platform to differentiate homework where you can have the reinforcement, the strengthening of memory done there and also you can do it in even gaming formats. Gamification of learning is one of the biggest growing industries right now and so there's plenty of gaming apps that can be used to enhance memory and attention subsystems that can be embedded into your Canvas course and can be used as homework if you like, if you think that students are in need of rehearsal of different attentional networks or memory systems. But again, the key is to understand and on your part know, what do I need to suggest to the student to do? Which sub-element of memory or attention needs rehearsing? And I think this feeds in really naturally and importantly to this idea of learning differences. We all have learning differences and there's gonna be some people who are far ahead and some people who are far behind on certain topics throughout the year. I think it would be a phenomenal option to be able to differentiate the homework that they get and to be able to remediate skillsets as well as memory systems and attention systems by using an online platform. I think the main point to remember here about students with learning challenges, especially with memory and attention, is celebrate the idea that everything can improve. Your brain adapts to what it does most. So rehearsal of memory systems or attention systems does lead to improvement in that. When we talked about these cognitive enhancers, these brain training activities, it's shown that with a certain level of repetition, all of them show improvements in the sub-area that they look at. They don't all improve cognition or executive functions. They improve working memory specifically or they improve sustained attention specifically or peripheral attention specifically. But there's no doubt that with rehearsal, your brain adapts to that. So there are interventions we can do for all levels of learners. Those struggling, those with per working memory with per attention systems can improve with rehearsal. It doesn't always have to be in online systems. I'm just sort of connecting this to the last point that we could leverage technology a bit better that would allow the student to be more satisfied with their own learning experiences and the time on task, as well as also free up the teacher's time within a class setting to be able to focus on the group needs and then differentiate homework individually through the online platform. So then the flip side of this is this other question we had about, are attention spans really getting worse due to tech and screens and all the rest of this? The main idea is that your brain adapts to what it does most. So if it's only spending time doing video games with quick changes or whatever or you're passively watching TV, obviously that affects attention systems in the brain. On the flip side though, you can extend your memory systems and attention systems through online activities, gamification of certain educational objectives that do actually take advantage of attention systems. A concrete example is the best selling game in history is Mario, right? And Mario has multiple levels of advancement, but it also has this incredibly intelligent algorithm that more or less you achieve about 70%. If you start to go below 70%, the program actually lowers the level of difficulty. And if you actually achieve higher than the 70%, it makes the task slightly more difficult. Why? Because it wants to keep you hooked on the game. So the longer you play it, the better. So what's the idea here is that gaming technology right now is leveraging the same algorithm, these same ideas to keep kids hooked on learning academic content. This keeps you hooked. It keeps your attention focused, but the repetition is so much that your memory is enhanced. So you've got memory and attention, therefore you're gonna have better learning. Okay, with that, that's the last of the questions. I offer my apologies if some of these responses were too short, but I do invite you to write to me with more specifics. If you say, listen, I don't feel like your answer to this question was adequate. Can you give me some more information? Or I wanna offer some more details because I'd like to know who the go-to people are and the research right now on this specific area of study. Please let me know. I do wanna support you. And the more specific the questions, the better. So I'm looking forward to staying in touch and to growing with you with these principles. Thanks a lot.