Neurology meets Edtech and the Arts in the Metaverse
RICH Learning Theory is brain-based learning on arts-based platforms. We study the molecular, cellular, structural, bodily and environmental basis of learning. Then we design immersive experiences to enrich and maximize attention, retention, creativity, collaboration, memory consolidation and joy into the learning process.
Enjoy these recent short video clips explaining the core of our understanding with founder Dr. Rich at the Museum of he Future in Dubai.
LITERACY+Music+Motion+EMOTION+PLAY+ART = ?
We always knew literacy was the ticket out of poverty - an intellectual highway to a richer, wider world and a significantly more meaningful future. We just didn’t know how the reading process worked and how to hack it for the benefit of the child having trouble with it. So we spent some time with Dr. Maryanne Wolf, dyslexia expert and author of Proust and the Squid. Maryanne created the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University and the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education. With her insights on the reading process and access to brain-scan technology, we postulated a way to bypass what WASN’T working in the reading brain and leverage what WAS working to hack the reading process.
First, we wrote 535 songs - many of them with spelling and American Sign Language embedded. Colliding music and motion and emotion and play and art together with the reading process led to the foundational discovery of RICH Learning. After devouring Maryanne’s book, it became clear that the way the human brain learns ANYTHING new is to:
R - Recognize
I - Identify
C - Comprehend
H - Harness
We always knew music worked as a teaching tool. We just didn’t know why. So we spent some time with Dr. Ani Patel, author of Music, Language and the Brain at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. According to Ani, music has much of you need to tag new information for short-term attention and long-term retention. He simplifies the power of music with the word OPERA.
O - Overlap
P - Precision
E - Emotion
R - Repetition
A - Attention
Instead of using music as an optional subject or tool, in RICH Learning everything new we learn - EVERYTHING - starts with a catchy tune to encode and hardwire it into memory. With music - for a plethora of molecular, cellular, structural, bodily and environmental reasons - it’s significantly easier to R-recognize, I-identify, C-comprehend, and H-harness.
We always knew movement/exercise was good for the brain. We just didn’t know what adding movement and motion would do to enrich the learning process. So we spent some time with Dr. John Ratey, Harvard’s ADD/ADHD and author of Spark: The Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brian. Turns out, exercise pours accelerant onto the learning fire. Along with adding more oxygen, glucose and dopamine to the learning process and removing the toxic stress hormone cortisol, moving while learning floods the brain with a magic learning molecule of neural growth. Pulsing BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor) into the learning brain through exercise builds:
More nerve/brain cells
More connections on the nerve/brain cells
More receptors on the connections of the nerve/brain cells
Instead of sitting most of the time in traditional school, in RICH Learning environments we’re moving much of the time. With all of those new brain cells, connections and receptors it’s exponentially, multiplicatively easier to R-recognize, I-identify, C-comprehend, and H-harness new information and hardwire it into short-term attention and long-term retention.
RICH Learning Theory research is explained and footnoted in the fun, easy-TO-read “RICH Learning: Brain-based Learning on Arts-based Platforms”. THE BOOK IS available in English (BUTTON below), and in Arabic and Mandarin via PDF by request.
“I didn’t know I was lesdyxic until I was 55 years old.”
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