In this Youtube episode of "Smarter Everyday," Destin Sandlin conducts an experiment. He's given a bicycle that has been modified so that when you turn the handlebars one way, the front wheel turns in the opposite direction. In other words, the steering has been inverted. Destin quickly discovers that he can't ride it, which baffles him since he's been riding a bike since he was 6 years old. This situation leads Destin to a profound conclusion: Knowledge is not the same as understanding. He KNOWS how to ride a bicycle. He knows the necessary components of riding a bike such as balance, orientation, and weight distribution, but when the mechanical procedures are changed, he no longer UNDERSTANDS how to ride the bike. To ensure it isn't just a fluke, Destin brings his unique bike along with him to conferences and has others try to ride it. He even offers money to people if they can ride it across the stage. No one is successful. After 8 months of practice, something clicks in Destin's brain, and he suddenly is able to ride consistently on the modified bike. Destin theorizes that attempting to tweak a skill that has been solidified in the brain over years and years takes a lot of time because it has essentially been "hard-wired." When he challenges his young son to learn how to ride the bike, Destin finds that it only takes his son 2 weeks to make the adjustment. This is a wonderful example of the role neural plasticity plays in learning a new skill. Since his son's brain is more plastic, he can more easily learn or relearn a skill.
Another interesting element to the story is that after Destin became proficient at riding the inverted bicycle, he attempted to ride a normal bike and initially couldn't ride it. His brain had re-wired and then had trouble reverting back to the original wiring. After a bit of time though, his brain once again "clicked" and it was as if he had never forgotten how to ride in the first place. He did this in public and the bystanders refused to believe that he had "forgotten" how to ride a bike and then suddenly remembered. Of course, those bystanders didn't know that he had learned how to ride a bike with inverted steering but the very idea that one could forget how to do something they'd been doing their entire life is counter-intuitive. His takeaway from this experience is that we should be careful how we interpret things because "you're looking at the world with a bias whether you think you are or not." So how does this relate to my understanding of learning and teaching? It makes me keenly aware of how slowly I, and others, learn new skills. Furthermore, making an adjustment to a previously known skill is not always as easy as it seems. Just because we KNOW how to do something doesn't mean we UNDERSTAND how to do it. The key to success in these situations is repetition or continual exposure to a new idea or concept and exploring different aspects or ways to learn a concept. For example, many children have trouble with fractions. There is a wonderful website called ST Math which has games and activities to help students conceptualize fractions and other mathematical content in different ways. Digital resources such as ST Math give students the access and opportunity to practice skills like they never have been able to before. In my classroom, I will be cognizant of the fact that what is easy for one student may not be easy for another. I will utilize the technology available to me to aid my students in their understanding of the given content area. SmarterEveryDay (2015, April 24) The backwards brain bicycle - smarter every day 133 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
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AuthorGeorge Porter, English Teacher at Sage Creek Archives
May 2016
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