FCS FLASH: Improve Your Memory Activity

FCS FLASH ISSUE Number 95: December 9, 2008

January 23: Monterey: CCCECE Winter Institute: Technology in Our Teaching
January 25: Los Angeles: Autry National Center: Cut from a Different Cloth
January 30: Los Angeles: CCCECE Winter Institute: Technology in Our Teaching
February 6: Cajon: CCCECE Winter Institute: Technology in Our Teaching
February 20: Rocklin: CCCECE Winter Institute: Technology in Our Teaching
March 6: Downey: Student Design Event "Persuasive Presentations and Communications: For the Design Professional"
March 15-19: Las Vegas: Joint Conference National Council on Aging/American Society on Aging
March 26-28: Sacramento: CAEYC Conference California Association for the Education of Young Children
April 19: Downey: Save the Date! 2009 Culinary Arts and Hospitality Competition
April 22-24: Lake Arrowhead: 2009 Workforce Leaders Institute
September 25-26: Sacramento: CSA Western Region, 2009 Symposium “Costume in the American West” Call For Papers

 

News Just For You! Roger Gerard, Shasta Community College, reflects on some marketing slogans from the last few generations. In response to the recent wildfires in Southern California, Lisa Ledeboer, Mt. San Antonio College, developed a useful article and activity to get students focused on evacuation preparedness. Cynthia Schlesinger from the VA’s Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System has a wonderful contribution applicable to all disciplines, “How to Say it to Seniors,” with information and resources to facilitate better communication with our aging population. The Western Region of the Costume Society of America is offering Discounted Student Memberships for 2009.

 

FCS FLASH: Improve Your Memory Activity
This semester the FCS FLASH has provided you with resources and activities on how people learn, insights on how the brain processes information, and tips on maximizing retention. As we bring the semester to a close, we have one additional fun and engaging activity for you to try. This one is a short experiment to find out more about how your students encode and remember information. One-half of your class will be asked to encode information based on pronunciation of the words … they will try to remember based on the sound of the words. The other half of your class will visually encode information … they will encode information using visualization. The trick in this activity is that students MUST NOT know at the outset that there are two different sets of instructions -- one for the acoustic encoding group and one for the visual encoding group. They must believe that everyone has the same instructions. It should only take about 10 minutes to complete, but to assure the most effective presentation, review the instructions carefully before you begin.

 

Print and review the directions on the Instructor’s Memory Activity Guide to complete the activity. (This has all the info you need to complete the entire activity.)

Print equal numbers of the Memory Activity Handout 1 and Memory Activity Handout 2.

Distribute Memory Activity Handout 1, auditory memory, to one side of the class, and Memory Activity Handout 2, visual memory, to the other side of the class.

 

It is critical that students believe they are all receiving the same handout!

Instruct students to read their instructions. Since there are 2 sets of instructions, DO NOT review the instructions with the class.
Have students complete the activity and score their papers.
Before they report their scores, explain the two different sets of instructions.
Compare the scores of each group.
Based on the outcome, ask some questions about what they learned from this activity and how they can use the information to help them learn more effectively …