Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Pixel Parenting, the podcast that helps families raise kids in a world full of screens using science and curiosity. Here we share science backed strategies and real conversations to help you build healthier digital habits with practical tools for everyday parenting in this digital age. Let's get into it if you ever watched your child reach for a device, the moment something feels hard homework, writing, problem solving, you are not alone. And and the goal isn't to panic or ban tools. It's to make sure kids are still building the brain pathways that let them think, persist and learn. Today I'm joined by Missy Whitman, who holds a doctorate in education. She's a co founder of Neuro Education and a visiting assistant professor at Pacific Lutheran University. With a background in health and fitness education and a deep focus on neuroplasticity, she helps educators design brain aligned learning environments that build movement, engagement and 21st century skills. We break down what attention actually is in learning, why novelty grabs it, and why productive struggle is where learning sticks. Then we zoom out to AI, what happens when we outsource too much thinking, and how we can use AI as a coach instead so we still practice the skills that matter. Let's jump right in. You describe yourself as a lifelong mover. What brought you to neuroplasticity and education? Yes, I got that from your LinkedIn. Yes.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: It's interesting because I've been a health and fitness teacher for 26 years, however long it's been, and thinking about the impact of exercise on brain development.
When I started learning about that, I was like whoa. PE and recess and all these things that we take away from students all the time are really, really essential.
And so that really got me thinking about the impact of movement on learning.
And then I met a cognitive learning scientist in 2016 at a computer conference. And by the way, I was presenting on Brain Breaks and why we needed movement in the classroom at this conference. And I didn't think anybody was going to come to it because it was a computer conference and here I was talking about movement in the classroom, which almost was like opposite of what was happening as we were bringing one to one devices in all classrooms. And so I thought, oh, no one's going to come to my session. But we had over 100 people that came to the session and it was like, I don't understand what's happening here. So the next day I went as a participant at this conference and when I walked in to Engaging the brain with Dr. Kieran Omani and Khan McQuinn, they had the same scene. They were at A computer conference. They were not talking about computers and they had over 100 people in the room.
And it made me realize that there were so many something that people were really interested in in a way that I don't think we had thought about it before. But as students became more sedentary with devices and really started like zoning in on the devices more, we started noticing that, whoa, this movement is really, really important. And so that's kind of where it started. I met Dr. Omani and him and I started having a cup of tea every Sunday to together and just talking about things. And so we started the first ever neural education institute for educators. And we've just been growing ever since.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: And how has your teaching changed drastically?
[00:03:26] Speaker B: And it's changed drastically because of this understanding of instructional design and how the brain pays attention.
And what are the things that engage the brain? What are the things that allow the brain to stay in a space for a longer period of time.
And so that is really kind of where my shifts in education started. I really started thinking about the student experience and the brain body experience that they were having in my class. And then I started shifting my design. And then we've been collaborating with other educators for, since 2017 and they bring in things and we just have this like really nice little ecosystem of educators who get curious about the brain, get curious about the body, get curious about attention and learning and long term transferable learning, as well as 21st century skills like communication and collaboration. And we get together, we create open education resources that other educators can bring into their classrooms and then tell us how it went. And it's just a really great collaborative space.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: That's awesome.
So you mentioned how the students engage, how they pay attention. So how does that happen from the brain's perspective?
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting because in education, and I have said this so many times, I have said, that kid can't sit, that kid can't pay attention. And I've never really gotten curious about what attention is. And so as we are thinking about brain, we really dive into the neural substrates of attention.
So what's happening in the brain that causes attention? And it keeps bringing us back to Dr. Marian Diamond's work on neuroplasticity.
In 1964, she had a study going on where she was looking at what have big impacts on brain development.
And two of the things that she talks about that have impact on brain development I come back to all the time when I think about attention specifically. Specifically attention is fleeting, by the way.
It is fleeting. And even me Going off topic right now, who knows if I'll ever get back on, because it's so fleeting. But right now, you're probably not thinking about your big toe. Oh, but now you are, because now I brought it up. And so it's one of those things where we, we. Our attention can move to different things all of the time. And it does. I mean, if a car goes by that's loud, our attention goes to it. As a teacher, oh, my gosh, if it's snows outside, you've lost attention for the whole day. And so it's all of these things that we're constantly trying to garner attention from students all the time. And back to Marian Diamond. She talks about two things that really support learning. One is novelty or newness, that is always going to get our attention. That's why if it snows outside and it doesn't typically snow, you're looking outside or for us, in the Pacific, Pacific Northwest, if the sun comes out, there's novelty in that. And so that attention is going to go to those things that are new or novel.
And then once we do get into spaces of challenge, productive struggle, then we really zone in with our attention. And then it's why you don't hear the car going by and you don't hear the. Or you don't see the snow or that you're not distracted by other things.
So thinking about what's novel and then also thinking about how you invite students in with curiosity and creativity and critical thinking that allows them to get into a space of real, deep attention, and that's when learning happens.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: You mentioned productive struggle. What was that challenge?
[00:07:17] Speaker B: So I'll give you an example. The first time you rode a bike, you fell off, you got back on. You fell off, you got back on. You probably had a caring adult or somebody in your life who was holding the back of the. Of the bike as you were trying to maneuver. And over time, you know, you ride the bike a few times. One day you sleep on it, you come back, you sleep on it, you do that over time, and pretty soon you wake up one morning and you can ride the bike. That effort over time is productive struggle. And productive struggle from a neuroscience perspective causes the neurons to activate. And then when they activate, they actually grow the neural structures that allow us to transfer that learning into other things. So if today, maybe you haven't ridden a bike in five years, but today I bring a bike in and you get on it, you probably couldn't ride that bike because you have such a deeply myelinated pathway in your brain that you can come back to it. I think about driving a stick. I used to drive a stick. You put a stick in front of me. I'm going to, I'm going to crunch the gears a little bit, but I'm going to be able to reactivate that very strongly myelinated pathway in my brain. And that productive struggle is absolutely essential in order for those deep pathways to develop in students brains for that transferable learning, which is what our goal is.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: So basically productive struggle is when we don't know how to do something, it is doable according to our students developmental stage. And each time they repeat, they get better. And there's the whatever, how many whatever neurons connect their pathways gets thicker and strengthens and then that's when learning happens. Correct. And then that stays there over time until adulthood or. Well, there's different developmental stages. Depends.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that's it. That's a great way to describe it. I love the analogy of a pathway in the brain that starts out just like as a dirt road and then as you continue to navigate it and the challenge of you have to have challenge if you do not, if you're just like doing the same thing every day without challenge, there's, you don't have change. It's just like muscle building. If you're not upping your weights, if you're not challenging the muscle, you're not going to have physiological change of the muscle. And so when we think about the pathways in the brain, I mean they start as just a little path through the trees and then as that pathway gets navigated more and more, it turns into a road and then it turns into a highway. Then once that pathway gets large enough that it turns into that highway, that, that's an automatic response that we have now.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: So how does that relate to AI? What can we do to make AI useful in order? Like how can we make AI use.
I'm not framing you. Well, sorry. This is why I edit.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: I love it. And this is productive.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Right. Now, like I, I don't want you to edit this because this point here, what's happening in your brain is productive struggle. And oftentimes we don't like the messiness of the productive struggle. And so we edit it out and we edit it out in our classrooms, we edit it out at home. And it's the first thing we do when AI comes out where we cannot wait to offload so many tasks to AI because there. It's exhausting. It is absolutely, absolutely exhausting.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: It is the question then is how can we build those connection and still use AI? Right? So that's the question, like, how can we still use our brains with AI and not just unload?
[00:11:07] Speaker B: It's so interesting because when AI came out, at first we're testing it out, we're getting on there and we're like, oh my gosh, this is so fantastic. I can write my emails with this, I can write a summary of something, I can change the reading level of something. Like, there's all these things that AI does.
But if we are continually outsourcing to AI, then that productive struggle that we need, that supports that brain change, that then allows that transferability of those skills over time doesn't necessarily happen.
And there are things, by the way, I want to outsource. I am ready to outsource some things, and if I am outsourcing the things that I need transferable learning later in, then I'm, I'm jeopardizing my own learning, lifelong learning around certain things. I'm noticing it with students a lot. And, you know, we're all, we're all in this together. It's not just a student thing. So sometimes, you know, I think we say, oh, the students, they're, they're not going to learn and we need to need to be mindful that we will stop learning as well. But one of the things that I'm noticing with, with students is when they are turning in assignments and they're utilizing AI to do the work for them when they come back in to talk and process that assignment, they don't have the knowledge and the skills and the, they haven't lived it, they haven't embodied those words and so they're not able to then talk about it.
So as we continue to outsource our assignments to AI, then those are the things that we're not actually going to build any shift and change in our, in our brain, like myelination and dendritic plumage, which are the two things that we really want to make sure that we're growing in our brain.
Those things are not going to happen if, if we're outsourcing that information, knowledge and experiences to AI.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Yes, but are there ways to collaborate with AI to build that myelination and, you know, and to create that brain structure? I agree there are things that we want to offload. We want to. But for students, they need to practice some skills. Can AI help practice some skills? And how are teachers, or how would you recommend teaching teachers and parents to approach that collaboration with AI?
[00:13:41] Speaker B: I'll share a story That I think is so interesting. There's a teacher that's local here in my area, and he is sending his students to this competition. It's a CTE competition.
And he was sending his students this competition. And when he went to go see the materials to help the students study for this competition, he was like, whoa, there's not a lot of resources.
So he decided, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna ask AI to help me. And so he just gets on AI and he's like, can you write me 20 questions to support my students on preparing for this competition? And so it gave him 20 questions. Great. He takes the 20 questions to the students, and he's like, hey, I used AI to create these 20 questions, so let's use these 20 questions. Well, then that opened the door for the students. Cause they're like, whoa, you're using AI? If you're using AI, does that mean we can use AI? And he felt like, oh, here I'm telling you not to use AI, and here I'm using AI. And now you're realizing that there is a way that you can use AI in order to support your learning. So what the students did is they used AI as a coach.
So they had the questions, they had the understanding of the competition, and then they use AI over time, that continuously allowed them to. To do retrieval practices. It allowed them to have some spaced rehearsals. So they'd. They'd work on the AI a little bit for one day and then come back the next day and do it. And over time, they prepared for that competition. And one of the students came in first place in the nation on in the competition, and one came third place in the nation. And here these students were. They were not just learning about a competition. They were learning about Internet of things and cybersecurity.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: And.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: And now these students are workforce ready because one, they know how to utilize AI in a way that helps grow those neural pathways in their brain for that transferable learning. And two, they're talking to AI about the things that they're building that are going to be transferable as far as the content of the areas that they're studying in. And so I think we are hitting the tip of the iceberg on all of the things that we can do do to utilize AI to help augment our own thinking so that we still develop those neural structures in our brain. And we've got that extra support, that extra tutor to help us do that as well.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So as parents, maybe we could say, okay, you can use AI, but as a brainstorming tool, not as a writing tool or as a corrector tool or something like that. Or maybe have them compare, have the students write an assignment, and then have the AI write the same assignment, and then compare and have the student assess. Is that the kind of activation that we're looking for when using AI?
[00:16:45] Speaker B: I think so. And we're all really fresh in this AI space. So what we know about AI today is going to be drastically different than we know about AI in three months. I mean, it's moving so quickly. I talk to students all the time about how they're utilizing AI and they are so creative with AI, And I'm meeting students that are just outsourcing their thinking completely, and that doesn't feel good to them. And I'm talking with students who are utilizing AI to really help their thinking go further around certain topics.
And so I think if we listen to the kids, they're gonna give us some really good perspective. So, I mean, this AI is something that you bring back in the conversation when you're driving next to your kid. I know for me, driving with my kid is the best time to have those conversations or sitting at the table as we're eating. You know, there's those. There are those moments in time where we get to have those conversations and get curious together and explore. And, you know, every time I hear something new from a student about how they're using it, I can't help but go and test it out myself.
So we're definitely kind of in this really beautiful testing stage. At the same time, there are going to be things that come up around data privacy and security that. That we might not even be thinking about with closed systems and open systems and what all that means. And so we're really just trying to translate what AI is in the first place, and then on top of how we utilize it. So I'm curious on how we might do this more efficiently as community members, as teachers, as parents, people who care deeply about kids and care deeply about their learning and their. Their human potential.
So I think we have a lot of work to do, actually, and I think even this podcast is such a great example of us just getting curious and having the conversation.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: I love the conversation part that's in every single episode. At the end of the day, it comes down to communication. Let's talk about it. Let's talk with our kids. Let's be curious about what they think, how they think about it, and then based on the information you share, like the whole Productive struggle, the myelination, like the idea that we need to strengthen brain pathways, then we can guide them. Is there anything you like, a message you would like to send to parents that you think would be practical for them or that you know, that would be meaningful given your expertise, you know, in neuro education.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Let's take it back to productive struggle. And just as the body needs productive struggle in order for there to be physiological change, if you want to go improve a mile time, then that productive struggle of going out every day and having that spaced rehearsal of time that you go out and you. Over time there is biological change.
Same thing happens with productive struggle with learning. Over time there is neurobiological change in the brain. And that impact is essential for that human potential.
And when we are in our devices, which great. That is a 21st century skill, understanding the device. AI is going to be a 21st century skill, understanding how to utilize it, all of those things are really essential. But what industry keeps telling us is that they need people coming into industry that have the very human skills of collaboration, of communication, critical thinking and creativity. And those things don't just happen with a device. Oftentimes those things happen because of community and being in very human spaces. And AI can come and support us in those and help augment our thinking. But the more opportunities that we as humans, humans get to be in community with each other, whether it's parents talking about AI or you know, kids talking about a project that they're working on, the more that we are in these spaces of community, the more brain, body connections that we have. And that infrastructure that's happening in the brain and body, those are the things that last long term. Whereas quickly outsourcing an assignment to AI, there's no change. And so that learning is a missed opportunity.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Before we wrap up, here's the main idea. Brains change through productive struggle effort over time. With the right level of challenge, here are three takeaways to remember. One, attention shifts easily and novelty can grab it. But deeper learning comes when kids are pulled into curiosity and challenge. Two, productive struggle builds the highways in the brain, those lasting pathways that support real transferable learning. And three, with AI, the question isn't it good or bad? It is. Is my child practicing the thinking or outsourcing it? AI can help when it's used like a tutor or coach, not a replacement. And one more thing, Missy mentioned in the age of AI, protect the very human stuff, movement, conversation and community. Because skills like collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity don't grow in isolation. We'll include all mentioned resources in the show notes and if you're a parent of a child ages 6 to 17, we're also running a short pixel parenting survey about how families are using AI for learning. It's anonymous, takes about seven to 10 minutes, and would love to hear from you. You'll find the link in the show notes if this episode helped. Share with a parent or educator who's navigating the same questions, and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode. Thanks for listening and happy parenting.
