Students Checked Out? Reel ’em Back In with DIY Neuroscience

Is DIY Neuroscience the best way to end the school year?*

The end of the school year… as we all say, summer is “nearest unto heaven.” ** Students and teachers agree, when we enter that last week of school, it is easy to start checking out.

Working with a friend’s class at a local Middle School, BYBer Will W. visited to help reel back in the students’ attentions and sneak a little bit more learning into the end of their school years!

Over Four, 45m blocks, he introduced students to the nervous system, to action potentials in cockroach neurons, to human-machine interfaces, to neuroprosthetics, and even mind-control! The classroom also has some of these tools for next year, empowering next year’s class of 8th graders to dive right into DIY neuroscience labs!

The next best, totally free(!) thing

Unfortunately, we can’t be everywhere at once to personally introduce these subjects to every classroom, but as you are likely familiar, our work at Backyard Brains is to make it so that no specialist is required to get students started performing neuroscience experiments and demonstrations!

Before you invest in any of our low-cost tools, you can show off any of our fantastic and free video and online resources to your classroom! Looking for an intellectually spicy end of year conversation starter? Any one of our dozen TED talks and videos would be perfect. Or how about one of our Netflix Appearances?

Click any of the links below to check out some awesome videos!

*Best? Maybe. An awesome way to end the year? For sure. Hope you enjoy these video resources!

**A brief digression on the changing of the seasons and watching students grow:

The Human Seasons
BY JOHN KEATS

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.