We all know how tough it can be to help learners store and retrieve information. This task is profoundly more difficult for those who have suffered damage to the hippocampus and those struggling with the scourge of Alzheimers disease.

Research on memory impairment by Dr. Morgan Barense, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, puts the use of video in the forefront of memory and cognition. Barenese has developed an app that uses recorded events to help solidify the memory and recall of patients. Interestingly, the technique involves reviewing the recorded events six times a day at three times the normal recording speed. This speed mimics the natural pace of the hippocampus. Preliminary results show a 40% increase in recall three months after the event.

Now, who says visual learning can't be a thing?

This brief, but excellent, article is an excerpt from the author's book, Limitless Mind. There are two strong take-aways from the article. First, if we want the benefits of collaboration, we need to remember that learners don't inherently know how to collaborate. Thus, if we want to embrace social learning, we have to "teach" learners the art of working in social groupings. Secondly, gender and cultural differences can manifest in a reluctance to collaborate with others not in their demographic. This can limit the ability of these students to benefit from social learning, leading to disparate learning outcomes.

Learning by way of collaboration doesn't occur spontaneously. As teachers, we need to help learners understand how to collaborate, and we need to ensure that the social mechanisms of collaboration are equally welcoming to all our students, regardless of demographic differences.