OCEANA – Logbook – conference

Kids have the mic!

Kids of year 7 succeeded in their challenge: to give a talk in a auditorium with 150 persons in the audience, at AgroParisTech engineering school in Paris. The topic of the talk what: how the brain work, how to optimize learning?

All gathered by groups of 2 or 3, talking about content of the OCEANA program, they had picked their subtopic:

• the brain, identity card,
• What we don’t see with our eyes:
  • neurons and
  • glials cells,
• the brain, this complex organ, how it works?
  • neurons get connected
  • neuronal path are created
  • nothing is fixed, the brain is plastic and we can learn all lifespan,
• the brain, functioning:
  • multiples brain lobes and functions,
  • what regions of the brain are used when we want to cross the street?
• the brain memorize, the brain learn: how to help memory? how to optimize it?

• We need messenger, the 5 sense: student are testing perception with the audience. Can we treat information if the vision is blur?
• We need to reactivate perceived information: children played the “kim game” with the audience,
• At the end, children ask to the audience what they learned about the brain. Do to that, they use a “memory game” to challenge the audience memory, we learn only if we don’t have “stress, fear …” and when we are active in the learning process.

Well done kids!

Each of the group created a tool to illustrate the message that they wanted to give: model, film, comic, card game …

Bravo! again to the kids that elicited curiosity, involvement and participation from the audience. The feedack that they received showed that information was successfully transferred, new neuronal paths was created or consolidated for all.

We wish to thanks WaxYouth, Jérémie Chaligné that initiated the project, for his invitation. The class and each kids, by participating to this event, experienced talking in public, which is a skill must needed for their future.

Autor: Isabelle Malet