Welcome!

We want to hear from you! Visit our BrainCogs Community Bulletin Board to send in your ideas and feedback about how you use BrainCogs, and well put them on our website for others to share!

In the coming months, this section of the web site will grow according to the feedback sent in from all the wonderful teachers using BrainCogs™. In the meantime, we offer a few tips and suggestions below.

Teacher Tips For Using BrainCogs

BrainCogs™ isn’t just test-prep software. The learning strategies introduced will help your students all year, so get started early!

Keep in mind that the Remembering and Organizing cogs contain strategies to help before students take a test, the Prioritizing and Shifting cogs contain strategies to help students during a test, and the Checking cog contains strategies to help students after, or upon completion, of a test.

The BrainCogs™ software was intended for individual use — but remember the benefits of whole-class discussions and activities to help solidify individually-acquired knowledge.

Think of this experience as similar to when your class reads a novel. Everyone reads the same words, yet everyone interprets the material differently. Perhaps you’ll want to view part of the software, such as the intro movies to each cog, as a whole class, and follow up each section with an extension activity to tie everything together. Check back to this site for more ideas and inspiration!

Use the BrainCogs™ vocabulary.

Think of yourself as a coach. If you’ve made up an elaborate game plan and want to refer to it later, you don’t want to have to go through all the details just to get your players to understand what you’re talking about. If you say "Triple Note Tote", you won’t have to explain each time that you mean a 3 column chart to help you remember details. Just like a football coach practices plays with his team, review the cog strategies from time to time, to make sure you students do understand what you’re referring to.

The BrainCogs™ CD-ROM contains more than 6 hours of animation and interactive activities.

We have intentionally divided up the content into sections that are short enough to complete in one sitting. Don’t worry about booking the computer lab for a full day. Spread out the BrainCogs experience over several weeks. Compare using BrainCogs™ as going to the gym and exercising. If you work out your brain for one hour, 3 times a week, for 3 weeks, you’ll reap more long-term benefits than you would if you put in one long nine hour workout!

As with any kind of learning, having students reflect on their BrainCogs™ experience is a valuable and important piece of the learning process.

Encourage your students to reflect on their use of the BrainCogs strategies after that first big test of the year. This can be achieved through a class discussion or individual journal entries. Lead them with questions. "What strategies did you use?" "Did it work?" "Will you use the same strategies again?" Have the students identify areas of the test that were difficult for them, and have them brainstorm ways that they can better prepare next time.