Rui Xu (ID#:861188980)
Basic Writing 003
Journal #3
24 October 2014
Learning In Another Way
In Claire O’Connell’s speech, she demonstrates the occasion which inspired her to think about the how to map the brain in a meaningful way. After that she told us how she did it and what she thought about the way that students should be educated. She came up with the idea of mapping the brain game form a popular smartphone game called “The Angry Bird”. As she worked together with her friend Bobby, they posted slices of brain tissue with multiple scan images. Through analyzing each layer of tissue images to identify the position of a single nerve and where two nerves touch together. With thousands of players’ results, we can build a map of the sample tissue and then map the whole nerval system of human brain. The result and principle of the research can be used in many aspects such as to rebuild the damaged eye wire that makes blind people enable to see again. Also to explore how brain structure can determine human characters.

I think the “inquiry-driven, project-based learning methods should be more encouraged in colleges. My experience on learning Python will prove my thesis. When I decided to learn Python in high school I knew nothing about programming except the most basic flow diagram principles. At first, I bought loads of technical handbooks which were obscure and hard. I was totally frustrated because there was no progress at all. But after I found my first intern position and participated in a real project everything had changed. My