“To be creative means to connect” –Nawal El Saadawi
NW Noggin is honored to be a Brain Awareness Week partner of the Dana Foundation, a leading philanthropic organization that supports neuroscience research through grants, publications, and educational programs. We share their enthusiasm for genuine community outreach, and their commitment to educating everyone about the potential of research…
Listening, learning and making connections beyond the college green…
LEARN MORE: The Dana Foundation
LEARN MORE: Brain Awareness Week
What is NW Noggin?
‘If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.’–Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Estrada
The Northwest Neuroscience Outreach Group: Growing in Networks is a robust, creative, volunteer driven non-profit (EIN: 81-3885713) that brings together scientists and artists and students of all ages to share their expertise, enthuse young people about science and art, share area educational resources, and inform and excite the public about ongoing, taxpayer supported neuroscience research…
LEARN MORE: Noggin has the Juice!
Noggin was thrilled to offer the keynote address at the Dana-sponsored Brain Awareness event during the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego last fall…
LEARN MORE: SfN18 Celebrates Brain Awareness
LEARN MORE: Synapsing in San Diego @ SfN!
Since 2012 we’ve worked with more than 30,000 academic priority students in Portland, Vancouver, eastern, coastal and southern Oregon, eastern Washington, San Diego and DC public schools!
Going places, connecting communities: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” –Benjamin Franklin
We’ve offered free talks from students in neuroscience and art at local bike shop pubs and other venues, and have informed thousands of community members about federally funded research, helping train graduates to present their work to a lay audience.
Brain Awareness Week Partner Interview: NW Noggin
LEARN MORE: Combining Neuroscience & Art (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
Essential to our training of new scientists is the inclusion of art.
LEARN MORE: The “STEAM” approach
Arts integration makes learning personally relevant.
From the Perception course at Portland State University (J. Chapleau)
Art, drama, music, experiment, improv and storytelling allow for compelling, open ended exploration of scientific concepts, and offer actual science teachers in the classroom, with real kids, a broader, more innovative palette from which they can approach their own lessons.
NW Noggin in Davenport, Washington
This is more effective, engaging, inclusive and joyful than administering yet another “one-right-answer” bubble test confusingly written by for-profit test and textbook companies, or imposing more meaningless jargon from another graduate school of education…
“He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.” –Ursula K. Le Guin
“Learning goals” – or learning? Ditch the jargon, drop the scripted elevator pitch, see other people, listen, ask questions, make things, tell stories, get inspired, go places – and engage!
LEARN MORE: Noggin at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility, Woodburn, OR
Latino Network collaboration in Portland Public Schools
Spirit Mountain Community Funded outreach to tribal majority schools, Fall 2018
LEARN MORE: STEAM Art Projects
We LOVE volunteering (it’s even good for your health), listening, discussing brain research, and making art in urban and rural schools, youth correctional facilities, Congress, homeless youth centers, hospitals, art museums, symphonies, Wizard-Con, concerts, pubs…
“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” – John Dewey
Noggin at North Middle School, Grants Pass, OR
LEARN MORE: Volunteering and health benefits in general adults
We love it so much, in fact, that we do it all year long!
The questions we get are incredible, and thought-provoking. They sharpen and inform our own thinking about the brain and sleep, anxiety, bias, depression, homelessness, equity, art, ADHD, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, pain, drugs, adolescent brain development…
READ THEIR QUESTIONS: How can you change your brain?
“As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” –Amy Poehler
We are lucky to have such tremendous collaborators, including the Portland Alcohol Research Center (PARC) at OHSU, which purchased our pipe cleaners, nitrile gloves and 3D printing supplies, and the exceptional graduate and undergraduate students who leave their campus and lab to contribute their valuable time, knowledge, enthusiasm and expertise in public. They make connections – and make art! – and build community around the shared fascination with who we are, what we’re made of, and how we work…
LEARN MORE: NW Noggin Collaborators
LEARN MORE: Synapsing in San Diego
Check out what we did during this year’s Brain Awareness Week (March 11-16) at the links below…
Noggin joins ABCD Family Night @ OHSU!
Great experience! The ABCD Study is exploring changes in both the structure and function of developing brains, and behavior, by following a cohort of kids through their adolescence…
Noggin @ p:ear!
P:ear is an extraordinary homeless youth center, where we love to answer questions and learn more from wonderful young Portlanders without access to safe housing. We’re visiting here every Tuesday to show brains, and make art…
We visited Oregon Public Broadcasting to talk more brains and art!
Listen to “Combining Neuroscience And Art” on Spreaker.
Bill Griesar, who teaches psychology and neuroscience at Portland State University, teamed up with artist Jeff Leake to create a nonprofit called NW Noggin. Their goal is to engage kids through both art and science to help them learn about their how their brains work.
Noggin @ HeLa High!
We returned to this awesome Evergreen Public School to mess with our taste buds, and investigate the relationship between sensory detection and perception..! We enjoyed access to the official Instagram account for PSU this same day, too 🙂
Noggin @ Brain Fair
One of the largest Brain Fairs ever! We put the brains in Brain Fair, and went through twenty boxes of nitrile gloves! That’s 1000 people holding brains!!