BrainBank Learning - a strategy for meaningful learning

BrainBank Learning (BBL) is a pedagogically based toolg for concept based learning and development of learning strategies in a life long perspective. The tool is developed by Cerpus AS over several years of empirical testing and publication of results. The pupils work in BBL on the Internet using a standard web browser. Each pupil has her own account in the application. Concepts the pupil comes across while studying are entered and annotated in BBL, next the pupil may associate the concepts using descriptive typed associations. Doing this, the pupil constructs her own personal network of concepts and associations, a topic map making up a representation of the learners documented knowledge.

The intension of documenting the learning process this way is both to stimulate a deeper understanding of the learners knowledge as well as establishing a stucture which can be used for navigation and reuse of the knowledge elements at later occasions.

By connecting digital resources (images, texts, video and sound) to the concepts in BBL, the pupils  may construct a personal ePortfolio represented in a topic map structure. The concepts and the association types will then function as meta data for the digital content.