To understand the road blocks taking place in the construction of modern classroom design one must first understand the inner workings of a learners whole brain function as we know it today. As the information we discover related to whole brain learning achieves hope for break through learner acceleration derived in part from new classroom design. Regardless of the form digital educational delivery creates (digital curriculums) the “theater” or delivery system will become as important as the content itself. Every school administration team understands that unless the learner improves memory retention and recall (MRR) for the “educational movie” (regardless of the form of this movie, such as existing lesson plan, multimedia supported lesson plan – or self supported interactive digital lesson plan) the score will not in fact change across the wide spectrum of learning groups unless the MRR is elevated. A condition best achieved when the delivery system for education most faithfully mirrors the whole brains favorite way to learn. But what is the brains favorite way to learn?

Lets begin with the Hippocampus story.

The Hippocampus located above the central brain stem is acting for classroom learners, as the "virtual RAM" memory for the human brain. The sensory input we all enjoy when in the presence of one another, as well as the sensory stimulation from tactile, auditory, emotional, visual, kinesthetic and non-verbal cueing that takes place within all human learning flows directly through the hippocampus. The Hippocampus is the controlling telegraph station of the mind acting as the "central switching" station to “decide” what long-term posting of any incoming stimulation will remain in permanent impression to the cerebral cortex (the multi hard drives of the human brain). The reader of my paper is saturating their own hippocampus with chemical data that is now stimulating electrical generation and cell state simulation in the neurocortex fields creating state capacity for memory retention and recall along predefined calcium charged ion pathways (which we can now field map) flowing within the neural highway of your own mind. This involuntary process dictates to "pre conditioned" response levels whether you will in fact remember my words or delete them as you fail to argue the premise at any future point of debate. Your unconscious competent is your hippocampus control system – now under the most serious stress since evolution began to work on higher brain function.

Modern mind theory currently concludes the conscious fields incorporating perception and feeling are replies to stimulations that arise in mind fields much like magnetic fields as generated in a coil of wire. The multiple on/off signals of our vast “mind” fields of connected neurons create a virtual “conscious field” that itself depending upon its state degree – or cell electrical intensity – will define our MRR or memory retention and replay. As much of a learners mind field is generated through involuntary stimulation, developing new classroom design criteria for “knowing” which stimulation sequence (say in classroom architecture) generates more intense memory retention and recall becomes of vital importance as the outcome is improved human comprehension – learning. The Super Teaching longitudinal study invested more than two decades to discover if the brain indeed could provide feedback (mind mapping) establishing a measured whole brain response that the “mind field” did in fact have a favorite way to learn.

Mind fields also have optimum learner states for reception. Mind fields may turn chemistry on or off to elevate mood and expectancy. The very presence of more appealing mind field technology (Super Teaching) stimulates favorable field states more receptive to long-term memory posting (retention and recall). When such tools are absent from the classroom the mind field fails to duplicate the conditions of deeper storage for the learner. As these experiments are now possible to duplicate using modern mind mapping technology any institution can prove the premise for Super Teaching with their own double blind studies. Variation in the output is minimal and all human brains are effected positively by incorporating Super Teaching classroom architecture.

The hippocampus operates with a CPU program that is slow to alter in evolutionary time. Hippocampus core program (firings) develop over generations based on its early history repetitive environmental programming. The program process of earlier human history was more gentle than todays, taking place over massive time periods. The hippocampus of past generations was not influenced by or hyper stressed from the current generations assault of multimedia sensory input. Today's imploding societies now saturate the hippocampus with multimedia stimulation from shopping mall, to home entertainment theater, to IPOD. The Hippocampus Ram, when compared to a 286 computer, might be a 564 byte ram drive facing terra/bytes of high bandwidth incoming – that require a 100 gig ram versus a 564 byte ram capacity to manage all the incoming information packets. This stress load has altered the core program of “how” the hippocampus selects or discards information for long-term memory storage on the brains C drive (cerebral cortex). Vast sums of learner information are now being dumped, a condition beyond the educators teaching art to repair. More correctly there is now a selective brain switching deficit disorder versus an actual attention deficit disorder in modern brains. In fact recent studies verify the conclusions of the two decade old Super Teaching trails – that conclude the brain itself has been restructured at the synapse level for multimedia conditioned learners at very young ages. The appetite to learn remains high for all learners. The form of educational delivery to the new brains anticipation for delivery method as well as content quality defines whether the brain will discard or post the curriculum information packets. This new data holds great potential for human learning in the current generation.

In a single span of two generations more evolutionary pressure has been placed on the Hippocampus/Cortex system than in thousands of years of prior human environment. One might ask, was the hippocampus designed to adapt to the modern stress load? Consider the hippocampus mission of learning to plant corn, over time, from a mentor sponsor. Now consider a young teenage learner exercising a modern hippocampus mission at any urban stop light at any busy intersection, while the six yahoo windows opened on the wireless card beep and demand multi replies on the full featured laptop on the seat facing the driver as they stop – and each demand the drivers attention. All the while the driver is engaged in busy cross traffic, on the go, scanning and making selection calls and throughout the duration of this enterprise the driver controlling complex machinery is also talking on the cell video phone, seeing and talking to a third party at the same time – and taking two calls on hold that beep in and placing one call into a two way conference while they answer the yahoos and watch for the stop light to change – even as the pager on the young teen drivers belt is going off making them take the IPOD bud out of their left ear – and during the stop light, still on red for only seconds, the driver is also replying to the heat by turning the air condition down and ignoring the GPS routing verbal commands coming from the center console. The light abruptly changes to green and the accelerator must be depressed while countless priorities are managed and moved into sequence. When is the adaptive quality of the human hippocampus naturally exceeded? Is it now? When such a pre conditioned learner enters a modern antique classroom design – the brain – elevates mind wandering and "channel switching" of the slower classroom media (the teacher). Modern brains fail to post countless information packets into long-term memory retention and recall (as test scores demonstrate). During the time that national test scores have lowered teaching deliverables have risen to unmatched excellence. What is wrong? One might question over eighty billion dollars in the wrong technology solution where countless points of useless obsolesce have arisen all without grade elevation. What continues to be wrong?

The first generation of help was provided primarily by manufacturing companies seeking to keep their factories busy. The actual proof of performance their educational technologies “worked” proved, much later, to be shallow. Institutions left with high repair costs, obsolete technologies and underperforming statistics began to back away from technology in all applications as a sustainable solution. Still the test scores did not recover and, for much of the world, are not showing promise of near term recovery anytime soon. Why are the learners failing to learn for the first time in recorded human history?

Dr. Benjamin Libet of the University of California at San Francisco found that certain simple actions, such as moving one's hand or turning your head on your neck represent processes at the neurological level that are pre initiated before the conscious decision to act has taken place. How would such experiments in the 1970's (new recent information on whole brain function) impact learning in every classroom?

Another relevant question might be is the hippocampus innately better designed by nature to manage a time period of adapting humans from the first hunter-gatherer lifestyle toward several thousand years later to the buckboard with a cup of piping hot coffee on the seat beside the driver, versus adapting to today's astronaut managing a safe shuttle landing? Have we reached a stage of hyper stimulation that the adaptive qualities of the key switching center of the brain, the Hippocampus, are now simply in overwhelm? Have we humans required new software operating codes for a hardware device that is not designed by nature to handle the memory requirements of the new multimedia world we now live in or the velocity of signals now reaching such brains?

Perhaps the most correct question would be, when is the adapting process of the brain chemistry and hippocampus ram processing system taxed by incoming super stimulation beyond the ability of the hippocampus to function at optimum? Is such a condition affecting classroom learning for all learners worldwide today?

In 1986 (even more recent new whole brain information) Dr. Byron Reeves of Stanford University and Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri began to study whether the simple formal features of television multimedia – such as cuts, edits, zooms, pans, variable noise patterns, and changing images effected by special effect motors would activate focus and elevated attention on the screen. A profound conclusion developed. This data pool would become a “floorboard” for later Super Teaching Theory for all learners and the basis of new classroom design incorporating Super Teaching as the brains favorite way to remember, retain, and recall (the three R's). The conclusion reached by this pioneering multimedia research team postulated from watching brain waves and mind mapping was that attention was positively effected (enhanced) by multimedia form over substance, and that these stylistic tricks did indeed trigger “involuntary” response to improve memory retention and recall (MRR). Such responses derive their attentional value through the evolutionary significance of movement. In Super Teaching theory we would later come to call the ideal movement sequences ST Pattern or Super Teaching pattern shifts the brain into higher states of memory retention and recall. As the process could now be measured the science became "which" patterns suggested the best performance. The final point of the important work presented by Dr. Reeves, Dr. Thorson and their team concluded that the multimedia “form”, not the content, was the aspect that created the result as unique (elevated viewer attention) and measurable test score output. Viewers tended to have riveted attention on presented subject matter with the ST pacing in the classroom but when lacking the ST pacing stimulation individuals experienced involuntary randomized mind wandering that defeated elevations to memory retention and recall (MRR) (a return to poor test score performance).

As the wiring bundle to the hippocampus is the brain's virtually “everything” our minds “patch board switching station” from which all “incoming” is filtered into long-term, permanent storage (cerebral cortex) the taxation upon the ability of the hippocampus to function at optimum due to hyper stimulation is taking a considerable and increasing role for modern researchers in defining the future of classroom learning and design.

The hippocampus alone makes decisions, and for humans who wish to learn, hippocampus decisions are absolute as to which incoming information will be stored into the cerebral cortex and for some aspects of human learning the cingulated cortex of the brain. Not only does the hippocampus, or short term ram memory, make a decision as to what information patterns (memory) will be placed into the brains longer term storage or C, D, E, F, G, H and related hard drives (cerebral cortex) – the massive cerebral cortex of the left and right brain hemispheres do/do not receive data based on hippocampus selection or predetermined on/off cell state controls. As these on/off cell state controls have been found to fall under outside “influence”, it is therefore possible to determine the learner brain is more “on” than “off”. This knowledge and technology condition is new in the history of human education and brain state knowledge.

For example we now know the hippocampus, virtually alone, decides precisely where curriculum information packets or bundles of incoming information from all RAM experience will next assemble, and combine auditory visual kinesthetic emotional stimulation, into later recognized patterns. ST studies have demonstrated specific input stimulation (three screen variable pacing learner multimedia) can influence, as well as impact, the electrical quality of each learner impression (cell state) and the depth such information packets will be chemically impressed into the cortex's synapse nerve bundles for later retrieval. If the impression and the impact for the electrical storage process (memory state) is weak the reconstruction of experience is vague or non existent. If the impression or the impact for the electrical storage process (memory cell state) is high in quality the potential for reconstruction of the experience (learning) is improve. The fact that such potential at the cell state level can be influenced for all learners represents a new system opportunity for classroom design and teacher output performance.