Brain Workshop - Brain Training That Makes Kids Smarter

Both parents and educators are always interested in new brain training techniques to help young children learn more effectively. An amazing app called Brain Workshop can help.

WEBSITE: http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net

Brain Workshop is an open-source application that takes students through a series of training sessions that challenge the mind to keep track of multiple concepts like position, letters, numbers and sound, and process those concepts quickly enough to make a quick decision.

The application pushes short term memory to its limits, and according to the application creators, actually serves to develop the brain and improve fluid intelligence.

Brain Training with Brain Workshop
Science is still working on whether or not a brain's capabilities can be "developed" through brain training exercises, but the creators of Brain Workshop cite a specific study published by the National Academy of Sciences. The study findings were also published in a 2008 Wired article.

The study provides evidence that a specific form of training tasks can actually increase "Gf", which is defined as fluid intelligence - the ability to reason and solve new problems. The training that was focused on in the study is the very training that you'll find in Brain Workshop.

Brain Workshop Main Screen

Brain Workshop uses what it calls "Dual N-Back" tasks, which it says will improve short term memory and fluid intelligence. That software is very easy to learn, and simple enough for children as young as eight or nine years old to play. However it is also capable of holding the attention of adults, and helping them brain train as well.

From the main screen, you can press C to choose game mode, which gives you the ability to alter aspects of the training. For example, you can turn off the audio portion of the training to make it simpler, or you could turn on "Use arithmetic" to make the training even more difficult.

Choose Game Mode

From the main screen, when you press the space bar to start a new training session, you'll see a screen that looks a bit like a tic-tac-toe game. This is the training space, where all of the brain training will take place.

Main Training Screen

Once you press the space bar to begin, you'll see a square show up somewhere on the three-by-three grid.

At the same time, you'll hear a computerized voice speak a letter. The trick of the "game" is to remember two important things - the position of the square, and the letter that was spoken two turns previous.

A Training Session

Trust me, it sounds a whole lot easier than it actually is. However, even though the training sessions may really push your brain to its limit, the session itself is very fun and addictive.

The problem with the default training mode is that it's set to Dual 2-Back, which means that you have to remember two turns previous. Unless you've been training for a while, that is actually extremely difficult for most people.

Thankfully, you can simplify this from the main screen by pressing "Space" to enter the training workshop, pressing "M" for manual, and then "F1" to reduce the N-Back level to 1.

Changing to Dual 1-Back

Once you've changed to Dual 1-Back, you only have to remember the very last position and the very last letter spoken. Again - it sounds much easier than it is. However, over time, you'll get better at it, and if the study findings are any indication, you may even see an improvement in your short-term memory.

The session screen includes a list of your last performance statistics for the current day at the upper right corner of the screen, the statistics for your very last brain training session at the bottom of the screen, and of course all of the controls to the left. As you can see, the new mode "Dual 1-Back" is now at the top of the training screen.

Training Session Screen

Also, if you've been using the program for at least a couple of days in a row, you can press "G" on the keyboard to see a graph that shows your daily progress. This should show evidence of your regular performance increase the more you use the software.

Daily Progress Graph

Also, Brain Workshop is intended to be used in a classroom or school environment, so you can actually create multiple profiles so that the software can track the performance changes for individual students.

You can create student accounts by pressing "U" from the main menu, which will take you to the "Choose User" screen.

Create New User

On this simple screen, you can use the keyboard arrow keys to arrow up to "New user" and define the name of the new user account. This is also the screen where students will go to log into their own brain training account.

The individual user account has an option to modify the configuration for that account. This is actually a way for teachers or parents to customize the look, feel and behavior of the application for specific students.

The software opens the configuration file for that student's account, and you can change things like whether the application opens in full-screen or not, whether the background is black or white, whether to provide correct/incorrect feedback to the student during the training session, and many other configuration options.

Student Configuration File

As students use the software and develop their skills with remembering both position and the last letters spoken, the teacher or parent can then increase the difficulty of the software by modifying the mode to Dual 2-Back.

This requires an ability to remember two steps back for position and spoken letter, pushing the student's mental abilities to new limits.

Braining Training Software
While science is still trying to decide whether or not it's truly possible to improve the brain's capabilities through regular training, the creators of Brain Workshop at least have one real scientific study supporting the software.

Testing the software yourself, you'll see just how far the training sessions push your memory. It's very easy to see how regularly using the brain training tool will help to greatly improve your ability to remember things.