Schools teach using the methods that yield the lowest
percentage of retainment. Lectures and reading books are the main ways students
are forced to learn. But perhaps there is no other way of teaching myriads of
students but through lectures or readings. The most effective way we learn is
from teaching others or applying what we just read, seen, or heard immediately.
For me, the reason I did a bit of research to find more effective ways of
learning is because I wanted to maximize my time I spent studying. I do not
want to waste my days away doing something that yields so little actual
learning in return. From the example from http://www.psychotactics.com/blog/art-retain-learning/
the way we traditionally learn has students leaking about 90% of information
when they read or sit in class listening to lectures. When I am studying for
classes, I look over the professor’s powerpoints and notes. I am merely reading
the teacher’s notes. It makes sense that I am actually learning very little in
my classes if I compare to how much time I spend looking over these notes. From
reading the article mentioned, I’ve learned that making mistakes forces our
brains to take note of the mistake.
The best way to make mistakes is through teaching someone or
implementing what you just read. If we think about it, it all makes sense. When
we teach someone it forces us to make connections and to make mistakes. When we
realize the mistakes we made through teaching, our brains are forced to make a
note of it.
The conundrum that exists however is, can you be teaching
someone if you don’t actually know what you are talking about? At first glance
it may seem like an oxymoron. But let’s look at it this way. Perhaps it is the
act of teaching someone that forces us to make connections, explore topics that
confuse us, make mistakes and to correct them, and at the same time, when we
are teaching someone, we are using our own auditory and visual aspects to help
retain the information. In other words, when we pretend to teach a subject, we
retain more than if we just read a book on the subject. Perhaps when I am
preparing for my finals, I want to pretend to teach an imaginary-student out loud
of the notes that I am going over, instead of just reading over the notes over
and over again.
UPDATE: just added this in as of Sunday, 11:44 pm; May 6,
2012 after talking with David while walking Lucky
How exactly should we take advantage of this knowledge? If
we read an interesting article and want to be able to retain as much as we can
from it, we should teach the contents of the article to ourselves. Again, I don’t
believe we have to have a person sitting there listening to what we are “teaching”
them for us to retain the information. Again, it is the act of teaching that
allows us to retain the information. For me, when I read the article linked
above, I wanted to put this idea of teaching others to the test. I took out a
piece of binder paper and made an outline of the article paragraph by
paragraph. I read the paragraphs most related to each other, went to the paper,
and based off what I had read, I proceeded to write down what I had remembered
(I would not look at the article when I proceeded to write down what I just
read as that would just be paraphrasing and would decrease the chances of
making mistakes- mistakes is what helps us retain information). I would
summarize what I just read, put in my own thoughts, ideas, and questions, went
back to the article to see if I had made any mistakes in terms of information,
got any confusion clarified, and repeated these steps for the next few paragraphs
for the rest of the article. Lastly, I went over my outline piece by piece and
section by section, ran through the logic in my mind without looking at the
paper, mulled over the notes and clarified any lasting confusion.
I am confident to say that I have retained a high percentage
of information from the article that I pretended to teach to myself as I was able
to explain the contents of the “How to Retain 90% of everything you learn”
article to my brother as we were walking Lucky. I was also able to retain and
teach my brother what I had retained from “The Three Types of Burning Desires
and The Three Times in Our Lives When Burning Desire Fades” post I had written
yesterday.
When I look back on writing these posts, I ask myself, am I “teaching”
myself when I write articles for my blog? When I write, I let my mind flow, ask
myself questions, make connections, and make clarifications in terms of what I feel
and think about things. I would conclude that although I am learning about
myself, I am NOT retaining as much about my own post compared to if I did the
outlining process described above for these posts I write myself. Why is that? What’s
the difference between letting my thoughts flow, writing them down in a
coherent manner vs. outlining my own articles and “teaching” them to myself?
Obviously, because I wrote the article myself, outlining it
again and teaching it to myself would only reinforce what I realized about
myself, but I believe, when I write down my thoughts, I am merely recording my thoughts.
My thoughts come in spurts and it comes it a logical pattern. Thoughts come,
questions come up, more ideas come up and I document them. That is how I write
these articles. This piece of word document that I am using to type this up is
merely a receiver that allows me to record down my thoughts and ideas
permanently vs if I didn’t write them down, I would forget the majority of my thoughts
as I go deeper and deeper into contemplation. So when I write these articles, I
am merely getting down my spontaneous, present, in the moment, and fleeting
thoughts and ideas. It’s one thing to remember parts of your trail of thoughts
and deeper insights, and another thing to be able to analyze the pattern of my
in-the-moment thoughts after I record them down. It is then, when I go back and
analyze (teach to myself) my thoughts, feelings, ideas, and questions of my
posts that I can retain more of the information.
No comments:
Post a Comment