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17 Feb 20 - 01:28 PM (#4034660) Subject: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Dave the Gnome The Feynman technique Basically: Choose a Concept Teach it to a Toddler Identify Gaps and Go Back to The Source Material Review and Simplify This rings true with me. When I was teaching UNIX basics I always found that I had to really understand every aspect when with absolute beginners. Once I got to system security or performance tuning I found I was better equipped if I went through the same process. Sadly, most people on these courses had a little knowledge already which, as we know, can be very dangerous!I Anyway. I like the concept and thought I would share it. One variation could work. Instead of trying to teach a child, how about trying to teach the Mudcat collective. Or is that child just too unruly? :-) |
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17 Feb 20 - 01:45 PM (#4034663) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: punkfolkrocker Learn from other peoples costly mistakes.. .. but still end up doing exactly the same stupid things yourself... |
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17 Feb 20 - 01:45 PM (#4034664) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Donuel When I tried to teach the conundrums of black holes I discovered my own gaps in understanding by trying to teach an 8 year old. The Feynman technique does include having to know fundamentals first so there can be a common language/concepts to discuss something. Step 1, learn everything possible first. Step 2, study the impossible that may be possible based on what you know. But I get your point Dave. Teach and you will be taught. ? |
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17 Feb 20 - 01:50 PM (#4034666) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: punkfolkrocker btw.. my mrs has spent over 30 years teaching thousands of toddlers and infants... I think she might enjoy sitting back with a coffee and chocolate biscuits, watching you guys try to teach Black Holes and Coding to her current class... You'd be advised to wear shin pads and cricket boxes.. .. and can you still run faster than a 5 year old when they escape...??? |
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17 Feb 20 - 01:52 PM (#4034668) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Mr Red In the early days of computer manuals, it was normal when reading a particular page to realise you had to have read the whole manual to get what any one page was about. I find help files and web help pages much the same today. The best way I find when looking for a particular wheeze is working examples and tinkering from there. At least Micro$oft have learned that lesson, but not in every case! Computers are complex! People can be thick ----- can't I? |
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17 Feb 20 - 03:48 PM (#4034676) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Senoufou I'm extremely interested in this, having been a teacher and a learner for most of my life. I started 'teaching' at thirteen when the local vicar put me in charge of the 3-5 year-olds at Sunday school. I adored doing it, and found that visual aids, plasticene-modelling and acting out Bible stories did the trick. Later, as a qualified primary schoolteacher, I discovered that simple chalk-and-talk was boring and unproductive. Jokes, a bit of interactive banter, short educational films, related artwork, creativity, out-of-school visits and so on produced far more worthwhile learning. As a learner, I have always found throwing myself in at the deep end taught me what I needed to know very swiftly. For example, a few years ago I learned British Sign Language,and haunted the Deaf Social Centre in Norwich, interacting with the lovely deaf folk there as best I could. I soon picked up the signing (had to!) which added a lot to my evening class lessons, and I passed the exam. I'm now learning Malinke, and I just let my husband rabbit on, either to me or on his mobile phone to his family, and somehow, I'm picking it up well. So I think 'doing' is the best way to learn, not breaking the subject up into digestible chunks. But every person has their own individual brain, and must learn in the way that suits them best. |
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17 Feb 20 - 04:28 PM (#4034677) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Jack Campin Here's something I wrote years ago about language learning. VOLATS for Turkish |
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17 Feb 20 - 05:08 PM (#4034682) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Tattie Bogle "Dangerous webpage blocked" on trying to open your link, Jack! My best way to learn anything is MY way, and everyone else will have THEIR own way, i.e. there is no one good suit-everyone way. To learn my lines or songs in various am-dram productions I've been in, was to make myself up a CD or tape of the words with my own lines missing, which I would then have to fill in. For learning musical stuff, I would have 1) a recording of my alto part for note learning, then 2) a recording of a professional production to consolidate words and singing alto part against all the other parts. Most of this hard work would be done in the car, to the possible consternation of other road users! Again, for learning songs, I would just sing along to a recording until the words were embedded; tunes come much easier for me than words! After that, it's sing them through without any backing, in the shower! |
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17 Feb 20 - 08:51 PM (#4034709) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Steve Shaw When I was about 20, one day I was out with Vicar Shaw from Oldham (no relation), on the banks of the Bury-Bolton canal in Radcliffe. He was one of the most eminent field botanists in the country, big chum of Roy Lancaster (who I've also met), and we were searching for undiscovered rarities. I was just looking up a specimen in my Flora when he whipped round and snapped "What d'yer think yer doin'!" "Er, I'm just looking up this specimen..." "Shut bloody book! Tha'll never learn OWT from a book! Ah didn't get ter be who I am by lookin' stuff up in a BOOK!" Ever since then I've treated books as reference only or a source of confirmation, never things you can learn from. John Seymour, who I always seem to be coming back to, said that nobody learns anything from having knowledge poured over them. You have to go out and grab it for yourself. I think the secret is to be child-like in your never-ceasing curiosity about everything all the time. |
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17 Feb 20 - 09:05 PM (#4034711) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Steve Shaw Talking about the influence of Vicar Shaw, I think that you need just one or two inspirational teachers in your life who'll pass on their spark. Kenny Alvin at Imperial College often "forgot" the required curriculum and went off on a tangent about his hobby horses, mainly to do with palaeobotany, and you couldn't help having his boundless enthusiasm rub off on you. Another was Kery Dalby (his full first name was Dunkery, called after Dunkery Beacon on Exmoor, in sight of which he was born), who taught us plant taxonomy. He'd occasionally take us for a botanical ramble, and progress would be "painfully" slow as he stopped incessantly to give us lengthy rundowns on wayside weeds. On one occasion we were on our way with him to Box Hill in Surrey. We got off the train at Boxhill and Westhumble station - and it took us an hour and a half to walk the half-mile from there to the bottom of Box Hill. But he had the knack of making you hang on his every word as his enthusiasm bubbled over, without a hint of pedagogical ego...a brilliant man who would always let his students buy him pints... :-) |
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18 Feb 20 - 03:37 AM (#4034724) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Mr Red i.e. there is no one good suit-everyone way. There is a nuance to that. There are ways a person can learn things that help any sighted person, the nuance is "the person may not want to use the methodology", then they say "it doesn't work for me". Self-fulfilling prophecy. One is to write things out long-hand. It is additional to reading, it involves motor actions, the storage in the cerebellum has another leg. The analogy I use is "legs on a stool" -- read & write is only a two legged stool, so it implies there is need for another trick for stability. Typing the concept/text etc in a computer is not a substitute. When I was on a "Creative Management**" course the person over-seeing the running would sit at the back quietly and doodle, (colours often). When his boss asked how the lecturer did, he consulted his doodle and he was confident in assessing the performance. I found my notes on particular songs made during the thinking process, if it took more than a day, had a similar feel, The juxtaposition of the words, phrases, sqiggles etc. Works for dyslexics even more so. Indeed there is a methodology that says when starting to jot down notes, the place to start is the "subject" ringed round in the centre of the page/paper/blackboard. Allied concepts then can be placed around in boxes/trangles/etc with lines for connectedness. More minutia can be placed around them with lines of connectedness to wherever. Circled, colours, thumbnail photos. Think criminal investigations/dramas, they often have such walls. A doddle with rules! ** I thought they wus groomin' me for management, and they wus trying to nuture my creativity. As my colleague said "I bet you got more put of that, than I did" and boy was he right. |
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18 Feb 20 - 03:53 AM (#4034726) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Mr Red The New Scientist has a lengthy article about sleep, and two germain things they advised for memorising were: 1) don't loose sleep to "cram" all night, for exams/interviews etc. 2) by reading/consuming info before sleep. Say in the evening. Another leg on the stool. One current understanding of sleep's purpose** is that of sorting the previous day's transactions and preparing the coming day's tasks. Tidying-up if you will. **(in this context. Yea, yea, there are also physiological things going on in the brain like flushing out prions). We all sleep, some better than others! |
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18 Feb 20 - 03:54 AM (#4034727) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Jack Campin That's the approach popularized by Tony Buzan in "Use Your Head". Buzan went on to write a shelfload of books about it, all entirely pointless - it only takes a few minutes to explain the idea, and anyone can work out the implications on their own. |
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18 Feb 20 - 04:07 AM (#4034730) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Doug Chadwick My best way to learn anything is MY way, and everyone else will have THEIR own way, i.e. there is no one good suit-everyone way. ..... "Shut bloody book! Tha'll never learn OWT from a book! Ah didn't get ter be who I am by lookin' stuff up in a BOOK!" Just because a book didn't suit him doesn't mean that it wasn't right for you, Steve, as you rightly point out in your first sentence. I can cram for an exam, learning the information like a script, to the point where I know the ink blots and creases in the paper. Three weeks later, I have forgotten most of it. The only way I can learn things in the long term is by constant repetition. For me, it really is a case of use it or lose it. Unfortunately, I have reached that point where even things I have known all my life are blanked out by senior moments. DC |
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18 Feb 20 - 04:19 AM (#4034731) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Senoufou I do relate to the sleep thing. I have always slept wonderfully well. Eight hours solid at night, and a nap in the afternoon, even when young. (Got home from teaching at the school around 4pm, fell into bed and slept profoundly for an hour!) If deprived of sleep, a rare thing such as during these blooming storms recently, I find my brain is not so sharp, a bit muddled and 'fuzzy'. This isn't just old age, it's always been so. And finding an inspirational teacher - oh yes! I was so lucky to have had several of these. Mr Shearn, who taught us English Literature, acted out the Shakespeare plays himself in front of the class, and his 'presence' was magical. I think he may have been gay, and rather 'camp', so he had huge talents in the drama field. We were mesmerised, never bored, and Shakespeare's words stayed in our heads, to be quoted freely in exams. |
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18 Feb 20 - 04:52 AM (#4034734) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Jack Campin "Dangerous webpage blocked" on trying to open your link, Jack! Strange. It's just a copy of a Usenet post I made, back in the early 90s. No active content and not even any hyperlinks - it's just text and a table. It's hosted by Angelfire, who I didn't think still existed - presumably that's why your provider doesn't like it? |
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18 Feb 20 - 05:26 AM (#4034736) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Steve Shaw Well I crammed to pass exams like the best of 'em, but I can't remember any of the information (as opposed to knowledge) that I picked up that way. You have to make all those connections from multiple directions that Mr Red was referring to, see how things relate and make ultimate sense. That has to be an active process fuelled by curiosity and self-motivation. I have hundreds of books (never fiction, which I don't read) but I can't sit there and read 'em cover to cover. I CAN grab one to find a missing link in my knowledge of a given topic, to sort a point out, and all of a sudden everything then makes sense, and I'm very unlikely to forget things in any substantive way that I learned that way. Not sayin' that there aren't irreducible "nuts and bolts." I used to think that the teachers who made us stand up and chant our times tables ad nauseam were morons, but I now realise what people of vision they truly were (when they weren't whacking us on the backside with a cane). And where would we be had we not learned the alphabet? I'm a good speller and don't make mistakes, but ask me how I learned to spell and all I can tell you is that I didn't do it by swallowing a dictionary. A word, to me, is never a string of letters. It's a mini-picture in which the basics simply have to be in place, and ideally it evokes the thing in real life that it represents. If it doesn't "look right" it shouldn't be let go. If you spotted that a Model T Ford had pulled up alongside Constable's hay wain, would you let it pass? |
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18 Feb 20 - 05:51 AM (#4034741) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Senoufou I could read when I was only two. But do you know, I have no idea how I learnt to do it! My mother managed to get me enrolled in Infants School a year early, at the age of four, because I stood in front of the Headmistress and reeled off most of the words from what I later realised was the Schonell Reading Age Test. As a teacher, I had pupils who could barely read at the age of eleven and I used many different strategies to help them improve. Each child had their own 'access portal' to their brain. It is, I found, a very personal thing. Oooh this is so interesting! My sister and her two daughters are incredibly gifted (very high IQs) but I don't think they would necessarily be able to teach, as they are all rather impatient. |
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18 Feb 20 - 07:16 AM (#4034750) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Steve Shaw In m'humble, the only thing that IQ tests measure is the ability to answer IQ test questions. And no sour grapes from me: when my IQ was measured when I was ten I was put into the top two percent (my score was 178). For a laugh, I paid to have it measured again when I was 20 and came out twenty points lower. Must've been all that Newcastle Exhibition. I should think I'm in single figures by now. Maybe the tests measure something or other about us, but I doubt if anyone knows what. And Hans Eysenck was an extremely unpleasant man whose science was incredibly shaky to the point of being dishonest and whose predilections were inclined towards the racist far-right. |
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18 Feb 20 - 11:14 AM (#4034807) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: punkfolkrocker Sen - "muddled and 'fuzzy'" is my norm.. My brain was at it's best when I was 17.. All downhill since then... I've rarely had a full nights sleep since the 1980s... I'll be pleasantly surprised if I make it past 70, but if I do, I don't expect to have escaped onset of dementia.. Still.. no point planning too far ahead in the corona era...??? |
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18 Feb 20 - 12:02 PM (#4034812) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Senoufou I wonder why you 'haven't had a good night's sleep' since the 1980's punkfolkrocker? My mother had dementia near the end of her life, but seemed happy and jolly enough anyway. I have to smile about 'Corona'. In the sixties, the Corona man came round in a van selling Corona fizzy drinks in bottles. (I believe it was a Welsh firm called Evans, but I may be wrong) Others on here may remember that too. Keep a-troshing, and don't yew worry about the end o' yer loif! |
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18 Feb 20 - 12:10 PM (#4034815) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: punkfolkrocker Sen - that was the very first in the entered our heads.. Still waiting for the Cresta and Kia-ora viruses.. Pandemics with their very own classic advertising jingles.. We like how the world health organisations are thinking these days... |
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18 Feb 20 - 12:25 PM (#4034817) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Steve Shaw I seem to remember that Corona pop bottles were covered in little dimples. I wonder whether it was a rash caused by the Corona virus... As long as there's no dandelion and burdock virus I'll be fine... |
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18 Feb 20 - 12:36 PM (#4034822) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: punkfolkrocker "the very first thing that" entered our heads.. bloody google dictate and tiny phone screens... |
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19 Feb 20 - 08:02 AM (#4034948) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Dave the Gnome Can you name a pop group that has been going since 1871? Ben Shaws :-) |
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19 Feb 20 - 09:05 AM (#4034979) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Steve Shaw No relation... |
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19 Feb 20 - 09:36 AM (#4034982) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Mrrzy I didn't understand a lot about statistics until I taught it. I didn't understand the rest (of what I needed to know) about statistics till I had to analyze my dissertation data. The way to remember a joke is to tell it before you forget it. So learning by teaching good; learning by doing, better. The joke thing is both. But to learn a foreign language, nothing beats immersion. Interestingly, British and American sign languages are mutually incomprehensible but ASL and French sign language are not. We Murricans got ours from the French, via (entre autres) Alexander Graham Bell... |
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19 Feb 20 - 11:01 AM (#4035006) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Senoufou It's funny isn't it Mrrzy that ASL and BSL are not mutually understood? I found when I was very young that 'falling in love' with a subject caused me to learn it avidly, like someone obsessed. My first French teacher, Mrs Hayward (a Welsh lady) was very pretty and always wore bright red lipstick. Totally enraptured, I watched her mouth as she pronounced the first French words I had ever heard. ("Bonjour mes éleves") ^ sorry, can't do a grave accent there on my laptop. I was only ten, but grabbed the very simple textbook and pored over it (It was all about a snowman and children throwing snowballs) We also had a French 'assistante' and I was like her little dog! Followed her everywhere, copying her accent. Same with Phonetics at University. I couldn't get enough of the palatal clicks, pharyngeal fricatives and glottal stops etc. So I came top with a Distinction! But our German teacher was ghastly. He had a first class honours degree, but couldn't teach for toffees. I suppose he put me off German a bit, and I only did it to A Level. |
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19 Feb 20 - 11:42 AM (#4035012) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Dave the Gnome So you was best at French but wurst at German? |
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19 Feb 20 - 12:16 PM (#4035022) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Steve Shaw Are you calling that bratwurst? (Sorry, Eliza...!) |
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19 Feb 20 - 12:23 PM (#4035025) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Senoufou Hahahahaaaagh Dave! I'm definitely the shape of a Wurst nowadays, hee hee! I actually did come top in German too, but never liked the blooming thing. I hated wading through Goethe and other dreadful literature. Mr Stonelake just couldn't inspire us to save himself. I needed 'A' Level German as the second language in order to fulfil the Attestation of Fitness to study at Edinburgh Faculty of Arts. And Latin 'O'Level as well. Now my sis and both her daughters are mathematics/science buffs. This brings me to a theory that a good way to learn is to follow one's interests and inclinations. A subject one finds fascinating is probably the best choice to study. (Is there such a thing as a PhD in Crumpetology?) |
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20 Feb 20 - 03:17 AM (#4035137) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: Ebbie A (very) slight segue here (?): The way I learn songs is to listen a few times to a recording then start to transcribe bits and pieces on the computer as the song progresses over and over. By the time I've learned the melody I have also learned the lyrics. But when Ginny Hawker and her group were the Guest Artists at our local Alaska Folk Festival I fell in love with the songs on several amazing CDs. I learned seven (7) of her songs all at the same time. I don't recommend it. |
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20 Feb 20 - 03:20 PM (#4035260) Subject: RE: BS: Best way to learn anything From: The Sandman useless for teaching the concertina. |