Learning

• Kind of a superset of Reading and Taking Notes

School/education is not for teaching, but for learning. –Oregon State professor when describing the lack of understanding and massive confusion his students demonstrated when tackling a 2-minute problem in groups of 2 after they affirmed verbally that they understood the example previously presented.

Quicker isn't necessarily smarter, and slower isn't necessarily dumber. The intuitive person might not understand rigorously the idea. –One World Schoolhouse, Sal Khan

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a very narrow field –Neils Bohr
How professionals get to be “professionals” is by reading and trying stuff with disks they didn't care about. –StackOverflow on recovering disk data

By Dr. John Medina

• Exercise is HUGE! 2-3 days a week minimum, 20-30 mins of aerobic exercise (breaking a sweat it seems) leads to improved executive function, better cardiovascular system, etc.
• Marriages where the husband doesn't consider his wife's suggestions and complaints as useful soon leads to a divorce. Wives also should try to speak in a way their husband can understand. Source: John Gottman
• Curiosity greatly increases learning. However, is it always important? We still need to eat, save people's lives, etc.

http://vimeo.com/103672026 Really interesting passages from the Bible. However, my current lens is from a skeptic perspective

Are you sure that when you learn something, it actually takes root? + some other stuff I forget

• Learn Engineering (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyqwLiowZiU), and Automotive Basics do a great job too: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAutoPartsShop/about
• Edwards Lifesciences Critical Care Education is making some crazy helpful videos using animation to teach well. Clearsight and FloTrac / Fluid Responsiveness (done by Digital Cut in Irvine)
• Also welding simulator analysis on the fly…crazy.
• Jesse Schell in Learning is/<should be> Beautiful
  • Schell games creates 2/3 transformational games and 1/3 entertainment games.
  • Games/technology are great at creating situations where people don’t know what to do…putting your mind into that state where it’s a teachable moment. Human teachers are very necessary for those moments, and it's important to emphasize that fact when talking with teachers if you want adoption.
  • Increasingly people want a customized education and are very curious, foster that with education!
  • Also linked to Animation Mentor
• Lester Ingber has some good ideas (elephant and peanut problem <which I still don't get> and breadth-type learning) in karate81_attention.pdf and to some extent his other essay smni72_learning.pdf
• History of Bell Labs (particularly design decisions like having all doors open and free for questions) seem to be well described in The Idea Factory (check it out at the library)
• Alan Kay cares a lot about this. Powerful Ideas Need Love Too
  • The Federalist papers have difficult but worthwhile prose on why America was made the way it was. Once again we are face to face with something that “is hard to learn,” but has lost its perceived value to Americans–they ask why should they make the effort to get fluent in reading and understanding such deep content?

• Really good ideas for thought-provoking questions to ask children in Sugata Mitra's Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) toolkit. Some good tips too. Also see a Wired article talking about Mexico children doing the same thing: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/

• Learn faster by pretending you're teaching the subject to someone else while you're taking notes or reviewing them. Talking out loud helps me the most, but some can write down like they are talking. (A lot easier to do when the lecture is pre-recorded!!!) >.<
• The_Educated_Mind (linked by Bret Victor) claims that we should go through a natural heirarchy of understanding, similar to Trivium except more fundamental.

More of the same as above. “Tell then drill” is often used, whereas IMACS

“Decades of research with children suggests that young learners who may be programming don’t necessarily learn problem solving well, and many, in fact, struggle with algorithmic concepts especially if they are left to tinker in programming environments, or if the learning is not scaffolded and designed using the right problems and pedagogies.”

http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html (high school student taking Scheme classes) “The thing I liked most about taking this course in Scheme was that I knew that I was learning something.”

My background: A “TAG” student raised in a non-IMACS environment in *Hillsboro, OR* and graduated high school in 2008. I somehow got into Carnegie Mellon and wanted to learn more about signal processing primarily and pushed to take as difficult as courses as I could handle within my interests. I ended up getting C's in every math-related course and frankly still don't have a working understanding of probability and differential equations, I think because we went too fast and I resorted to pattern-matching. I am trying to balance see how important getting a

I am reading your blog and trying to meta-search it using Google to answer my questions, but I don't know the keywords for a few of my remaining questions. Please link to any relevant blog posts instead of rewriting them.

Do non-gifted kids exist? How do they learn optimally? What things should they not learn? Should they not learn critical thinking –> do IMACS?

• I remember someone saying a proportion of people don't want to have to think critically intrinsically, Khan seems to think all kids are capable of
• I do see that memorization is ideal for these people.
• Who are non-talented kids? Are there any? How would one identify themWhat should society do with these

What What should parents with non “TAG” students do? isn't this program appropriate for non-gifted-and-talented students?

What should I study? Do you have resources you recommend? How do you guys read books?

• I heard The Little Schemer is good.

• Did Stephen Poniatowicz and other Dan ___ from NC go to this school?