Elaborative Encoding/Rehearsal; highly useful. Networked thought. See Bloom's and Solo's

For true deep processing and learning, intellectualism, one must think beyond the single source they are consuming and think about everything they know. Although keep in mind selective attention for true learning and thinking.

This process is habitualized by means of Zettelkasten and further aided in tool like hypothes.is

Seems similar to Communicating with an Antinet Zettelkasten.

People have evolved as social animals and this extends to thinking and interacting. We think better when we think socially (in groups) as opposed to thinking alone.

This in part may be why solo reading and annotating improves one's thinking because it is a form of social annotation between the lone annotator and the author. Actual social annotation amongst groups may add additonal power to this method.

I personally annotate alone, though I typically do so in a publicly discoverable fashion within Hypothes.is. While the audience of my annotations may be exceedingly low, there is at least a perceived public for my output. Thus my thinking, though done alone, is accelerated and improved by the potential social context in which it's done. (Hello, dear reader! 🥰) I can artificially take advantage of the social learning effects even if the social circle may mathematically approach the limit of an audience of one (me).

isolated nor learned in an isolated fashion, but hang together in a network of ideas, or “latticework of mental models” (Munger, 1994), it becomes easier to make sense of new information. That makes it easier not only to learn and remember, but also to retrieve the information later in the moment and context it is needed.

Our natural memories are limited in their capacities, but it becomes easier to remember facts when they've got an association to other things in our minds. The building of mental models makes it easier to acquire and remember new information. The down side is that it may make it harder to dramatically change those mental models and re-associate knowledge to them without additional amounts of work.

The mental work involved here may be one of the reasons for some cognitive biases and the reason why people are more apt to stay stuck in their mental ruts. An example would be not changing their minds about ideas of racism and inequality, both because it's easier to keep their pre-existing ideas and biases than to do the necessary work to change their minds. Similar things come into play with respect to tribalism and political party identifications as well.

This could be an interesting area to explore more deeply. Connect with George Lakoff.

(Gadamer 2004).

All intellectual endeavors start from a preexisting set of ideas. These can then be built upon to create new concepts which then influence the original starting point and may continue ever expanding with further thought.

Ahrens argues that most writing advice goes against the idea of the hermeneutic circle and pretends as if the writer is starting with a blank page. This can prefigure some of the stress and difficulty Ernest Hemingway spoke of when he compared writing to "facing the white bull which is paper with no words on it."

While it can be convenient to think of the idea of tabula rasa, in practice it really doesn't exist. As a result the zettelkasten more readily shows its value in the writing process.

It's interesting to make this distinction. While I recognize that networked learning pre-dates the rise of the web, I suspect many students and educators would equate "network" with "the internet" at this point (and the internet means "Web 2.0" - that is, a collaborative space where the user/creator distinction is blurred).

Would love to hear Campbell or Kuh elaborate on this. Identifying "connections" as more important than identifying content/information? A new way for searching the Internet? Mining connections among content/people? Mining the connections I've made among content/people on the Internet?

Yes, yes, yes. Networked learning IS experiential. I am always on the lookout for opportunities to facilitate those experiences - for my students and myself, and consider every embrace of glorious messiness a significant victory.

With a wide open network, it also makes the world look smaller.

This is a great essay by Gardner Campbell. I'd add more notes. But every time I try, I start sounding like a crazed revolutionary. Like this...

Ask not how you can be a more suitable corporate drone. Ask how you can knock them down a few pegs.

The computer is an unprecedented partner for the human mind. We've barely begun to tap its potential. Stop trying to turn it into television.

Stop training kids to do what they're told. Teach them to teach themselves and one another.

What a beautiful and evocative series of sentences!