Surprising! particularly since they traditionally come at the end.

Though for teaching purposes, I can definitely see a professor wanting it up front. I also frequently skim through bibliographies before starting reading works now, though I didn't do this in the past. Reading a bibliography first is an excellent way to establish common context with an author however.

tabula rasa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa

Umberto Eco indicates that every work of art can be read in one of three ways: - moral, - allegorical - anagogical

Compare this to early Christianities which had various different readings of the scriptures.

Relate this also to the idea of Heraclitus and the not stepping into the same river twice as a viewer can view a work multiple times in different physical and personal contexts which will change their mood and interpretation of the work.

Creating links to one's own personal context can help one to both learn and retain new material.

More closely associating new ideas to one's own personal life helps to create and expand the context of the learning to what one already knows.

Within the context of Bloom's Taxonomy, doing this shows that one understands and is already applying and even doing a bit of creating, at least internally.

Should 'understanding' come before 'remembering' in Bloom's taxonomy? That seems more logical to me.

Bloom's Taxonomy mirrors the zettelkasten method

(Recall Bloom's Taxonomy: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create)

One needs to be able to generally understand an idea(s) to be able to write it down clearly in one's own words. Regular work within a zettelkasten helps to reinforce memory of ideas for understanding and retention. Applying the knowledge to other situations happens almost naturally with the combinatorial creativity that occurs within a zettelkasten. Analysis is heavily encouraged as one takes new information and links it to prior knowledge and ideas; this is also concurrent with the application of knowledge. Being able to compare and contrast two ideas on separate cards is also part of the analysis portions of Bloom's taxonomy which also leads into the evaluation phase. Finally, one of the most important reasons for keeping a zettelkasten is to use it to generate or create new ideas and thoughts and then write them down in articles, books, or other media in a clear and justified manner.

Personalizing ideas using existing memories is a method of brining new knowledge into one's own personal context and making them easier to remember.

link this to: - the pedagogical idea of context shifting as a means of learning - cards about reframing ideas into one's own words when taking notes

There is a solid group of cards around these areas of learning.

Random thought: Personal learning networks put one into a regular milieu of people who are talking and thinking about topics of interest to the learner. Regular discussions with these people helps one's associative memory by tying the ideas into this context of people with relation to the same topic. Humans are exceedingly good at knowing and responding to social relationships and within a personal learning network, these ties help to create context on an interpersonal level, but also provide scaffolding for the ideas and learning that one hopes to do. These features will tend to reinforce each other over time.

On the flip side of the coin there is anecdotal evidence of friends taking courses together because of their personal relationships rather than their interest in the particular topics.

Scholars who study writing differentiate between knowledge telling and knowledge transforming.

Highlighting can be seen as a weak form of knowledge telling. It's a low level indicator that an idea is important, but doesn't even go so far as the reader strengthening the concept by restating the idea in their own words similar to the Feynman technique.

One could go steps further by not only restating it but transforming it and linking it into one's larger body of knowledge or extending into other contexts.

On the difference for writing for one's self and for others. Of course there's also the need to be able to re-decifer one's notes again in the future. It may be best to keep more detailed for your future self as if you're writing for the public.

I like the idea of distance in "communication space" which comes up in the comments. This is related to context collapse and shared contexts which are often too-important in our communication with regard to being understood in the far future.

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Matthias Melcher</span> in Commonplace Book | x28's new Blog (<time class='dt-published'>07/06/2021 11:13:34</time>)</cite></small>

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