It's difficult to teach when you've forgotten how you learned a thing yourself. It's hard to un-know a topic to empathize with the beginner.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Manuel_of_Eames_Cursive_Shorthand_by_the/2Bk9AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Manuel of Eames Cursive Shorthand by the Card System<br /> A Reporting System with Longhand Movement, in which the Vowels and Consonants are Joined in the Order of Their Occurrence, Including a Remarkable Discovery in Pedagogics which Reduces the Time of Learning at Least One-half

I think I should define groups of my org-fc flashcards to review as a single unit. They should be interleaved.

Maybe test doing this with org-transclude.

Must look for good ways to implement retrieval practice.

Cothran, Ann, and George E. Mason. “The Typewriter: Time-Tested Tool for Teaching Reading and Writing.” The Elementary School Journal 78, no. 3 (1978): 171–73. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1001415

No new results here, but a modest overview and literature review of research on typewriters in classrooms.

M. W. Tate's 1934 typewriter studies showed student gains in language usage and spelling. Now that computers have automatic spell-checkers and students less frequently use dictionaries or study spelling in particular, does spelling ability in modern classrooms keep pace with numbers from earlier in the century when more emphasis was put on that portion of writing pedagogy?

One must wonder if the early use of typewriters to teach reading and writing research matches that of modern day use of computers and tablets in the same classrooms?

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1926-01653-001

Tao, Terence. “What Is Good Mathematics?,” February 13, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0702396.

Variations of this can also be applied to other fields, like history. What makes good history, good historians, good history teachers, etc.?

A ‘Science of Reading’ Revolt Takes on the Education Establishment by [[Sarah Mervosh]]

Lambert, Jonathan. “Why Writing by Hand Beats Typing for Thinking and Learning.” NPR, May 11, 2024, sec. Your Health. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/11/1250529661/handwriting-cursive-typing-schools-learning-brain.

Broad ideas which are scaffolded in youth should be more closely examined as children grow and develop. Being left with only basic "myths" is a disservice not only to the students, but to the societies in which they live and the early education would be better left off if it isn't followed up on in stages at later times. Or if it's the case, then stronger versions of the basics should be included for better long term outcomes.

We could consider open pedagogy an innovation too, and even a next step from OER.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1avz21q/what_to_teach_in_an_obsidian_workshop_at/

quoted section from:

St Augustine, Letters, trans. by Wilfrid Parsons, 5 vols. (Baltimore, MD: Catholic University of America Press, 1956), V, Letter 211, ‘To a Convent of Consecrated Virgins’, p. 43.

Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy - Manifold @CUNY

How to fold and cut a Christmas star<br /> Christian Lawson-Perfect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S90WPkgxvas

What a great simple example with some interesting complexity.

For teachers trying this with students, when one is done making some five pointed stars, the next questions a curious mathematician might ask are: how might I generalize this new knowledge to make a 6 pointed star? A 7 pointed star? a 1,729 pointed star? Is there a maximum number of points possible? Is there a minimum? Can any star be made without a cut? What happens if we make more than one cut? Are there certain numbers for which a star can't be made? Is there a relationship between the number of folds made and the number of points? What does all this have to do with our basic definition of what a paper star might look like? What other questions might we ask to extend this little idea of cutting paper stars?

Recalling some results from my third grade origami days, based on the thickness of most standard office paper, a typical sheet of paper can only be folded in half at most 7 times. This number can go up a bit if the thickness of the paper is reduced, but having a maximum number of potential folds suggests there is an upper bound for how many points a star might have using this method of construction.

I'd listened to this whole episode sometime since 2022-04-05, but didn't put it in my notes.

Mark Robertson delineates how he actively models the use of his note taking practice (using Roam Research) while teaching/lecturing in the classroom. This sort of modeling can be useful for showing students how academics read, gather, and actively use their knowledge. It does miss the portion about using the knowledge to create papers, articles, books, etc., but the use of this mode of reading and notes within a discussion setting isn't terribly different.

Use of the system for conversation/discussion with the authors of various texts as you read, with your (past) self as you consult your own notes, or your students in classroom lectures/discussion sections is close to creating your own discussion for new audiences (by way of the work your write yourself.)

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1194506/4875515-mark-robertson-history-socratic-dialogue-live-roaming.mp3

link to https://hypothes.is/a/FjbXGHnSEe6Qd4eEukSDKA

Adler and Van Doren's minimal bar of a college education is that it produce competent syntopical readers.

Adler/Van Doren use the statement of unity of a work as an example of testing one's understanding of a work and its contents.

(Again, did this exist in the 1940 edition?)

Who do McDaniel and Donnelly 1996 cite in their work as predecessors of their idea as certainly it existed?

Examples in the literature of this same idea/method after this: - https://hypothes.is/a/TclhyMfqEeyTkQdZl43ZyA (Feynman Technique in ZK; relationship to Ahrens) - explain it to me like I'm a 5th grader - https://hypothes.is/a/BKhfvuIyEeyZj_v7eMiYcg ("People talk" in Algebra Project) - https://hypothes.is/a/m0KQSDlZEeyYFLulG9z0vw (Intellectual Life version) - https://hypothes.is/a/OyAAflm5Ee6GStMjUMCKbw (earlier version of statement in this same work) - https://hypothes.is/a/iV5MwjivEe23zyebtBagfw (Ahrens' version of elaboration citing McDaniel and Donnelly 1996, this uses both restatement and application to a situation as a means of testing understanding) - https://hypothes.is/a/B3sDhlm5Ee6wF0fRYO0OQg (Adler's version for testing understanding from his video) - https://hypothes.is/a/rh1M5vdEEeut4pOOF7OYNA (Manfred Kuenh and Luhmann's reformulating writing)

Zettelkasten courses and teachers

Having someone who is experienced, cares, and knows the entirety of their space can be invaluable to speed you on your way to having at least an idea of the space in general and then give you pointers on your particular practice and needs. There is tremendous amount of ink spilled on the idea of zettelkasten, some of it good, some of it remarkably bad, and most of it painfully generic and useless.

Most of those I know who have serious practices have spent an inordinate amount of time reading and refining to come to where they are. They, and I, would all probably think that a good teacher and class on the subject could have saved them hundreds (thousands?) of hours of time and in exchange for a couple of hundred dollars. How much is your time worth in the balance? Can you read a cheap book or two on the topic? A few blog posts? Certainly, and many have, yet there are still lots of very basic questions which pop up here and elsewhere. Buying a book isn't the end-all either as you've still got to spend the time reading and distilling what's in it. A good instructor can boil down Ahrens' work into twenty minutes and get you up and working a lot more quickly, not to mention distilling down even a fraction of all the other potentially relevant sources.

Most of the questions in this sub-reddit are people asking for pointers either about where to start or examples of specific things they're having trouble with. Of course in the majority of the cases they could simply search this or one or two other sources to find almost exactly what they need, yet here they are posting one of the same 10 questions over and over. (I also generally get the impression that they're only thinking about the system in a theoretical fashion and aren't actually practicing it for themselves.) It's nice to have pointers like the one that u/WM2D2 provides, but how is someone new to the space supposed to find this or other specific sources without the prior knowledge? Simple search is unlikely to uncover the best sources. In my experience, a lot of the best material on zettelkasten practice doesn't even contain the word "zettelkasten" to allow one to find it via search. And what to do if or when it doesn't answer all their questions? Instructors are usually good at distilling down the particulars into a more coherent whole. This is what you're paying for.

Of those who are well-practiced, even fewer have expanded on their own individual practice to look at how others have practiced for a variety of very disparate use cases. Where is this experience to be found? Having looked at and read many sources over the years, it's definitely hard won knowledge. And what about taking the theory and turning it into actual practice? This is where a good teacher will come in handy to help you actually do the work to become better much more rapidly than any book ever could. The rules are easy, it's the practice to turn those rules into a practicable art that is the tougher road.

This being said, there is definitely a spectrum of experience and teaching ability. There are certainly only one or two people I can imagine recommending as a teacher in this specific area. Because this may be some of the most hard won knowledge to come across, I'll mention that u/taurusnoises is one of those I would recommend if you're looking to save your time and come to a useful practice for yourself without spending lots of time floundering around.

written in response to u/IamOkei at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1728f1n/why_are_people_paying_thousand_of_dollars_on/

a perennial question

This may be an interesting use case for artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT which can provide the reader of complex material with simplified synopses to allow better penetration of the material (potentially by removing jargon, argot, etc.)

open pedagogy/info lit connection

note how open pedagogy is not necessarily tied to OER

Gould, Jessica. “Teachers College, Columbia U. Dissolves Program behind Literacy Curriculum Used in NYC Public Schools.” Gothamist, September 8, 2023. https://gothamist.com/news/columbia-university-dissolves-program-behind-literacy-curriculum-used-in-nyc-public-schools.

The Teachers College of Columbia University has shut down the Lucy Calkins Units of Study literacy program.

Missing from the story is more emphasis on not only the social costs, which they touch on, but the tremendous financial (sunk) cost to the system by not only adopting it but enriching Calkins and the institution (in a position of trust) which benefitted from having sold it.

link to: https://hypothes.is/a/eicbpgSKEe6vc0fPdIm05w

This is an under-examined aspect of info lit

How exactly? Give us an example? Otherwise not very clear.

second hand quote from History: Professional Scholarship in America<br /> John Higham, 1965

Warburg definitely read Bernheim's Lehrbuch!!! He excerpted it! Though based on the footnote in the text, it may appear that his quotation was from the 1908 edition of Bernheim.

Machine translation of the German:

Warburg assigned another piece of paper to these organicistic considerations about historical development, which follows a »hidden plan« (Menke-Glückert), on which he noted a passage from Ernst Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der Historischen Method in which Wilhelm Wundt is referred to, who explains, as Warburg excerpts, »that historical general processes are applications of general psychological principles, such as e.g. B. the reaction is an application of the principle of "contrast enhancement".

362 Z. 0 02/0 0 0411. Warburg zitier t Wundt, Logik. Eine Untersuchung der Principien der Erkenntnis und der Methode wissenschaf tlicher Forschung, Stuttgar t 1895, Bd. II/2, S. 413, aus Ernst Bernheim, Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie. Mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmit tel zum Studium der Geschichte, Leipzig 1908, S. 60 f.

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/Th2g4kVoEe6OSV9qNo31rQ

Indigenous cultures can "see" dark constellations (example: the Australian emu in the sky) which are defined empty spaces which are explicitly visible.

Using this concept, one could think of or use blank index cards in a zettelkasten or even the empty (negative) spaces between cards as "dark ideas" (potential ideas which need to be thought of and filled in).

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/FlqusEN1Ee6XEr_9StPUlA

Lone child nodes cry out for siblings.

When I was in middle school a teacher told me only to put a sub-bullet point in an outline only if it wasn't an orphan (if you had one sub-point it should have at least one sibling, otherwise don't include it). This was miserable advice because it ended trains of thought which might otherwise grow into something.

On the other hand it could be better framed that if you have only one child, you should brainstorm to come up with others.

Notes about what you don't know (open questions), empty outline slots, red links as [[wikilinks]], and other "holes" in tools for thought provide a bookmark for where one may have quit exploring, but are an explicit breadcrumb for picking up that line of thought and continuing it at a future time.

Linear writing in one's notebooks, books they're reading, and other places doesn't always provide an explicit space which invites the reader or writer to fill them in. One has to train themselves to annotate in the margins to have a conversation with the text. Until one sees these empty spaces as inviting spaces they can be invisible to the eye.

abramdemski suggests starting with an idea you're interested in working on and fleshing out when you start your zettelkasten. This harkens back to Montessori teaching philosophies.

Using Magic: The Gathering boxes for younger children and teenagers might be a more palatable way to introduce the zettelkasten method of note taking to them, particularly when it's a game in which they have a pre-existing interest.

It can be easy to deprive a generation of important pieces of their cultural heritage by omitting any focus on it.

• shiboleth
• philology
• disinterest
• overwhelm

Compare the loss of classical education and cultural heritage by "internal decay" as described by Hutchins in the early 1900s and the forced loss of cultural heritage of Indigenous Americans by the U.S. Government in roughly the same period by re-education and stamping out Indigenous language.

Certainly one was loss through lack of exposure, but the other was outright erasure due to the natures of orality and literacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8OTapyT-YM

I love the idea here of analogizing the abstract nature of category theory in math with the abstract nature of metaphor in writing!

Good job Dale Keiger!

creative mathematics versus computational or calculational mathematics...

we need more of the creative in early education

partial quote from Emily Riehl

Too many non-mathematicians view numbers as solid, concrete things which are meant to make definite sense and quite often their only experience with it is just that. Add two numbers up and always get the same thing. Calculate something in physics with an equation and get an exact, "true" answer. But somehow to be an actual mathematician, one must not see it as a "solid area" (using these words in their non-mathematical senses), but a wholly abstract field of abstraction built upon abstraction. While each abstraction has a sense of "trueness", it will need to be abstracted over and over while still maintaining that sense of "trueness". For many, this is close to being impossible because of the sense of solidity and gravity given to early mathematics.

How can we add more exploration for younger students?

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading

https://danallosso.substack.com/p/some-thoughts-on-teaching-history

Benjamin Bloom was the originator (and the taxonomy was named after him)

Can the zettelkasten method be a means of fixing/helping with this problem of facts versus creativity in a programmatic way?

Gary Thomas feels that the 1960s Plowden Report was the strongest official impetus for progressive education in the 20th century.

He suggest that it was a natural successor to the Hadow Report.

Direct Instruction was a method promulgated in the 1970s and 80s that touted 'teacher-proof' methods, but ultimately didn't pan out. Some of the early gains seen in use of the method were ultimately attributed to generous resourcing rather to the program itself.

Generous resourcing might then be a better method to attempt from the start? (snarkmark)

Although we are talking about implicit pedagogy, this brings about the necessity to be explicit by providing informative samples when teaching. This brings to mind when teachers ask random questions instead of being explicit in their questioning as it relates to the desired learning outcome.

The frequent educational quote "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.", often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, is most attributable to 3rd century Confucian philosopher Kunzi (Xun Kuang or 荀子) who wrote:

Not having heard of it is not as good as having heard of it. Having heard of it is not as good as having seen it. Having seen it is not as good as knowing it. Knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice. Learning arrives at putting it into practice and then stops . . .

The translation of which appears in Xunzi: The Complete Text, Translated by Eric L. Hutton, Chapter 8: The Achievements of the Ru, Quote Page 64, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. 2014.

Variations of the sentiment and attributions have appeared frequently thereafter.

Calkins' Units of Study curriculum has been estimated to be used by nearly 25% of the 67,000 elementary schools in the United States in 2023.

Columbia University Teachers College education professor Lucy Calkins, a leader of the "balanced literacy" teaching philosophy in reading, has been influential in how millions of children have been learning to read for decades.

Santalucia, Nick. “The Zettelkasten in the Secondary Classroom.” Blog, July 6, 2021. https://www.nicksantalucia.com/blog/the-zettelkasten-in-the-secondary-classroom-k12.

The eternal student question, "Why do we need to learn this?" should always have a fantastic answer from their teachers.

https://www.amazon.com/Vaughn-Cube-Multiplication-Petersons/dp/0768941776

Dean Vaughn has apparently renamed the method of loci as a commodity to be able to market a method for memorizing the multiplication tables.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/13khuxs/obsidian_for_teachers/

see also: https://github.com/biscotty666/OBSPKMEssentials

I started making lists on index cards—you know the ones we used back in school.

Note the total lack of any referent to why we used to use index cards in school.

transparency of systems

Going back at least as far as the rhetoric of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, we recognize that while sets of rules can be helpful to the student, these must also be paired with ample imitation and practice.

This is a digital and information literacy issue that gets addressed in a very authentic way through this process.

Answers issue noted above

It may be worth considering whether or not some students want to share their work, and if they feel pressured into it.

Recommended Resource:

I recommend adding this doctoral research article on developing open education practices (OEP) in British Columbia, Canada. The scholarly article is released by Open University, a U.K. higher education institution that promotes open education.

Paskevicius, M. & Irvine, V. (2019). Open Education and Learning Design: Open Pedagogy in Praxis. Open University, 2019(1). DOI: 10.5334/jime.51

A relevant excerpt from the article reveals the study results that show OEP enhances student learning:

"Furthermore, participants reflected on how inviting learners to work in the open increased the level of risk and/or potential reward and thereby motivated greater investment in the work. This was articulated by Patricia who suggested “the stakes might feel higher when someone is creating something that’s going to be open and accessible by a wider community” as well as Alice who stated “students will write differently, you know, if they know it’s not just going to their professor.” The practice of encouraging learners to share their work was perceived by Olivia to “add more value to their work,” by showing learners the work they do at university can “have an audience beyond their professors.”"

Except, of course, branching and merging mean that this hurdle isn't a necessary one. Git was designed from the beginning so that this would be a non-issue (or at least not as bad as what this class experienced); that's where the D in DVCS comes from, after all...

(And I thought that's where this was going—! Rather than just giving people the solution—in this case branches/remotes—and telling them to use it, then what you do is you let them experience the problem firsthand and then can appreciate the solution and why it's there. Really surprised that's not where this ended up.)

While the original proverb appears in King James Version of the Bible, Book of Proverbs 13:24, the satirical poem Hudibras is the first appearance of the quote and popularized the aphorism "spare the rod and spoil the child".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudibras

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spare_the_rod_and_spoil_the_child

syndication link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hudibras&oldid=1148518740

Werberger, Raleigh. “Using Old Tech (Not Edtech) to Teach Thinking Skills.” Edutopia (blog), January 28, 2015. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/old-tech-teach-thinking-skills-raleigh-werberger.

link to: https://boffosocko.com/2022/11/05/55811174/ for related suggestion using index cards rather than Post-it Notes.

This process is also a good physical visualization of how Hypothes.is works.

What would a list of prompts for teaching creatively look like if it were created using Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies as a model?

Inspired by Sophia Rahming (~09:48)

see also: https://web.hypothes.is/annotation-and-ai-starter-assignments/

Stroebe, Lilian L. “Die Stellung Des Mittelhochdeutschen Im College-Lehrplan.” Monatshefte Für Deutsche Sprache Und Pädagogik, 1924, 27–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44327729

The place of Middle High German in the college curriculum<br /> Lilian L. Stroebe<br /> Monthly magazines for German language and pedagogy (1924), pp. 27-36

... of course to the reading material. Especially in the field of etymology it is easy to stimulate the pupils' independence. For years I have had each of my students create an etymological card dictionary with good success, and I see that at the end of the course they have this card box ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/opinion/college-learning-students-success.html

Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning

Michel Thomas Method Review

Michel Thomas method also includes: - atomic pieces built up as building blocks into larger pieces - lots of encouragement to prevent the feeling of failure

Downsides: - there is no failure mode which can nudge people into a false sense of performance when using their language with actual native speakers

This reviewer indicates that there is some base level of directed mnemonic work going on, but the repetition level isn't such that long term retention (at least in the space repetition sort of way) is a specific goal. We'll need to look into this piece more closely to firm this up, however.

The Michel Thomas Method in a nutshell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Xh-by50pI

This video indicates that small mnemonic hooks are inserted for some words in the Michel Thomas method. This was not immediately apparent or seen in the 1997 BBC documentary about his method and wasn't immediately apparent in Harold Goodman's discussion.

Is it apparent in Goodman's session with his nephews? Was it part of Thomas' method originally or was it added later? Is it truly necessary or does it work without it as in the SSiW method which doesn't use it.

It will take some deeper dives, but ostensibly this method seems to look like that of Pimsleur, Mormon Church, SSiW, and other methods.

The Language Master<br /> BBC - Michel Thomas<br /> [English CC]<br /> [Leg. PT-BR]

Michel Thomas is one of the most brilliant language teachers in the world. His usual clients are movie stars and business leaders. This programme takes him to a Sixth Form College in London to work with school pupils, to test his claim that he can teach anyone a language in a week - with no reading, writing or homework. The film also explores his personal history - as a hero of the French Resistance during WW II.

The Michel Thomas method involves: - slow build up of words, phrases, natural grammar - forced production of the language through practice - positive interaction - patience - no stress - no judgement - encouragement - constant evidence of progress

How does "understanding" of the language evolve out of this method? It's more like revelation rather than understanding...

This method appears much more atomic than that of SSiW (Aran Jones), but some of this is down to the fact that there's a live person who is able to unjudgementally prompt one with pieces which they've missed. The teacher has the context whereas the taped instructors do not. Presumably this sort of interpersonal prompting and context isn't necessarily required, but it can help to better lower the learner's stress and potentially speed up the learning process. It would require some standardization to set up a specific experiment to test between these two modes to tease this data out.

Reference key: [[Levy1997]]<br /> “The Language Master.” 1:33 : 1, color. London, UK: BBC 2, March 23, 1997. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0w_uYPAQic.

AMS Open Math Notes

Resources and inspiration for math instruction and learning

Welcome to AMS Open Math Notes, a repository of freely downloadable mathematical works hosted by the American Mathematical Society as a service to researchers, faculty and students. Open Math Notes includes: - Draft works including course notes, textbooks, and research expositions. These have not been published elsewhere and are subject to revision. - Items previously published in the Journal of Inquiry-Based Learning in Mathematics, a refereed journal - Refereed publications at the AMS

Visitors are encouraged to download and use any of these materials as teaching and research aids, and to send constructive comments and suggestions to the authors.

The Method Gaspey-Otto-Sauer of teaching languages was popular until the 1950s and was influenced by la méthode Ollendorff from the 1830s.

This is an interesting idea - a Renewable assignment - is a living assignment (like a literary search in Hypothes.is for Biblical studies students.

https://ditchthattextbook.com/

An example of a zettelkasten, meant for productivity in most settings, being called unproductive in Gotthard Deutsch's case.

Of course this calls to mind the definition of productivity and from who's perspective. From Deutsch's written output perspective it may have been exceptionally low in comparison to the outputs of others like Niklas Luhmann, S.D. Goitein, or Roland Barthes. But when viewed from the perspective of a teaching instrument and influence on his students, perhaps it was monumentally productive?

What are the differences and affordances in moving from cadavre exquis to Eno/Schmidt's Oblique Strategies to ChatGPT?

Notice how in the story of Garnkiny, the Moon Man, and Dawool, that the power of emotion is used as a means of strengthening not only the story, but the memory of the other associated elements.

What was the specific change in mathematical teaching instituted by Whewell, Peacock, and Herschel in An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (1819)?

https://cathieleblanc.com/2023/02/05/choosing-learning-materials/

Cathie notices that students skip materials about the theoretical "why" of assignments to get to the simpler assignments.

This seems to be an issue with some in the personal knowledge management space who want to jump into the technology, the terminology, and moving things about without always understanding what they're doing or why. Many end up giving up as a result. Few books provide reasoning behind the terminologies or building blocks they describe to provide the theoretical why. As a result some may figure it out from long, fraught practice, but it's likely that more are not seeing the results they expect and thus giving up.

Too many in the productivity porn space focus on the apps and the potential workflows without looking at the question "why" at all. It's rare that any focus on understanding or actual output.

This sounds somewhat similar to Mark Robertson's method of "live Roaming" (using Roam Research during his history classes) as a teaching tool on top of other prior methods.

link to: Roland Barthes' card collection for teaching: https://hypothes.is/a/wELPGLhaEeywRnsyCfVmXQ

Communities like OneHE.org discussion forums are also great places to share support and learn about pedagogy of care!

This is a really interesting point about all kinds of self-disclosure in the classroom, but especially disclosing what third-parties think about you.

How often does one meet a conversational partner that is interested in generative thought? This practice takes some work, but how could one particularly encourage it in classroom setting?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuJbg6eLC7Y3shnika1fdfHifoUPOeEp7

Frank was a middle grades teacher before retiring and now teaches a school online. He's done so for 7+ years starting at the 7th/8th grade level and moving upward each year.

Good teachers need to have the context of the student to know what level of explanation they need to give to satisfy the curiosity of the learner. (Also a potential reason that online programmatic learning is difficult as having the appropriate context to skip portions is incredibly hard to do with computers.)

General rule of thumb: The levels of the depth of explanations provided are generally proportional to the levels of understanding achieved.

Further understanding requires additional questions, research, and work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Xaw72ESdA

According to researcher Danny Hatcher, the "Feynman Technique" was coined by Scott H. Young in the August 22, 2011 YouTube video Learn Faster with The Feynman Technique and the subsequent 2022-09-01 article Learn Faster with Feynman Technique, ostensibly in a summarization of Gleick, James (1992). Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-40836-3. OCLC 243743850.

The frequently quoted Einstein that accompanies many instances of the Feynman Technique is also wrong and not said by Einstein.

The root Einstein quote, is apparently as follows:

that all physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart ought to lend themselves to so simple a description 'that even a child could understand them.' —Ronald W. Clark, p418 of Einstein: His Life and Times (1972)

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/selected-negative-teaching-evaluations-of-jesus-christ

hilarious

https://web.archive.org/web/20221202202544/https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-11-25-press-play-isn-t-a-teaching-strategy-why-educators-need-new-methods-for-video

https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2022/11/09/insights-gained-forcing-students-cheat-class-opinion

https://readwriterespond.com/2022/11/commonplace-book-a-verb-or-a-noun/

Sometimes the root question is "what to I want to do this for?" Having an underlying reason can be hugely motivating.

Are you collecting examples of things for students? (seeing examples can be incredibly powerful, especially for defining spaces) for yourself? Are you using them for exploring a particular space? To clarify your thinking/thought process? To think more critically? To write an article, blog, or book? To make videos or other content?

Your own website is a version of many of these things in itself. You read, you collect, you write, you interlink ideas and expand on them. You're doing it much more naturally than you think.

I find that having an idea of the broader space, what various practices look like, and use cases for them provides me a lot more flexibility for what may work or not work for my particular use case. I can then pick and choose for what suits me best, knowing that I don't have to spend as much time and effort experimenting to invent a system from scratch but can evolve something pre-existing to suit my current needs best.

It's like learning to cook. There are thousands of methods (not even counting cuisine specific portions) for cooking a variety of meals. Knowing what these are and their outcomes can be incredibly helpful for creatively coming up with new meals. By analogy students are often only learning to heat water to boil an egg, but with some additional techniques they can bake complicated French pâtissier. Often if you know a handful of cooking methods you can go much further and farther using combinations of techniques and ingredients.

What I'm looking for in the reading, note taking, and creation space is a baseline version of Peter Hertzmann's 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot combined with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Generally cooking is seen as an overly complex and difficult topic, something that is emphasized on most aspirational cooking shows. But cooking schools break the material down into small pieces which makes the processes much easier and more broadly applicable. Once you've got these building blocks mastered, you can be much more creative with what you can create.

How can we combine these small building blocks of reading and note taking practices for students in the 4th - 8th grades so that they can begin to leverage them in high school and certainly by college? Is there a way to frame them within teaching rhetoric and critical thinking to improve not only learning outcomes, but to improve lifelong learning and thinking?

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s204/client/snv?noteGuid=5b7828b7-c4f9-4242-b62f-788eeb44c76e&noteKey=34f69bfeebbb6bca&sn=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.evernote.com%2Fshard%2Fs204%2Fsh%2F5b7828b7-c4f9-4242-b62f-788eeb44c76e%2F34f69bfeebbb6bca&title=Powerful%252C%2Bnon-judgmental%2Bquestions

Powerful, non-judgmental questions

• If you had to guess, what would have to be true for you to...?
• If you did know...
• (on tangent) ...and how does that relate to you?
• What's not allowing you to...?
• What prevents you from asking…?
• Do you want to go into this?
• What's your criteria for saying yes?
• What would have you say yes?
• What are the things we're lacking?
• What's the scary question that you're not asking?
• What are the qualities you want for [being, action, process, etc.]?
• How would you behave if you were the best in the world at what you do?

I'm starting a list of powerful, non-judgmental questions for coaching or just relationships in general. Here's the starting batch https://t.co/ktsYVxkQna pic.twitter.com/Dq1zQnWqAS

— Tiago Forte (@fortelabs) January 15, 2019

These questions and similar ones (work this out) could be interesting prompts to be included on a syllabus or as starts for an annotated syllabus. (eg: What do you want to get out of this class? What do you already know about these areas? How can we expand on what you know? What would you like to explore?, etc.)

https://blog.mahabali.me/pedagogy/pedagogical-snacking-transforming-classroom-dynamics/

Providing a snack break during classes can dramatically improve the participants' participation and cohesion.

Providing a snack break before a peer feedback classroom session can dramatically improve the interactions during it.

This is not dissimilar to conferences providing socializing and snacking time/spaces both at the start of the event and throughout the day.

How does this claim relate to the growth of radical pedagogies during the lockdown? Massive increases in Pass/Fail grading, growing interest in the "ungrading" umbrella of alternative assessment strategies, course redesign for low-stakes assessment, etc?

(One answer is that it wasn't a good time for experimentation - see the comments in the conclusion about arguing from data - and we might consider these as adaptations, not intentional "deployment".)

This broadly applies to both oral and literate societies.

Desire, ability, and need are all tough measures however... each one losing a portion of the population along the way.

How can we maintain high proportions across all these variables?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhH1BOdLKq4

linked notes:<br /> https://docdrop.org/video/LhH1BOdLKq4/

Throughout this piece Oppenheimer provides examples of notes he wrote which eventually made it into his written output in their entirety.

This has generally been uncommon in the literature, but is a great form of pedagogy. It's subtle, but it makes his examples and advice much stronger than others who write these sorts of essays.

Thomas F. Tout, one of the founders of the Historical Association, was one of the first professors to introduce original research into the undergraduate program in the early 1900s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvxbl7Iwep4

Lots of levels here to pull apart, but this should be particularly interesting to novices.

Modes of note taking: * note taking for raw information * note taking (or writing) for understanding * note taking for relationships of and between knowledge * note taking for creating proficiency * note taking for productivity

Sung takes the viewpoint that linear note taking isn't as effective as mind mapping and drawing out relationships; in part this is why handwriting is more effective means of note taking compared to typing, particularly as most note taking apps force one into a linear pathway that doesn't mirror the affordances available within handwriting.

This video is definitely more about note taking than note making.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-petition.html

The paradigm stayed constant for the professor while it changed for the students coming into the program. Chaos ensued.

There will be longer term effects of this in 10-20 years when these students are physicians.