In this article I want to introduce some general aspects of learning psychology that will finally leading to the concept of flash card based learning and why it makes sense.
Learning as simple mental work
Having to learn still sounds like a penalty. Above all a lot of what is learnt is forgotten - fairly quickly.
Despite all modern teaching methods not much is learnt in classical "lessons". Also little is learnt if we sit down and begin to just read the script, book, booklet, brochure, web page or presentation and try to concentrate. We try to memorise, and try to recognize certain laws that we underline or highlight. Most people even do not know what concentrations means at all. I cannot blame them. And to be hones: I do not know it myself.
Mysterious "concentration"
I only know what it felt like: sit down, be quiet and to strain oneself. Some people touch their front or tear their hair, drink far to much coffee or smoke to many cigarettes. Thinking seems to be the most important part: so one stares for minutes on our vocabulary or text as if we could mesmerize it. This then is called memorising or concentration for short. As enlightened learner we know that most thinks have to be repeated about 7 times till we "know" them. So it comes that some think that they are too old to learn.
But everybody can learn 10 languages!
So Berlitz and his students showed.
Not everybody is gifted? Might be true - even though I am not convinced.
Anyway: what we know for sure is that we are getting better as we train. But how?
Everybody knows Pavlov's Dog: Pavlov was a Russian scientist who showed the connection between stimuli without meaning (ringing of a bell) and a stimuli with meaning (getting food). If applied repeatedly together a dog will have salivation if he senses the bell ringing. Psychology calls this classical conditioning. The ringing bell is called stimuli and the salvation is the reaction. The same happens if we learn something knew: if we hear the French word" mère" for the first time we are a like a dog hearing the ringing bell albeit on higher level. "mère" is a stimuli with no meaning till we know that its the French word for "mother". Than mother becomes the correct reaction in the sense of classical conditioning. So we are all dogs reacting to certain stimuli? No. We will not react and will not try to react if there is no incentive. Even though the principle remains important.
Forgetting
So know we know how things are learnt in principle. But what to do about the fact that we forget most of the thinks we learnt even insights that learning is some kind of incentive driven form of classical conditioning?
Ebbinghaus found out that we only keep about 20% of things in mind that we learnt properly. And we even do not now what these 20% are!
This is where a basic learning principle enters the stage: flash card based learning. Using flash card and an bunch of boxes helps us to separate thinks we learnt properly from those we forgot. Of cause this is just part of the way. But let constrain on this for this time.
Mediabird and flash cards
This principle is used in Mediabirds training component:
By creating question or definition markers you can fill a virtual flash card box that you can use to repeat facts appropriately.
Steps in Mediabird:
- Select some text that is related to the question you think is relevant (incentive).
- Click on the insert box in the upper left of the card editor component and choose question or definition. Now you can either use the marked text as answer, as (part of the) question or definition or define you answer explicitly.
2008/10/03 07:09
Technology
