I’ve been thinking about educational games as well. The main problem, it seems to me, is that trying to make learning fun for someone who isn’t already interested and motivated is a waste of time because you’re just trying to hide the teaching under a sugarcoating of computer game, and that never works. On the other hand trying to make learning fun for someone who is already interested and motivated is pointless, because they already want to learn and the game just adds needless hassle like completing levels in order to reach the next piece of knowledge, or whatever game mechanic you’re using. It’s a pity, because I think of the way games like Portal build up complex puzzles from simpler ones and use the level itself to ask the player leading questions, like a kind of visual/spatial socratic method, and I think there must be a way to use that to teach, espiecally mathematics where visual/spatial metaphors could easily translate into mathematical metaphors… but I just can’t come up with a concrete version of the idea that wouldn’t be boring or stupid.
Lately I’ve been thinking that the fastest way to get to grips with a new subject is probably just to memorise big chunks of information without trying to understand it, using techniques like a memory palace and spaced learning programs like Mnemosyne and Anki, then think about what you’ve learned later, and insight might strike you. This would be espiecally effective if you combined it with a social precommitment to teach your knowledge to someone else, or to take part in a competitive quiz.
Lately I’ve been thinking that the fastest way to get to grips with a new subject is probably just to memorise big chunks of information without trying to understand it, using techniques like a memory palace and spaced learning programs like Mnemosyne and Anki, then think about what you’ve learned later, and insight might strike you.
If this is true and you aren’t too much of an outlier, it would go a decent way to explain the failure of a good chunk of educational theory in the past few centuries.
If this is true and you aren’t too much of an outlier, it would go a decent way to explain the failure of a good chunk of educational theory in the past few centuries.
The basic idea works for me, but I think Tom’s simplifying it. It’s not about “add to Anki with 0% understanding” vs “gain 100% understanding when first learning”; instead, it’s more like “add to Anki with 80% understanding” vs “gain 90% understanding, having had to spend several hours for the extra 10%.”
Far too many people tend to get hung up over that one thing in a chapter that they can’t understand. More often than not, it’s something they could understand perfectly if they just said “meh” and read a few pages ahead, but no; they just stay stuck on that one spot, thinking “wtf is this??!!”
Also, far too many people read books word-by-word when they could get essentially the same amount of information by skimming over the pages. Anki helps here, as it forces you to extract the relevant pieces of information from the text, (or at least stuff that looks important) instead of letting you comfortably wade through a wall of text and believe you’ve understood it.
(It seems, on first glance, that these two paragraphs contradict each other, but they actually don’t. The third one is talking about stuff that looks easy but actually isn’t, the second one’s talking about stuff that looks difficult, but wouldn’t if you’d just read ahead.)
Also, you generally don’t have to wait until later for insight into whatever you’ve failed to understand… More often than not, insight strikes even as you’re adding the cards.
I’ve been thinking about educational games as well. The main problem, it seems to me, is that trying to make learning fun for someone who isn’t already interested and motivated is a waste of time because you’re just trying to hide the teaching under a sugarcoating of computer game, and that never works. On the other hand trying to make learning fun for someone who is already interested and motivated is pointless, because they already want to learn and the game just adds needless hassle like completing levels in order to reach the next piece of knowledge, or whatever game mechanic you’re using. It’s a pity, because I think of the way games like Portal build up complex puzzles from simpler ones and use the level itself to ask the player leading questions, like a kind of visual/spatial socratic method, and I think there must be a way to use that to teach, espiecally mathematics where visual/spatial metaphors could easily translate into mathematical metaphors… but I just can’t come up with a concrete version of the idea that wouldn’t be boring or stupid.
Lately I’ve been thinking that the fastest way to get to grips with a new subject is probably just to memorise big chunks of information without trying to understand it, using techniques like a memory palace and spaced learning programs like Mnemosyne and Anki, then think about what you’ve learned later, and insight might strike you. This would be espiecally effective if you combined it with a social precommitment to teach your knowledge to someone else, or to take part in a competitive quiz.
If this is true and you aren’t too much of an outlier, it would go a decent way to explain the failure of a good chunk of educational theory in the past few centuries.
The basic idea works for me, but I think Tom’s simplifying it. It’s not about “add to Anki with 0% understanding” vs “gain 100% understanding when first learning”; instead, it’s more like “add to Anki with 80% understanding” vs “gain 90% understanding, having had to spend several hours for the extra 10%.”
Far too many people tend to get hung up over that one thing in a chapter that they can’t understand. More often than not, it’s something they could understand perfectly if they just said “meh” and read a few pages ahead, but no; they just stay stuck on that one spot, thinking “wtf is this??!!”
Also, far too many people read books word-by-word when they could get essentially the same amount of information by skimming over the pages. Anki helps here, as it forces you to extract the relevant pieces of information from the text, (or at least stuff that looks important) instead of letting you comfortably wade through a wall of text and believe you’ve understood it.
(It seems, on first glance, that these two paragraphs contradict each other, but they actually don’t. The third one is talking about stuff that looks easy but actually isn’t, the second one’s talking about stuff that looks difficult, but wouldn’t if you’d just read ahead.)
Also, you generally don’t have to wait until later for insight into whatever you’ve failed to understand… More often than not, insight strikes even as you’re adding the cards.
http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#abstraction