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Mar 23, 2022·edited Mar 23, 2022Liked by Sahil Bloom

My favorite way to learn is watching documentaries and online video lectures :)

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Mar 23, 2022Liked by Sahil Bloom

Some of your recommendations run counter to what studies in learning science have shown to be true - e.g. if you explore rather than tour, you are likely to overload working memory because you don't know exactly what to pay attention to. The correct prescription for most people would be to tour first, then explore.

More on this from the book Urban Myths About Learning and Education:

For novice learners discovery learning could never be the method, although it may be a goal. Effective educational methods should carefully and gradually help learners to move towards this goal. Van Merriënboer and Kirschner sum it up in their 2013 article as follows: First, such methods should help learners to gain some knowledge about the learning domain, because new relationships can only be discovered thanks to things you already know (what you know determines what you see, not the other way round). Second, such methods should help learners develop skills and cognitive strategies for systematically exploring and experimenting in the domain, using the rules of thumb that are useful in the domain. And third, such methods should provide support and guidance during the discovery process, and only decrease support and guidance as learners gain more expertise.

De Bruyckere, Pedro; Kirschner, Paul A.; Hulshof, Casper D.. Urban Myths about Learning and Education (pp. 51-52). Elsevier Science. Kindle Edition.

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Mar 23, 2022Liked by Sahil Bloom

The topics you write about are so intriguing.. and your analysis is phenomenal! But the question is .. how fast could you throw the heater?

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Mar 23, 2022Liked by Sahil Bloom

Who would have thought Hail Mary would make one think deeply about (and learn about) communication with someone/something without a common means to do so.

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Highly recommend synthesis.is for kids aged 7-14!

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The Zettlekasten method is a perfect way to explore networked learning. It allows you to organize your thoughts and make all sorts of different connections. If you use a piece of software like Obsidian along with it you can literally see a graph of all your different thoughts and how they relate. I’ve just recently learned about it and it is definitely worth checking out.

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Is “learning new things” a hobby?

I enjoy sprinting up very steep learning curves as fast as I can:

#PowerBI

#SEO

These are two disciples that I’ve really worked to develop and learn over the past 3 years.

It has been very rewarding for a curious person like me.

www.tuttleventures.com

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The ideas you're outlining here might be under-represented, but they're not exactly new. This thinking is in line with the "constructivist" approach to learning.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_education)

Some folks to check out for elaboration on these ideas: John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, David Ausubel, and Seymour Papert.

For example, every teacher has learned about Jerome Bruner and "spiral curriculum" — a structure for teaching any subject to any child in a developmentally-appropriate way by relating it to prior knowledge and alternating between content and practice.

And they've built dozens of lessons using David Ausubel's "advanced organizers", a structured way of introducing new material that leaves space for students to explore and develop their own intuitions, but doesn't just toss them into the wilderness and hope for the best.

They've all been very influential.

Over the last 5-10 year, there's been a big trend towards more interdisciplinary learning in higher education.

Some articles:

https://theconversation.com/why-the-interdisciplinary-push-in-universities-is-actually-a-dangerous-antidisciplinary-trend-175511

https://www.aldertkamp.nl/post/interdisciplinary-education-a-wave-of-the-future

The question is why haven't their ideas been translated into the classroom despite teachers being trained to use them?

There are folks who simply believe it doesn't work.

For example, see Kirschner's "Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work" (2010) or E.D. Hirsch's "Why Knowledge Matters" (2016)

Kirschner paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1

Other folks say it hasn't really been tried, that the structure of the modern school system interferes with the approach in some way.

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