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Teaching

To teach someone something and have it stick we cannot simply communicate facts and information. We have to allow the student to reach their conclusion on their own.

  • ex. In presenting a statistical experiment (seizure experiment) to students, telling them that only 4 out of 15 people helps the seizure victim does not cause them to remember the idea. Instead if we show them an interview between two people and they both nice, then tell them that these two are among the 11 that didn't help the seizure victim. Then the students inherently understand that just because you're a nice doesn't mean you will help the victim. In the second scenario students remembered and learned the core psychological concept much better

"Do not train boys to learning by force and harshness, but lead them by what amuses them, so that they may better discover the bent of their minds" —Plato

Simplify the world you are teaching.

  • ex. in WoW website section where they are introducing game to new players, there is very digestible chunks of information presented. what makes the info so digestible is that it presents a simplified version of the world. For instance, when they say "the numbers 1-0 on the keyboard correspond to spells", they could have gotten more technical, and talked about how all keys on the keyboard are customizable, or that spells can be cast by clicking a button on the mouse. They simplified the world, favoring just presenting enough information to understand the purpose of the keys. "ok there is an action and reaction type relationship here. multiple spells, multiple keys. got it. At this level of understanding, it's irrelevant that keys are customizable. This is an enlightening lesson for teaching/educating people, because as people who have a good view of the whole picture, it is easy to lose sight that those new to the world do not need to see that picture.too. It is more difficult when you are passionate about that field, because you find all parts of the world fascinating, and are more likely to want to share it, even if it is not the best thing. You get too excited about it and share too much, frustrating the other person, because they cant process all the info you are throwing at them. When teaching something, consider the "happy path" of understanding something
  • ex. "chords are 3 or 4 notes played together. Most common 3 note chords are major and minor"
    • this simplifies the fact that there are actually possibilities of lots of notes in chords

Students should be allowed to reach their own conclusions, Pestalozzi preached, by using a series of steps that began with hands-on observations and then proceeded to intuitions, conceptual thinking, and visual imagery.

If you were to teach how to compute the average, the multiplication, and the division of a number but didn't tell him the method, what they would have to do is figure out how to do the calculation based on their understanding of what multiplication actually is . teaching them this way is what allow for far greater understanding of the underlying concepts than if the student were just given a formula

  • develops higher order thinking skills

Teaching Children

It is very easy for an adult to get a glimpse into a child's brain. Imagine a child who is to learn the names of the days of the week. This child has no scheduled events such us the Sunday mass, or Saturday soccer. For this child, there is less difference between Tuesday and Thursday than there is a difference between Ganymede and Calisto. To learn the names of the days is like attaching labels to vacuum. Entirely futile and asemantic. The adult may reason "these are vital terms the child will need in her life".

To remedy the empathy problem, the adult can imagine the year split into 36 ten-day periods with each period assigned a specific name: Primedec, Secdec, Winterdec, Febdec, etc. How about learning that sequence just for a test? Only 36 names (just to compensate for adult metacognitive superiority). All adults, with no exceptions, rejects such a proposition. This is exactly how a child feels. A bunch of names to learn with no content and no purpose! This is classic asemantic learning.

when showing someone something new (ex. boardgame), show them examples of not just what they can do, but what they can do in combination with other moves. For instance, if showing someone Catan, don't just show them that if they build on a port, then they can trade wheat 2:1. Show them that by building on the port, they can trade wheat 2:1, which when coupled with their other settlements on wheat nodes, will allow them to control the commodity and trade it for any commodity they need, making them less reliant on other players.

  • Presenting it in this way allows the others to visualize how they are going to play, allowing this information you just gave a chance to seep in and see if it fits in with their own playstyle.

A good teacher can only teach you the rules, as a good student it's your job to know the exceptions.