"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." -- Confucius
How to Learn New Things as an Adult
31–40 of 117 posts
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that without knowing those useless trivia you won't even have the chance to draw connections and associations between them, which is essential for working with these "larger ideas" of yours. No, search engines won't make up for simple lack of knowledge. You have to know what to search for in the first place.
I see your point, and I feel you have unfairly made my comment mean something much more than it originally was intended to be. I want to make it clear. I am not advocating not knowing things. I am advocating that some things are "trivia" and some things are not. I feel from your post that you have put more things in the "trivia" category than I would. This article opened up asking a single question; "what’s the capit…
I wouldn't dismiss trivia so ... trivially. Trivia has value.
Getting to know the capital of a country is like creating a tiny hook onto which other information accretes. It creates a sense of familiarity about a place, which sensitises you to other news about the area (for example, the #StopAdani movement which, tragically, is going to fail).
Five years back, I started playing these trivia games at Sporcle (sparkle.com). I mean, what is the use of knowing all the periodic table elements? Then it turns out, a niece independently fell in love with chemistry and the periodic table, which has opened up a nice new channel of talking to each other. And I'm looking forward to visiting Ytterby[1] this summer
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/elements/fe...
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#33The trick to learning new things as an adult is to never stop learning. For many people university (or highschool, for the slightly less fortunate) is the last time they will actively learn, after that they are 'done learning'. But you're never done learning! In a world that changes as fast as ours does you'll be learning until you die if you want to keep up and stay relevant in the near future. Even more so in the I…
I wish people would understand that such a world means that new children have less and less of a chance at success.
No, that's not true. They will simply have a new baseline when they exit their secondary education.
Secondary education levels have been a moving target ever since we started educating people to the state-of-the-art. It's been a long time (centuries, really) since an individual could hold the complete state of science in their head so it is all teamwork now and nobody knows everything.
So if you do your education today you simply learn more of something narrower.
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#34This article seems to be an advertisement so I don't have a positive disposition towards it. There's this free online course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn which I think might be preferable to the book in the article, since it has transcribed video that you can speed up, exercises, and quizzes.
I took that course. I didn't gain much from it. There is some interesting theory about how we learn.
The best (er.. only) trick I remember: rather than re-reading material, reflect on it for a few minutes after you've read it, trying to recall and organize it in your mind.
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#35The trick to learning new things as an adult is to never stop learning. For many people university (or highschool, for the slightly less fortunate) is the last time they will actively learn, after that they are 'done learning'. But you're never done learning! In a world that changes as fast as ours does you'll be learning until you die if you want to keep up and stay relevant in the near future. Even more so in the I…
I wish people would understand that such a world means that new children have less and less of a chance at success.
Life was much better for children back in the 19th century, before adult education really took off!
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#36I really don't think there's much difference between learning as an adult or a teenager. It's just that we have less time. A few months ago I wanted to learn to appreciate and listen to classical music. I woke up an hour earlier every morning and read a book, listened to an audio course (Robert Greenberg's How to Listen to and Understand Great Music), and listened to actual music then and throughout the day. A few mo…
I agree, but I'm finding it's hard to follow through with the extra hour in the morning, before the commute and everything. Maybe an audio book could still work.
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#37Trick question. Australia has 8 capital cities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_capital_c...
That aside, the article is rather bunk and claims to have authority. Memorization isnt learning.
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like academia will be much more efficient once universities start getting on board with this idea.
Out of curiosity, what do you think that adoption will look like?
Personally I'd like to see a large reduction in the emphasis on exams and repetitive homework. Today, at least to some degree, classes are designed to rank students against their classmates by who can memorize the most trivia. The primary objective of every class should be that the students know how to find info related to the subject. The final project in an algorithms course could be something like, "Using google and a programming language of your choice provide an implementation of $ALGORITHM." Where $ALGORITHM could be an algorithm that was not explicitly covered in the course material. This would show that the students have a broad enough understanding of the material that they can seek out solutions to types of problems they haven't seen before.
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#39A much harder thing for adults is to re-learn something they already know in a different way. For example, I thought I knew how to swim until I took private lessons with an instructor. I spent most of the time 'unlearning' the wrong techniques. The muscle memory was just engraved. I know guys don't ask for directions, but if you want results, pro help can really pay off.
Re: How to Learn New Things as an Adult
#40This article seems to be an advertisement so I don't have a positive disposition towards it. There's this free online course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn which I think might be preferable to the book in the article, since it has transcribed video that you can speed up, exercises, and quizzes.
I took that course. I didn't gain much from it. There is some interesting theory about how we learn. The best (er.. only) trick I remember: rather than re-reading material, reflect on it for a few minutes after you've read it, trying to recall and organize it in your mind.
You are probably already a great learner then. I took the course and can definitely say it was an eye opener.
Few additional tricks I picked up: * Recall(as you mentioned) is critical to understanding. Effective recall also connects a topic just learned with other known topics. * A problem looks solvable but its important to actually apply yourself and arrive at the solution. The process of learning does not offer rewards until the mind has been exercised. * Deliberate practice of poorly understood concepts. Don't fall into the trap of fooling yourself to believe that you have understood a concept or practicing problems that you are already good at. * Read through material quickly to to create a "framework" or stick-figures in the mind. Gradually add new concepts to the basic framework. * Learning is best done with frequent breaks to absorb information. Learning is also a passive process where the neurons need time to grow. * Repetition spaced across several days forces us to recall. This helps strengthen memories and filing concepts into long-term memory bank. * Better sleep helps.
I could go on. Really wonderful course.