#make it stick

[docdevortrash]

Please don’t do a part two where you change this year’s name, boys — I’ve already gotten so attached to this one 😩

[differentcatcat]

Larson Files Articles of Impeachment, Calls for 25th Amendment as Trump Becomes More Unhinged

East Hartford, CT – Today, Rep. John B. Larson (CT-01) announced he has filed articles of impeachment to remove Donald Trump from office as

Put him in prison with a dangerous and horny cell mate.

@jimmyhoffathecat

[harmlessxxx]

it’s been a minute. felt good tonight. down 7 pounds :’-)

[irarelypostanything]

The Learning Process - Mental Models

This interest all started when I watched a TED talk by John Green about “paper towns.”  To prevent illegal map copying, cartographers used to make up fictional cities and see if anyone copied these fictional city names.  They caught someone doing this, supposedly, but the mapmaker they confronted countered with something interesting.  They made up a city...I don’t remember what it was called.  People bought their map and expected to find a city there.  The city was made up, but so many people expected to find a city there that they set up actual shops, gas stations, and homes.  It was called a paper town.  The map made it exist.

It’s a true story, but John Green uses it as a metaphor for the learning process.  He starts to talk about his own YouTube series, most notably CrashCourse, which he handles the humanities side of (Hank Green, his brother, was a godsend on the biology side when we were in college).  He tries to get people interested in a subject.  Vi Hart does the same thing with math.  They try to employ certain “hooks,” like talking about how cats land on their feet.

Make it Stick goes at length in discussing mental models.  Intuitively, it makes sense.  The learning process can be thought of as forming and strengthening connections.  If you can relate new information to information you already have, whether it’s through analogy or through a more realistic connection, you can fall back on that old knowledge and also make it easier for new connections to form.  On a somewhat related tangent, when you get into a new field every memorable story and analogy helps.  When you learn something completely new and relate it to something old, you form connections.  Those connections can branch out to different connections.  Learning can be exponential, and that’s the exciting thing about it.

I think that channels like Vi Hart are certainly a good way to light the spark, but continued learning is another question.  For instance, how do we get new people interested in coding?  MIT pushed Scratch.  I’m personally a much bigger fan of a game where you have to code JavaScript to progress from one stage to the next, but that’s not nearly as fun as playing an FPS.  Or Minecraft.  Speaking of Minecraft, the solution might be in front of us all along...but personally, I think the problem with using Minecraft is that it’s way more tempting to try to brew potions or go ranching than it is to learn how to emulate circuits.

My brother got me an Arduino, back in high school, hoping that it would get me fascinated and interested in coding.  I didn’t get into it, and he was really disappointed but decided that coding isn’t for everyone.  Then I signed up for a class on coding.  The class on coding got me interested in coding.

That was supposed to be a 10-minute freewrite, and it’s been 12.  I guess that the main thing I wanted to establish was that real, comprehensive knowledge on a field takes time to develop.  The initial spark is important, but then the fire needs to last.  You need to keep discovering new territory.  You need to be willing to develop in other areas, whenever you find that the fire burns low and you have to gather different fuel.

I was really, really happy when I discovered the Medium page called BaseCS.  I mean, there it was, all these confusing and ridiculously boring and/or complex computer science topics, and it just pulled every trick in the book to make it readable.  The tone is enthusiastic and non-condescending.  It uses association without going off too much with useless facts.  It discusses history, but not too much.  It relates things back to old information.  And it’s just so light-hearted and sweet.  It has original graphics, unique metaphors, the kind of thing you’d expect a children’s book author to come up with if she woke up one day with a sudden knowledge of computer science.  It’s really, really good.

https://medium.com/@vaidehijoshi

[hardworking-squirrel]

 1/90

First day, beginnings of my research. Unfortunately, for long vacation I absolutely weaned to sit and studies. I cannot tell that I all this time idled, but it was difficult to set himself for lectures. On a result, frankly, no more than half an hour was succeeded to work. But I try not to reproach myself with it, and to gradually increase duration. And not to kill to time all enthusiasm.

From unusual there was the fact that at the beginning I read and sorted the paragraph but only then wrote the abstract. It was strange, but it appeared effectively as the abstract became more exact, short and on business. Tomorrow I will try to begin with a remembering of today's lecture, we will look as it will turn out.

It's a start.

[hardworking-squirrel]

Сегодня я составила список всех пройденных и желательных предметов. Их получилось целых 35, по началу это пугает. Но я разделила на 5 блоков по 7 предметов и это кажется более выполнимой задачей. Так же я нашла обзорные тесты по всем предметам. Выбрала рондомно первые предметы и прошла по ним тесты, чтобы знать начальный уровень.

Результаты и расстроили и одновременно вдохновили. Значит опробовать новую систему я могу в полной мере, так как ранее обретённые знания успели прилично позабыться.

[hardworking-squirrel]

Мои новые правила

1. Сначала читать новый материал, осмысливать его, а потом только делать конспект и карточки если необходимо.

2. Заниматься каждый день не меньше одного часа, и в конце каждого занятия припоминать весь пройденный материал.

3. Раз в неделю писать тематическое эссе по 5-ти рондомным темам, которые проходила в течение недели.

4. После прохождения всего предмета писать обзорный тест не меньше 50-ти вопросов, а затем повторять тесты с увеличивающимися временными интервалами.

5. После каждого учебного блока (7 предметов) писать тематическое эссе.

6. В течение дня и недели переключаться между 5-ю предметами.

7. Выделять время в конце каждого занятия для уточнения непонятных слов и понятий.

8. В конце изучения предмета составлять обзорную ментальную карту по ключевым понятиям.

9. Начинать каждое занятие с припоминания того, что было на предыдущем занятии.

10. Если эссе или тесты показали пробелы в знаниях, выделять время на повторение всего материала.

[codeandcanvas]

The Right System Already Exists

In this post, I write about how my piecemeal research into building my own practice and schedules, from ECTS to a sort of RPG system, has come to an end with the simple acceptance that the best formal solution already exists.

These are the books I will use as the basis for my self-regulated reconstruction of my graphic design studies from now on:

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

My reasons are simple. I have gradually chipped away at the problems inherent in my currently poor study system, which is entirely my own doing, because I abandoned an earlier system in favour of the bad but conventionally accepted one. Slowly, I have found my way back on track and discovered, as this illustration puts it, the “right system”, after losing both it and myself between 2017 and 2023.

I believed that passing grades were all that mattered. This left me stranded with half-remembered and poorly understood knowledge born of rote repetition.

This is how I intend to address my own shortcomings in all things graphic design: by using the right system, along with a great many books and other reading materials.

Libraries are an amazing resource here in Germany. Through interlibrary loans, you can even borrow books held by other libraries, usually for a small fee. If you are fortunate enough to live in a country with a solid library system, use it. Otherwise, the privilege goes to waste, and eventually, through disuse, it disappears.

I say this as someone who once believed that I could learn anything online. That is not so: tutorials are not learning. Tutorials are designed to guarantee a successful result in the easiest way possible.

And judging by the books above, ease is the enemy of expertise when it comes to learning and understanding.

This is Rio, sending a message from here to anyone out there who feels that they should know and understand more, but doesn’t.