Hi J,
Quote:
Originally Posted by JKuehl  So how would you link this to learning for university exams?
Right now, i have to go through 4 courses for my final exam which concludes my bachelor degree. |
I found it helpful to distinguish between 'learning' and 'studying'. Steve describes 'learning' as changing one's invariant representations. In my view (though I have to admit that I am much influenced by Hofstadters new book "I am a strange loop" lately) those invariant representations
define me in a way. And I am not willing to have some external demand like an exam drive changes to my own selfhood. So I might
study for an exam, but I never
learn for an exam. I do decide to learn about subjects that interest me for their own sake.
I also discovered that it is much, much easier to study for exams that cover subjects that I have learned about already. If a subject is still unfamiliar when I start to study, then I have to study and learn at the same time. On top of that, I feel forced to learn, which creates a lot of resistance.
Mark Lapiere mentioned a book about Holistic Learning in one of the earlier posts. That book resonated very well with my experience that study is easy if you allow yourself to learn from everything and by every means possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JKuehl The Mindmap helps me pack [hard facts] into a branch of [a] map, but there are no images for representing them. For such things, also time and effort would be too high to remember an image for each word. An example where this concept works very well is representing numbers with images ( three - tree, five - hive, ... ) because its limited to 10 images and youŽll use numbers every day. |
There are lots and lots of ways to form invariant representations. When I was eleven years old I was a year behind other kids on the subject of basic arithmetic. Then I was introduced to algebra. As a part of my homework I had to simplify a complex algebraic expression. With the help of my father and after at least ten minutes of intense concentration and hard work, we managed to simplify it to something astounding: zero. That simple experience is still at the core of my invariant representations that deal with complexity, rules, time, meaning and a lot of other stuff.
It feels great to be enthousiastic about a (new) tool. Watch out for the "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" trap, however. Your potential is so much greater than that. To quote Korzybski (again): "the map is not the country". Experience reality. Learning, eventually even wisdom, will be the result.
Jeroen