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Friday, 10 July 2009

Wednesday, 08 July 2009

Thursday, 02 July 2009

  • The Way We Learn Things

    I woke up this morning thinking about learning styles.  I don't know why I thought about it, but I guess this is just something you wonder about when you have a B.S. in biochemistry and you have to second guess whether a pH of 14 is acidic or basic.  Or you forget what the Wolf-Kisner reaction is...or how to even spell it.

    Typically in psychology, learning styles are grouped into visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning.  Visual learning is associated with reading.  Auditory learning is associated with hearing.  And kinesthetic learning is associated with physical movement.  I used to wonder all the time what my best learning style was, so I took a test.  I scored high on auditory and kinesthetic and poor on visual.  I guess it made some sense.  I get really sleepy when I read books, and I really tune into sound.  So after taking the learning test, I bought an expensive recorder to my lectures and recorded them, but my scores didn't change much.  I felt a bit cheated.  If you don't know a lot of teachers don't actually lecture on most of the things that they put on tests.  Schools are pretty biased towards the visual/reading aspect of learning.  

    So anyway, I was thinking this morning about another learning style that I think is missing among the three.  It's called modeling.  Modeling is when you emulate someone else.  Psychology recognizes this in babies, but I'd argue that adults need to model others too.  The lessons are different in terms of difficulty, but the emulation part is the same.  Babies need to learn from others how to walk and talk, and adults need to learn from others how to walk the walk and talk the talk.  That's why catch phrases like WWJD catch on.  When we want to be like someone, we try to do the things that they do.  And I think that's sorely missing in our education system.  We don't just need teachers who are experts in their field, but we need teachers who can be roles models and mentors.  Most people would say that the quality of a class is correlated strongly to the quality of a teacher, and that's a really relational thing.  On the other hand, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles are sense-based.  So, if I were to categorize my style, I'd say modeling would be my #1.

    To further develop my case that learning is highly dependent upon relationships, I think about my cousin who's autistic.  He's 6, and he still doesn't speak.  It's hard to teach him because his brain doesn't activate when other people are around.  He doesn't have the same motivation as you and me to want to speak to others.  In order to help him learn how to speak we have to translate a want that he already has (his want for food for example), and correlate language with it.  But it's hard because he doesn't have the modeling system built into him.  Seeing him is a lesson to me not to take my ability to model after others for granted. 


Thursday, 25 June 2009

  • thinking clearer

    why did this have to happen to me?  past.  me.
    how am i going to get out of this?  future.  me.

    thank you God for what you're doing in my life.  today.  you.

    even though we have thousands of words and phrases to express meaning in-between layers of thought, emotion, and action...i think it's much easier when you categorize these phrases into time and relation.  when you dwell too much on the past or the future there is less satisfaction in the present, and when you dwell too much on yourself you head in a direction towards loneliness.

    a cure for thinking too much in the past or the future?  thanking God for what you have now.  
    a cure for loneliness?  thanking God which leads to thanking others too.

    this is probably too simple, but it helps me think about my intentions before i say the things that i say.

Saturday, 13 June 2009

  • The Story of my Life. Well...a good chunk.

    This might be the story of my life. So far.

    "If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love."
    - Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis (better later than never Justin!)

    For a long time, I thought that love would abound more if I had avoided sin. I avoided situations that could have a potential for sin. This was GOOD. But I also avoided relationships that I thought had a potential for sin too. This was DUMB. Cause relationships aren't static. They grow. Yeah. Bring on the love.

    Onto things other than me. Thinking about the third world. North Korea. Internment camps. India. Hungry kids. I've got it so made around here. I can just sit at my computer and complain all day about how I feel. Damn. I feel like I need to say so much but at the same time I have so little to say.

    Quiet time with God is like the best thing in life. How about you? Have you done your quiet time today?

wavesofblu3

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