Wired 2.0! Create your ultimate learning environment by Simone de Gijt

src: Wired 2.0! Create your ultimate learning environment by Simone de Gijt - 2024-10-12

Abstract

Emotions

There are guards / filter that determines which information gets prioritized to end up to the working memory: emotions.

• Survival → prioritize that data (often life-threatening situations)
• Data generating emotions
  • Need to be right state of mind, otherwise, it will need lots of focus.
  • Emotions generated by past experiences.
• Data for new learnings.

2 biggest indicators:

• Sense
  • Do you understand it?
  • Based on your past experiences.
• Meaning
  • Why do you need to know this?
  • Based on relevance.

We store by similarity, we retrieve by difference.

Retrieval depends on:

• adequacy of cues
• mood and beliefs
• context of retrieval
• system of storage
  • Long term memory is not in one place, it’s all around.
  • It’s a long skill and we can train it.

Rate of retrieval != Rate of learning

AI influence on rate of learning

• accelerate the rate of learning through personalized and easily accessible content
• but weaken the rate of retrieval by reducing the need for frequent memory recall.

System of storage

Organize system of storage:

• critical attributes: you need to focus on the differences and what makes it unique
• chunking: blob of information, the more familiar you are with a certain type of information, the bigger the blob

Chunking

• pattern: step-by-step procedure. Attach meaning to the sequence you want to learn.
• categorical: establish various types of categories to help classify large amounts of information
  • this is the one best used for training your system of storage

A way improve this categorical chunking is use the following blueprint whenever you are learning by applying certain “chapters” for everything:

• advantages and disadvantages
• similarities and differences
• structure and function
• taxonomies hierarchical levels
• arrays (of critical attributes)

You can subscribe to a code reading club to check how others are chunking their understanding of code.

Time

Dark hole of learning: the low point of focus just past the middle of the day.

Primary-recency effect

The recency effect refers to the fact our memories remember the last item in a sequence more easily than items in the middle of the sequence.

How to spend in the down time:

• work with the information that’s in the working memory
  • practice with it
  • maybe reflect with it
  • questions and answers for yourself
  • give your body a break by walking around
• during this down time, your brain is chunking the information you have gathered here

The down time does increase the longer you push yourself to extend the prime time 1 ⇒ split in multiple prime times 1 instead of one big prime time 1.

Learning while coding

Instead of diving directly to the task, take 20 minutes to:

• 10 minutes: read and analyze the code by answering those questions:
  • What was the first element that caught your eye? Why?
  • What was the second thing you noticed? Why?
  • Are these two things related?
  • What concepts are present in the code? Do you know all of them?
  • What syntactic elements are present in the code? Do you know all of them?
  • What domain elements are present in the code? Do you know all of them?
• 2 minutes: stand up
  • shake your body
  • got to the toilet
  • get a drink
  • do some squats
• 8 minutes: research things that were unfamiliar by answering those questions:
  • What is this code trying to achieve?
  • What are the most important lines of the code?
  • What are the most relevant domain concepts?
  • What are the most relevant programming constructs?
  • What are the benefits of this implementation?
  • What are the potential downsides of this implementation?
  • Can you think of alternative solutions?
  • How can you improve this code?

How can AI help you learn optimally?

Help in the planning:

Hello assistant, can you make a planning for a learning episode. Topic is quantum computing. Learning block is 60 minutes. Divide in 3 blocks of 20 minutes. Every block having a prime time 1, a downtime and a prime time 2.

Summary / Query: NotebookLM | Note Taking & Research Assistant Powered by AI

• you can multiple sources
• generate the podcast
• ask questions

Visualize: Napkin AI - The visual AI for business storytelling

Differentiate:

Can you make a table on quarkus and springboot and tell me the difference between both.

Critical Thinking vs Artificial Intelligence

Critical thinking is a skill that can be trained. The more you do it, the more natural it becomes and the more automated that question will pop up.

AI is a tool.

We need to keep training the skill of critical thinking.

Apply critical thinking to artificial intelligence.

Keep asking high order thinking questions.

Reviews

2024-10-12

Why did I want to read/watch this? Learning is one of the most important things in life. Having a “framework” or something that help learning efficiently will help in life in general.

What did I get out of it? This is an awesome talk. To be honest, I normally watch those videos in 1.5x, and for this one, I change the speed playback to normal, and keep pausing to take notes.

Without digging on the theory, some techniques can be used to enhance my way of learning:

• use the following “framework” to learn new things:
  • advantages and disadvantages
  • similarities and differences
  • structure and function
  • taxonomies hierarchical levels
  • arrays (of critical attributes)
• use 20 minutes before diving into a task:
  • 10 minutes read and analyze
  • 2 minutes to move around
  • 8 minutes to research things that were unfamiliar
• ask high order thinking questions when pair programming or mob programming
  • this gave me an idea to note all the things we learned during our sessions
• leverage AI to help us on the rate of learning by
  • helping us do the learning planning
  • summarize and query the topic
  • make visualization of the topic (our brain is more accustomed to view images / icons than plain old text)