In the context of mastery, especially of something new, it is sometimes hard to know when to forget what you’ve learned. You have to build up a solid foundation of basic knowledge, the things that have to be done. And at some point you start to build up tacit knowledge of what you are trying to master. And this, the tacit knowledge that goes into learning and mastery, is probably the hardest thing to learn how to forget.
Although James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy is primarily about how individuals, especially kids, learn, there is a lot in the book that can be applied to how organizations learn. This list describes what Gee sees as common features of what he calls affinity groups and [...]
…volume control on my car radio goes up to 32? Did someone pick that number, and if so why? Seems to be awful random. Could it be a function of the radio design, a digital module somewhere in the system (after all, 32 is 2^5)?
Hmmmm.
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After reading Marc Prensky’s Don’t Bother Me, Mom, I’m Learning!, I picked up James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. I was expecting a book about video games and the potential ‘good’ they offered. And the book does discuss this.
But the book is really about how video games are an example of how good learning can be enabled, encouraged, and accomplished in any environment. His area of choice is K-12 science education, but the learning principles - 36 of them - can be applied in many other areas.
The guidance counselor at my son’s middle school called me last week and asked if I would be interested in coming in to talk to the eighth grade class at their upcoming career day. Of course I would love to do that, but it raises an interesting challenge for me. You see, I’m [...]
“You’ve forgotten a lot of things you used to know, haven’t you Dad?”
This astute observation from my son came at the end of an interesting conversation we had about lunar eclipses. We were driving east on I-44 in Southwest Missouri as the sun went down in the rear-view mirror. A short time later, [...]
Achieving mastery in your field of choice allows you to see and understand connections from outside your own area of expertise. I can’t help thinking of Richard Feynmann’s excursions outside the world of physics as an example. The recent Science Daily story Mathematicians Unlock Major Number Theory Puzzle provides another (emphasis mine):
It was [...]
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