210 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2024
    1. What’s missing obviously is a viable third option that would disrupt and transform the status quo by leaning into and operating from an awareness of the emerging future

      Active inference is natural (and mathematical) way to describe and model the predicted landscape and adapt to the emergent surprise

    1. Emerson is, “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”

      source?

    2. Emerson liked to identify four classes of readers: the hourglass, the sponge, the jelly-bag, and the Golconda. The hourglass takes nothing in. The sponge holds on to nothing but a little dirt and sediment. The jelly-bag doesn’t recognize good stuff, but holds on to worthless stuff. And the Golconda (a rich mine) keeps only the pure gems.

      Where is the origin of this reading analogy?

  2. Oct 2024
    1. While the four approaches in media literacy (cf. above) are effective in what they do, there are several concepts from other fields of study that can help create a more robust approach.

      I think it goes without saying that always learning and being an active learner, especially when it comes to media literacy, is the best bet when educating yourself.

    1. An Active Inference Model of Collective Intelligence

      Short explanation of a Model for collective intelligence based upon the socio-cognitive traits of individual members Active Inference

  3. Aug 2024
    1. use the Neuroscience principle of education for corporate learning systems so instead of just having a classic a classic lesson to teach people

      for - neuroscience and education - problem solving - active learning

      neuroscience and education - problem solving - active learning - this is much like Socratic dialogue technique, engaging the learner actively to recreate the problem in their own consciousness - and play an active role in solving it - just like historical innovators did

    1. this is one reason why we forget stuff it is not a like like something that that is telling us that our brains bad but on the other hand the brain is using active forgetting in order to make the most important information the more precise and more pronounced

      for - neuroscience - why brains forget - active forgetting

      neuroscience -active forgetting - leaves behind a small set of salient ideas

  4. May 2024
    1. Using a combination of small-group and whole-classdiscussion boards as work and reflection spaces is aneffective means of avoiding the ineffective line up andanswer model of asynchronous discussion and is an effectivemeans of employing active learning pedagogy

      small group whole class discussion boards - workshpaces

    2. As in traditional classroom presentations, there can alsobe requirements for other students to view, respond, andask questions of the presenter. A typical setup mightinclude a requirement that the presenting student postthe presentation on the weekend, that the class view thepresentation during the first half of the week, and post acomment or question by Wednesday. The presenter studentwould then need to return later in the week to respond tocomments and questions.

      Way to make presentations easier and allow for interactive discussions in class.

    3. This kind of post can also be usedfor students to introduce themselves to each other at thebeginning of the term. Having students review and analyzetheir own video recordings is an effective means of fosteringreflection.

      video presentations - allow for self-critique

    4. as VoiceThread(https://voicethread.com/), FlipGrid (http://info.flipgrid.com/)and YouSeeU (http://www.youseeu.com/).

      presentation tools Voice Thread FlipGrid (flip) YouSeeU

    5. several examples of discussion board activitiesthat successfully adopt an active learning pedagogy.

      possible discussion board scenarios for active learning --Presentation space --Gallery and reflection space --Work space

    6. Portfolio assignments are excellent vehicles for activelearning. The ability to select and create content allows plentyof room for student agency and fosters intrinsic motivation.

      Portfolios - way for active learning

    7. active learning experiences generally have two additionalcomponents: they require (1) meaningful action by thestudent on behalf of their learning and (2) that meaningfulaction be paired with reflection by the student regardingtheir learning experience. Prince

      2 components - meaningful action by students reflection on their experience

    8. Whereas traditional lecture/exam pedagogiesare teacher-centered, with the instructor as the focal point,active learning places the student at the center of thelearning experience

      student centered rather than instructor centered

    9. This paper suggests a three-pronged approach for conceptualizing activelearning in the online asynchronous class: the creation of an architecture of engagement in theonline classroom, the use of web-based tools in addition to the learning management system, and are-imagining of discussion boards as interactive spaces.

      active learning creating an architecture of engagment in system, web tools in addition to LMS discussion boards - interactive spaces

    1. faithful listening “promotes fidelity to our students and their work and encourages us to read more truthfully and generously.”

      faithful listening - I like that term

    2. This includes an open and respectful mindset, seeking to empathize and understand, acknowledging bias and differing perspectives while slowing the pace and being comfortable with reflective silence (Hoppe, 2006, p. 8-14).

      Active listening involves slowing down

  5. Mar 2024
    1. Anindexer who tags a document has already done the work needed toproduce an ‘active index’, where each locator is a clickable link thatwill bring up its target page immediately.

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  6. Jan 2024
    1. Kevin Mitchell says in one of his books free agents he talks about I 00:27:10 move therefore I am is that yeah yeah no that's that's that's that's exactly right and all the work on um uh uh active inference

      for - definition - consciousness - active inference

      definition - consciousness - active inference - In Levin's opinion, one important aspect of defining consciousness that seems generally overlooked is outputs - actions - active inference is a field that deals with the actions that result from intelligence - currently, there is a greater focus on the input / perception side of consciousness but not as strong a focus on the output / action side

  7. Dec 2023
    1. elected officials understand the benefits for the city or town from the work and projects implemented bymore active citizens and neighbourhood initiatives
      • for: leverage point - active citizen groups

      • leverage point

        • active citizen groups can get a variety of support from elected officials including
          • free suitable spaces
          • paid support staff
          • funding
          • simplification and support for any city permits
          • free marketing
  8. Oct 2023
  9. Sep 2023
    1. t may be that in using his system hedeveloped his mind and his knowledge of history to the point wherehe expected his readers to draw more inferences from the facts heselected than most modern readers are accustomed to doing, in thisday of the predigested book.

      It's possible that the process of note taking and excerpting may impose levels of analysis and synthesis on their users such that when writing and synthesizing their works that they more subtly expect their readers to do the same thing when their audiences may require more handholding and explanation.

      Here, both the authors' experiences and that of the cultures in which they're writing will determine the relationship.


      There's lots of analogies between thinking and digesting (rumination, consumption, etc), in reading and understanding contexts.

      Source: https://hypothes.is/a/hhCGsljeEe2QlccJUQ55fA

    1. "verbalism" is the besetting sin of those who fail to read analytically.
    2. What does active reading entail? We will return to this question many times in this book. For the moment, it suffices to say that, given the sam<' thing to read, one person reads it better than another, first, by reading it more actively, and second, by performing each of the acts involved more skill­fully.

      Initial stab at a definition of "active reading"

  10. Aug 2023
    1. BookmarkTypes and uses of PKM

      Almost every well known writer/composer/creative throughout history had some sort of note taking or knowledge system of one sort or another (florilegium, commonplace books, notebooks, diaries, journals, zettelkasten, waste books, mnemonic techniques, etc.), which would put them into your "active" category. I think you'd be hard put to come up with evidence of a "sudden" emergence of an "active" PKM system beyond the choice of individual users to actively do something with their collections or not.

      If you want to go more distant than Eminem, try looking closely at Ramon Llull's practice in the 11th century, or Homer in the c. 8th century BCE. Or to go much, much farther back, there's solid evidence that indigenous peoples in Australia had what you call both passive and active PKM systems as far back as 65,000 years ago. These are still in use today. Naturally these were not written, but used what anthropologists call orality. (See Walter Ong, Milman Parry, Lynne Kelly, Margo Neale, Duane Hamacher, et al.)

    1. The essence for this video is correct; active learning, progressive summarization, deep processing, relational analytical thinking, even evaluative.

      Yet, the implementation is severely lacking; marginalia, text writing, etc.

      Better would be the use of mindmaps or GRINDEmaps. I personally would combine it with the Antinet of course.

      I do like this guy's teaching style though 😂

  11. Jun 2023
    1. I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand, and enter in a little book short hints of what you find that is curious or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such particulars in your memory, where they will be ready either for practice on some future occasion if they are matters of utility, or at least to adorn and improve your conversation if they are rather points of curiosity.

      Benjamin Franklin letter to Miss Stevenson, Wanstead. Craven-street, May 16, 1760.

      Franklin doesn't use the word commonplace book here, but is actively recommending the creation and use of one. He's also encouraging the practice of annotation, though in commonplace form rather than within the book itself.

  12. May 2023
    1. "[What] I like about the [zettlekasten] system is that it's a constant reminder to to make up your mind and to specify what you what you're thinking."<br /> —Sönke Ahrens, [Tinderbox Meetup - May 7, 2023 00:30:36]

  13. Mar 2023
  14. Jan 2023
    1. The active links linked to the text is a good web accessibility example because it is operable. The user interface components and nvaigtion are operable because there is no hover interaction, the links are accessible without using a mouse

    1. It’s far more complicated than that, obviously. Different parts of this process are going on all the time. While working on one chapter, I’m also capturing and working on unrelated—for the time being at least—notes on other topics that interest me, including stuff that might well end up in future books.

      Because reading, annotating/note taking, and occasional outlining and writing can be broken down into small, concrete building blocks, each part of the process can be done separately and discretely with relatively easy ability to shift from one part of the process to another.

      Importantly, one can be working on multiple different high level projects (content production: writing, audio, video, etc.) simultaneously in a way which doesn't break the flow of one's immediate reading. While a particular note within a piece may not come to fruition within a current imagined project, it may spark an idea for a future as yet unimagined project.


      Aside: It would seem that Ryan Holiday's descriptions of his process are discrete with respect to each individual project. He's never mentioned using or reusing notes from past projects for current or future projects. He's even gone to the level that he creates custom note cards for his current project which have a title pre-printed on them.

      Does this pre-titling help to provide him with more singular focus for his specific workflow? Some who may be prone to being side-tracked or with specific ADHD issues may need or be helped by these visual and workflow cues to stay on task, and as a result be helped by them. For others it may hinder their workflows and creativity.

      This process may be different for beginning students or single project writers versus career writers (academics, journalists, fiction and non-fiction writers).


      As a concrete example of the above, I personally made a note here about Darwin and Lamarck for a separate interest in evolution which falls outside of my immediate area of interest with respect to note taking and writing output.

    1. Letusconsiderthepracticeof note takingundertwo mainheads:notesonlectures,andnotesonreading

      I've been heavily focused on note making while reading to the detriment of the different form of note making for lectures.

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  15. Dec 2022
    1. Conspiracy theories that provide names of the beneficiaries of political, social and economic disasters help people to navigate the complexities of the globalized world, and give simple answers as to who is right and who is wrong. If you add to this global communication technologies that help to rapidly develop and spread all sorts of conspiracy theories, these theories turn into a powerful tool to target subnational, national and international communities and to spread chaos and doubt. The smog of subjectivity created by user-generated content and the crisis of expertise have become a true gift to the Kremlin’s propaganda.
    1. Even when reading a book,the goal-oriented nature and intention of reading is paramount.6

      61 Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 45.

      I see some of the sense of this footnote, which helps to establish some ethos by calling to mind Adler/Van Doren's classic, but this particular page in their text is really about paying enough attention not to fall asleep and thus doesn't underline Scheper's point as well as references to other portions of their book about goals and active reading.

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  16. Nov 2022
    1. Discussion-Based Active Learning Strategies

      There are several unique ways to foster a discussion within a class setting. Some of these include-

      • Small Group Discussions - three to eight people
      • Think-Pair-Share - individually or in pairs, then share to a large group
      • Large Group Discussions- group of students

      • Brainstorming - group of students

      All of these contribute to ideas being shared and analyzed by the individuals involved. This also helps to build great communication skills as well as team building skills.

    1. the front endpapers are oftenthe most important. Some people reserve them for a fancybookplate.

      Adler and Van Doren indicate that outlining the arguments and structure of a book on its endpapers is a better and higher measurement of one's ownership of a text compared to a bookplate which only indicates the lower level of "financial" ownership.

    2. The endpapers at the back ofthe book can be used to make a personal index of the author'spoints in the order of their appearance.
    3. Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tendsto express itself in words, spoken or written. The person whosays he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually doesnot know what he thinks.

      Active reading is thinking, and thinking requires expression which can come in many forms including both spoken and written ones.


      I like that he acknowledges that expression (and thus thinking) can be done in both oral or written forms.

    4. Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? First,it keeps you awake-not merely conscious, but wide awake.Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tendsto express itself in words, spoken or written. The person whosays he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually doesnot know what he thinks. Third, writing your reactions downhelps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
    5. The pencil then becomes the sign of your alertness while you read.
    6. inspectional reading is always active.
    7. You will be surprised to find out howmuch time you will save, pleased to see how much more youwill grasp, and relieved to discover how much easier it all canbe than you supposed.

      The authors don't cover it, but the skimming portion of inspectional reading helps one to build some of the context which the author is attempting to relay. Preloading some of this context will decrease one's mental burden when more deeply and actively attempting to consume a text.

  17. Oct 2022
    1. Francis Bacon once remarked that "some booksare to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to bechewed and digested."
    2. The third level of reading we will call Analytical Reading.

      note that they're incorrectly capitalizing these types of reading to indicate their importance.

    1. This list is a great framework for showing students what they don't know, so they can actively work and practice at becoming better at their craft.

      I feel like actively annotating and "reading with a pen in hand" has been a great way to practice many of these points. Questioning texts, marking open problems, etc. goes a long way toward practicing these methods.

    1. My notes seem to be of two sorts. In reading certainvery important books 1 try to grasp the structure of thewriter's thought, and take notes accordingly. But morefrequently, in the last ten years, I do not read whole books,but rather parts of many books, from the point of view ofsome particular theme in which I am interested, and con-cerning which I usually have plans in my file. Therefore, Itake notes which do not fairly represent the books 1 read. Iam using this particular passage, this particular experi-ence, for the realization o f my own projects. Notes takenin this way form the contents o f memory upon which Imay have to call.
    2. Merely to name an item of experience often invitesus to explain it; the mere taking of a note from a book isoften a prod to reflection.
  18. Sep 2022
    1. As I write this book, for instance, I am sitting in a small room, beforea laptop computer, surrounded by books, papers, and magazines—all ofwhich I am, in some metaphorical sense, “in conversation with” (in muchthe same way I am also in conversation with you, my imagined reader).But what I am actually doing is working with a set of materials—lookingfor books on my shelves and flipping through them, folding pages over ormarking them with Post-its, retyping passages, filing and retrieving print-outs and photocopies, making notes in margins and on index cards, and,of course, composing, cutting, pasting, formatting, revising, and printingblocks of prose. I am, that is, for the most part, moving bits of text and paperaround.

      Joseph Harris uses a mélange of materials to make his writing including books, papers, magazines, from which he is copying sections out, writing in margins, making notes on index cards and then moving those pieces of text and pieces of paper (the index cards, and possibly Post-it notes) around to create his output.

      He doesn't delineate a specific process for his excerpting or note taking practice. How does he organize his notes? Is he just pulling them from piles around him? Is there a sense of organization at all?

    1. Courtney, Jennifer Pooler. “A Review of Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts.” The Journal of Effective Teaching 7, no. 1 (2007): 74–77.

      Review of: Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/9248.

    1. Critical reading methods, such asCERIC, make hidden expectations of doctoral programs explicit.

      Are some of the critical reading methods they're framing here similar to or some of the type found at Project Zero (https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines)?

    2. throughout an individual's schooling, the activity of readinglacks a coherent or explicit relationship to work that is assessed,unlike writing (Du Boulay 1999; Saltmarsh & Saltmarsh, 2008)

      Du Boulay, 1999; Saltmarsh & Saltmarsh, 2008<br /> Noticing that they've left these references off of the end of the paper.

      If we measure what we care about, why don't we do more grading and assessment of students' evidence of reading in addition to their writing? If we looked more closely at note taking and understanding first and foremost, would the ultimate analysis sort itself out? Instead we look only at the end products instead of the process. Focus more on the process and first class work here and the results will take care of themselves.

      cross reference:

      take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves (see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take_care_of_the_pennies_and_the_pounds_will_take_care_of_themselves)

    3. More effective structured note-taking systems,such as Cornell Notes or REAP, increase students' critical readingskills, including synthesis, analysis, and evaluation (Ahmad, 2019)

      More effective than what? Just highlighting? What does Ahmad show? Is there a hierarchy of strategies that have been cross tested with larger groups? What effect does a depth and breadth of neurodiverse subjects show, for example?


      This is the my first encounter with REAP.

      REAP is an acronym for Read, Encode, Annotate, Ponder.


      Has anyone done direct research on commonplacing or zettelkasten techniques to show concrete data to compare them with other currently more popular techniques like Cornell notes or REAP?

      Read for potential methods and set up for a potential meta study: Ahmad, S. Z. (2019). Impact of Cornell Notes vs. REAP on EFL secondary school students’ critical reading skills. International Education Studies, 12(10), 60-74

    4. Even with interactive features,highlighting does not require active engagement with the text, suchas paraphrasing or summarizing, which help to consolidate learning(Brown et al., 2014)

      What results do Brown et al show exactly? How do they dovetail with the citations and material in Ahrens2017 on these topics?

      Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jhu/detail.action?docID=3301452

      Ahrens, doesn't provide a full citation of Brown, but does quote it for the same broad purpose (see: https://hypothes.is/a/8ewTno3pEeydaHscXVaIzw) specifically with respect to the idea that highlighting doesn't help in the learning process, yet students still actively do it.

  19. Aug 2022
    1. But the real goal of a Great Books reading program is to experience the minds of these authors (something the Schoolmen called connatural knowledge) and imprint whatever value we find there on our souls (i.e. will and intellect). This can only be done through a process of intentional re-reading.
    1. The narrator considers this as vandalism and finds it hard to believe how anyone "educated enough to have access to a university library should do this to a book." To him "the treatment of books is a test of civilized behaviour."

      Highlighted portion is a quote from Kuehn sub-quoting David Lodge, Deaf Sentence (New York: Viking 2008)

      Ownership is certainly a factor here, but given how inexpensive many books are now, if you own it, why not mark it up? See also: Mortimer J. Adler's position on this.


      Marking up library books is a barbarism; not marking up your own books is a worse sin.

    1. Looking for books with wider margins for annotations and notes

      https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/wue2ex/looking_for_books_with_wider_margins_for/

      Not long after I posted this it had about 3 upvotes, including my automatic 1. It's now at 0, and there are several responses about not writing in books at all. It seems like this particular book community is morally opposed to writing in one's books! 🤣

      Why though? There's a tremendously long tradition of writing in books, and probably more so when they were far more expensive! Now they're incredibly inexpensive commodities, so why should we be less inclined to write in them, particularly when there's reasonable evidence of the value of doing so?

      I might understand not writing in library books as part of their value within the commons, but https://booktraces.org/ indicates that almost 12% or more of the books they've tracked prior to 1924 have some sort of mark, writing, or evidence that it was actively read.

      Given what I know of the second hand markets, it's highly unlikely that my books (marked up or not) will ever be read by another person.

      There's so much more to say here, but I just haven't the time today...

  20. Jul 2022
    1. so now finally we get to active inference all this discussion and we're finally getting to the point here right for his lab so um i had and i had already touched on 01:47:35 some of this before but um it would you know today if you're going to develop a really good ai system you're and you're going to have a you have a robot saying the robot has to act 01:47:47 in some environment it is pretty well understood that that if you program that robot to you give it a you give it a i mean traditionally you'll give it a a a fitness function or some kind of 01:47:59 valuation function and it's for example it's good if it it you know you lose points if you fall through a trap door and is and you get points if you uh you know whatever 01:48:11 find find the piece of cake or something well that's uh that's fine for extremely simple universes that your robot might work in but as soon as you get beyond you know as soon as you get to any kind of more realistic uh 01:48:24 universe that your robot has to work in that pre-programming pre-programming concept just kind of falls apart it is you you it would require the the the practitioner to think ahead of all the 01:48:37 things that the robot might encounter and then how to value certain you know value those situations in certain ways uh and that is really uh what active inference 01:48:49 offers is a is a kind of a cognitive understanding or a mechanism by which an organism will uh uh where its 01:49:00 fitness score is in a sense involves both uh you know achieving goals and exploring its world to for for for epistemic gain so 01:49:16 um that's what we would like the that's how we would like to program the robot in a sense so that it can learn from it can learn on the fly from its experiences it can it can alter its actions and 01:49:30 goals as it be as it becomes clear as it gathers more information from its universe as it as it meets new situations that were never never conceived of by the by the 01:49:42 programmer that it through through an active inference or an active inference like uh you know mechanism it can learn and explore and and critically balance exploration with 01:49:54 exploitation and then we come right back to that whole concept of criticality so you know what you would really like your robot to do is remain at that critical uh phase between 01:50:06 exploring what's out there and making use and gold directed behavior of what's in front of it and um and uh you know that's how you could program this world this robot to act in the world and be pretty good at 01:50:20 it you know if you if you build it well so that's what the systems of a society can help a society to do you you don't you it's worth talking about building new systems i think it would not be wise to say 01:50:32 this checklist of like we wanted this level of education we want to want this you know to react this way in this situation react this way in this situation and this level of uh you know whatever money and this level of this and this 01:50:45 level of that while those kinds of preferences can be a useful start society has to be alive in its moment you know in the moment as society is alive it's cognating it's 01:50:57 it's it's it's actively uh you know comparing what it's the result of its actions to the model that is in its head and uh so active inference offers this way 01:51:09 to uh to balance uh exploration and and uh and uh exploitation and remain critical and remain optimally cognitive right so that's part of it 01:51:24 uh and then part of it i mean and for me this the the the idea of the embodied uh you know the three four e's uh this is what i really am attracted to in 01:51:46 active inference is in a sense it's kind of a simple concept it's not really very complicated you know if you've studied bayesian uh theory it all it's kind of straight you know in a way it's kind of straightforward 01:51:58 but the the you know the way fristen has connected the dots and and and and uh extended that into the bigger picture of life kind of it it to me it is uh it is rich 01:52:11 there's a there's a lot yet to be learned and gained and explored in this umbrella of active inference

      Active inference is exemplified using a robot, but is really a model of how humans learn, process information and make decisions in the world.

  21. Jun 2022
    1. I very much appreciate your commitment to growth and learning. I also think it's nice to have colorful posts here vs. a ghost town. My feedback would be to gear your posts towards how to use an Antinet to produce written output. Specifically what main note you created, with pictures of the main note, and then elaborate on what they actually mean, and share a written post about the idea. You've done several of these posts, and I'd say lean even more towards sharing the most powerful thought/the most powerful maincard you've developed all week. For frequency, I'd say one post a week on this would be great.My main point is this: the primary use of Luhmann's Antinet was written output. The thoughts he shared were deep and developed because of the Antinet process. We're not in the PKM space, we're in the AKD space. Analog Knowledge Development, focusing on written output. The paradox is, when changing your mindset to written output, you actually become more of a learning machine.

      One of the toughest parts about these systems is that while they're relatively easy to outline (evidence: the thousands of 500-1000 word blog posts about zettelkasten in the last 3 years), they're tougher to practice and many people have slight variations on the idea (from Eminem's "Stacking Ammo" to Luhmann's (still incomplete) digital collection). Far fewer people are sticking with it beyond a few weeks or doing it for crazy reasons (I call it #ProductivityPorn, while Scott has the colorful phrase "bubble graph boys").

      For those who visit here, seeing discrete cards and ideas, videos, or examples of how others have done this practice can be immensely helpful. While it can be boring to watch a video of someone reading and taking notes by hand, it can also be incredibly useful to see exactly what they're doing and how they're doing it (though God bless you for speeding them up 😅).

      This is also part of why I share examples of how others have practiced these techniques too. Seeing discrete examples to imitate is far easier than trying to innovate your way into these methods, particularly when it's difficult to see the acceleration effects of serendipity that comes several months or years into the process. Plus it's fun to see how Vladimir Nabokov, Anne Lamott, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Bob Hope, Michael Ende, Twyla Tharp, Roland Barthes, Kate Grenville, Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Joan Rivers, Umberto Eco, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Raymond, Llull, George Carlin, John Locke, and Eminem all did variations of this for themselves. (This last sentence has so much entropy in it, I'm certain that it's never been written before in the history of humanity.)

      And isn't everyone tired to death of Luhmann, Luhmann, Luhmann? You'd think that no one had ever thought to take note of anything before?!

      While my own approach is a hybrid of online and offline techniques, I've gotten long emails from people following my Hypothes.is feed of notes and annotations saying what a useful extended example it is. Of course they don't see the follow up that entails revision of the notes or additional linking, tagging, and indexing that may go on, but it's at least enough of an idea that they understand the start of the practice.

      (Incidentally, I wrote most of this using a few cards from my own system. 🗃️✂️🖋️)

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHw-WdiNbw

      Example of someone's explicit note taking practice. While there's some missing context hiding without pre-knowledge of what a zettelkasten is, it's an n interesting example for modeling purposes for beginners.

    1. But systems of schooling and educational institutions–and much of online learning– are organized in ways that deny their voices matter. My role is to resist those systems and structures to reclaim the spaces of teaching and learning as voice affirming. Voice amplifying.

      Modeling annotation and note taking can allow students to see that their voices matter in conversation with the "greats" of knowledge. We can and should question authority. Even if one's internal voice questions as one reads, that might be enough, but modeling active reading and note taking can better underline and empower these modes of thought.

      There are certainly currents within American culture that we can and should question authority.

      Sadly some parts of conservative American culture are reverting back to paternalized power structures of "do as I say and not as I do" which leads to hypocrisy and erosion of society.

      Education can be used as a means of overcoming this, though it requires preventing the conservative right from eroding this away from the inside by removing books and certain thought from the education process that prevents this. Extreme examples of this are Warren Jeff's control of religion, education, and social life within his Mormon sect.

      Link to: - Lawrence Principe examples of the power establishment in Western classical education being questioned. Aristotle wasn't always right. The entire history of Western science is about questioning the status quo. (How can we center this practice not only in science, but within the humanities?)


      My evolving definition of active reading now explicitly includes the ideas of annotating the text, having a direct written conversation with it, questioning it, and expanding upon it. I'm not sure I may have included some or all of these in it before. This is what "reading with a pen in hand" (or digital annotation tool) should entail. What other pieces am I missing here which might also be included?

  22. May 2022
    1. Active reading to the extreme!

      What a clever innovation building on the ideas of the art of memory and Raymond Llull's combinatoric arts!

      Does this hit all of the areas of Bloom's Taxonomy? I suspect that it does.

      How could it be tied more directly into an active reading, annotating, and note taking practice?

    1. The student doesn’t have a strong preference for any of these archetypes. Their notes serve a clear purpose that’s often based on a short-term priority (e.g, writing a paper or passing a test), with the goal to “get it done” as simply as possible.

      The typical student note taking method of transcribing, using (or often not using at all), and keeping notes is doomed to failure.

      Many students make the mistake of not making their own actual notes. By this I don't mean they're not writing information down. In fact many are writing information down, but we can't really call these notes. Notes by definition ought to transform something seen or heard into one's own words. Without the transformation, these students think that they're taking notes, but in reality they're focusing their efforts on being transcriptionists. They're attempting to capture something for later consumption. This is a deadly trap! By only transcribing, they're not taking advantage of transforming information by putting ideas down in their own words to test their understanding. Often worse, even if they do transcribe notes, they don't revisit them. If they do revisit them, they're simply re-reading them and not actively working with them. Only re-reading them will lead to the illusion that they're learning something when in fact they're falling into the mere-exposure effect.

      Students who are acting as transcriptionists would be better off simply reading a textbook and taking notes directly from that.

      A note that isn't revisited or revised, may as well be a note not taken. If we were to consider a spectrum of useful, valuable, and worthwhile notes, these notes would be at the lowest end of the spectrum.

      link to: https://hypothes.is/a/QgkL6IkIEeym7OeN9v9New

  23. Apr 2022
    1. Since most of our feeds rely on either machine algorithms or human curation, there is very little control over what we actually want to see.

      While algorithmic feeds and "artificial intelligences" might control large swaths of what we see in our passive acquisition modes, we can and certainly should spend more of our time in active search modes which don't employ these tools or methods.

      How might we better blend our passive and active modes of search and discovery while still having and maintaining the value of serendipity in our workflows?

      Consider the loss of library stacks in our research workflows? We've lost some of the serendipity of seeing the book titles on the shelf that are adjacent to the one we're looking for. What about the books just above and below it? How do we replicate that sort of serendipity into our digital world?

      How do we help prevent the shiny object syndrome? How can stay on task rather than move onto the next pretty thing or topic presented to us by an algorithmic feed so that we can accomplish the task we set out to do? Certainly bookmarking a thing or a topic for later follow up can be useful so we don't go too far afield, but what other methods might we use? How can we optimize our random walks through life and a sea of information to tie disparate parts of everything together? Do we need to only rely on doing it as a broader species? Can smaller subgroups accomplish this if carefully planned or is exploring the problem space only possible at mass scale? And even then we may be under shooting the goal by an order of magnitude (or ten)?

    2. We have to endlessly scroll and parse a ton of images and headlines before we can find something interesting to read.

      The randomness of interesting tidbits in a social media scroll help to put us in a state of flow. We get small hits of dopamine from finding interesting posts to fill in the gaps of the boring bits in between and suddenly find we've lost the day. As a result an endless scroll of varying quality might have the effect of making one feel productive when in fact a reasonably large proportion of your time is spent on useless and uninteresting content.

      This effect may be put even further out when it's done algorithmically and the dopamine hits become more frequent. Potentially worse than this, the depth of the insight found in most social feeds is very shallow and rarely ever deep. One is almost never invited to delve further to find new insights.


      How might a social media stream of content be leveraged to help people read more interesting and complex content? Could putting Jacques Derrida's texts into a social media-like framing create this? Then one could reply to the text by sentence or paragraph with their own notes. This is similar to the user interface of Hypothes.is, but Hypothes.is has a more traditional reading interface compared to the social media space. What if one interspersed multiple authors in short threads? What other methods might work to "trick" the human mind into having more fun and finding flow in their deeper and more engaged reading states?

      Link this to the idea of fun in Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes.

    3. …and they are typically sorted: chronologically: newest items are displayed firstthrough data: most popular, trending, votesalgorithmically: the system determines what you see through your consumption patterns and what it wants you to seeby curation: humans determine what you seeby taxonomy: content is displayed within buckets of categories, like Wikipedia Most media entities employ a combination of the above.

      For reading richer, denser texts what is the best way of ordering and sorting it?

      Algorithmically sorting with a pseudo-chronological sort is the best method for social media content, but what is the most efficient method for journal articles? for books?

    1. solo thinking isrooted in our lifelong experience of social interaction; linguists and cognitivescientists theorize that the constant patter we carry on in our heads is a kind ofinternalized conversation. Our brains evolved to think with people: to teachthem, to argue with them, to exchange stories with them. Human thought isexquisitely sensitive to context, and one of the most powerful contexts of all isthe presence of other people. As a consequence, when we think socially, wethink differently—and often better—than when we think non-socially.

      People have evolved as social animals and this extends to thinking and interacting. We think better when we think socially (in groups) as opposed to thinking alone.

      This in part may be why solo reading and annotating improves one's thinking because it is a form of social annotation between the lone annotator and the author. Actual social annotation amongst groups may add additonal power to this method.

      I personally annotate alone, though I typically do so in a publicly discoverable fashion within Hypothes.is. While the audience of my annotations may be exceedingly low, there is at least a perceived public for my output. Thus my thinking, though done alone, is accelerated and improved by the potential social context in which it's done. (Hello, dear reader! 🥰) I can artificially take advantage of the social learning effects even if the social circle may mathematically approach the limit of an audience of one (me).

    2. the development of intelligent thinking is fundamentally a social process

      great quote


      How can social annotation practices take advantage of these sorts of active learning processes? What might be done in a flipped classroom setting to get students to use social annotation on a text prior to a lecture and have the questions and ideas from these sessions brought into the lecture space for discussion, argument, and expansion?

    3. Researchdemonstrates that students who engage in active learning acquire a deeperunderstanding of the material, score higher on exams, and are less likely to failor drop out.

      Active learning is a pedagogical structure whereby a teacher presents a problem to a group of students and has them (usually in smaller groups) collectively work on the solutions together. By talking and arguing amongst themselves they actively learn together not only how to approach problems, but to come up with their own solutions. Teachers can then show the correct answer, discuss why it was right and explain how the alternate approaches may have gone wrong. Research indicates that this approach helps provide a deeper understanding of the materials presented this way, that students score higher on exams and are less likely to either fail or drop out of these courses.

      Active learning sounds very similar to the sorts of approaches found in flipped classrooms. Is the overlap between the two approaches the same, or are there parts of the Venn diagrams of the two that differ, and, if so, how do they differ? Which portions are more beneficial?

      Does this sort of active learning approach also help to guard against "group think" as the result of comparing solutions from various groups? How might this be applied to democracy? Would separate versions of committees that then convene to compare notes and come up with solutions improve the quality of solutions?

    1. The Jesuit Francesco Sac-chini, in contrast, commended the interruption in reading that resulted fromstopping to copy a passage into one’s notebook: it slowed down reading and aidedretention.44
    2. The first manual solely devoted to excerpting, or note-taking fromreading, was composed for students in the advanced or rhetoric class at Jesuitcolleges by Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625), professor of rhetoric at the CollegioRomano. De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus (A Little Book on Howto Read with Profit) was published in 1614 and in a further six editions, followedby a translation into French in 1786 (for the use of Calvinists, judging from thededication to a pastor in Geneva) and into German in 1832.34

      Footnote:

      Sacchini (1614)—further references to “Sacchini” will be to this edition; warm thanks to Helmut Zedelmaier for sharing with me his photocopy of this edition. Further editions include: Sammieli (Saint-Mihiel, Lorraine), 1615; Ingolstadt 1616; Bordeaux 1617; Dillingen 1621; Leipzig 1711 and 1738; and Venetiis Britonum (Vannes, Brittany), 1866. It was translated into French (Sacchini [1786]) and German, Über die Lektüre, ihren Nutzen und die Vortheile sie gehörig anzuwenden, nach dem Lateini- Notes to Pages 70–72 283 schen des Sacchini teutsch bearbeitet und mit einem Anhange begleitet von Herrmann Walchner (Karlsruhe, 1832). I am grateful to Helmut Zedelmaier for the information about the German edition, which I have not seen. Sacchini’s De ratione . . . legendi was a source for Rainierio Carsughi, Ars bene scribendi (Rome, 1709), as discussed in Haskell (2003), 260. For the full range of Jesuit practices of note-taking (including notes taken under dictation) see Nelles (2007)—I am grateful to Paul Nelles for helpful conversations over the years. On Sacchini, see also Dainville (1978), 224–27.

  24. Mar 2022
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I44oMVd4Cw

      Become a Better Reader in 8 Minutes - Write down basic Impressions - Write actionable takeaways - Limit it to 10 items to create a level of selection - Create a list of favorite quotes - Bonus section: Catch all for other important tidbits. Also good for important questions.

      This is useful for its brevity and actionability, but it's also glossing over so much more that could be valuable. It specifically is leaving out methods and means of actively reusing all these written notes. No mention of reviews of the material or spaced repetition.

      Saw this via YouTube algorithm.

    1. sometimes it's 00:55:43 not the actual information bit but in a combined order that this is what it's all about and that often makes a difference between yeah you understand it and 00:56:00 you really understand it and um so maybe that's a good reminder that when we write it's it's not so much about new information and yeah don't have to 00:56:15 be too worried about not having the new information but about making this difference to really understanding it as something that 00:56:28 a significant or makes a difference

      For overall understanding and creating new writing output from it, the immediate focus shouldn't be about revealing new information or simple facts so much as it's about being able to place that new information into your own context. Once this has been done then the focus can shift to later being able to potentially use that new knowledge and understanding in other novel and enlightening contexts to create new insights.

    2. what i don't really do 00:48:10 is having a checklist like going through possible biases i don't feel that's very helpful i think it's important to keep them in mind but i think it's more about detecting okay 00:48:25 what kind of question is [Music] the author trying to answer

      Understanding the sorts of questions an author is looking at and attempting to answer are often more important than going through a checklist of biases which may come into play.

    3. give the text your reading the opportunity to tell you something new and something 00:49:02 you have not expected so i'm worried a little bit of having fixed [Music] categories to look through 00:49:16 text because it might turn every text into something that is um already fitting your categories instead of expanding them 00:49:26 or adding to them

      Coming to a text with too rigid a set of questions or preconceived categories may cause you to be blinded by what you expect to get out of it rather than allowing the text to surprise you with new and interesting insights you may not have anticipated.

    4. it is a tool for productivity um but i think it's a technology that forces you to [Music] engage more deeply with 00:29:06 the text you're reading

      The zettelkasten is a tool for thought that forces you to engage more deeply with what you're reading.

    1. Put Eidsheim 2015 and O'Callaghan 2007 in dialogue with each other.

      Brandon Lewis seems to be talking about actively taking two papers and placing them "in dialogue with each other" potentially by reading, annotating, and writing about them with himself as an intermediary.

    1. Research shows that people who are asked to write on complex topics,instead of being allowed to talk and gesture about them, end up reasoning lessastutely and drawing fewer inferences.

      Should active reading, thinking, and annotating also include making gestures as a means of providing more clear reasoning, and drawing better inferences from one's material?

      Would gestural movements with a hand or physical writing be helpful in annotation over digital annotation using typing as an input? Is this related to the anecdotal evidence/research of handwriting being a better method of note taking over typing?

      Could products like Hypothes.is or Diigo benefit from the use of digital pens on screens as a means of improving learning over using a mouse and a keyboard to highlight and annotate?

    1. Psychologists call this mechanism activeinhibition (cf. MacLeod, 2007

      Active inhibition is the filter that prevents our minds from being constantly flooded with memories and allows us to focus. It acts as a barrier between our long term memories and our immediate present.

      Is the filter behind active inhibition really active or is it passive? What is the actual physiological mechanism?

    2. RichardFeynman once had a visitor in his office, a historian who wanted tointerview him. When he spotted Feynman’s notebooks, he said howdelighted he was to see such “wonderful records of Feynman’sthinking.”“No, no!” Feynman protested. “They aren’t a record of my thinkingprocess. They are my thinking process. I actually did the work on thepaper.”“Well,” the historian said, “the work was done in your head, but therecord of it is still here.”“No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work onpaper, and this is the paper.”[33]

      Genius: The Life And Science of Richard Feynman,” James Gleick, Pantheon Books, 1992 (see pg. 409).

    3. Take Smart Notes

      It's important to be able to understand an idea within it's given text fully, but good readers are able to take the idea and place it into other contexts, to extend it, connect it to ideas beyond the text, and ask additional questions that the original author may not have considered or even thought possible.

    1. Even though your highlights from books typically include a page or "location" number, this context is largely meaningless unless you happen to be writing a paper requiring proper citations.

      Page numbers are terrible for anything other than looking up a location or citing where a quote is from, it provides little meaningful organizational context.

  25. Feb 2022
    1. In the early chapters Ahrens outlines the general form and method for taking notes for a zettelkasten, though he's not overly descriptive of the method and provides no direct examples.

      In the middle chapters he talks broadly about learning research and how the zettelkasten method dovetails with these methods.

      He does this almost as if he's a good teacher showing the student an outline of what to do and why, but leaving it up to them to actually do the work and experimentation to come up with their own specific methods of use to best suit their purposes. This allows them to do the work themselves so that they have a better chance of following a simple, but easy set of rules, but in a way that will allow them to potentially more quickly become an expert at the practice.

      “The one who does the work does the learning,” writes Doyle (2008, 63) [Section 10.5]

      In some sense, he's actively practicing what he preaches as a teaching device within his own book!

      I think that this point may be actively missed by those readers who aren't actively engaging with and converting his ideas into their own and doing the work which he's actively suggesting.

    2. We face here the same choice between methods that make us feellike we learned something and methods that truly do make us learnsomething.

      What methods of studying actually make us learn something versus make us feel as if we've learned something?

      Active reading, progressive summarization may be on this list while highlighting and underlining might not. Or perhaps there's a spectrum of poor to good, and if this is the case, what does it look like? Is it the same for everyone or are factors like neurodivergence part of the equation which might change this spectrum of learning methods and techniques?

    3. Reading with a pen in yourhand is the small-scale equivalent of a lecture.

      Active reading with a pen in your hand and the creation of smart notes is a small-scale equivalent of a full introductory lecture from the perspective of Richard Feynman's technique for testing understanding.

      Active reading is roughly equivalent to the idea of reading with a pen in your hand or showing evidence of a mind at play.

    4. Taking smart notes is the deliberate practice ofthese skills. Mere reading, underlining sentences and hoping toremember the content is not.

      Some of the lighter and more passive (and common) forms of reading, highlighting, underlining sentences and hoping to understand or even remember the content and contexts is far less valuable than active reading, progressive summarization, comparing and contrasting, and extracting smart or permanent notes from one's texts.

    5. Notes build up while you think, read, understand and generateideas, because you have to have a pen in your hand if you want tothink, read, understand and generate ideas properly anyway

      An active reader is always thinking, writing, and annotating. The notes from this process can and could easily be used to facilitate writing and generating new material showing new contexts and new modes of thought.

    1. It matters less what you read, he told me, emphasizing each word, than how you take notes.

      I appreciate how he puts some priority in note taking, but it does matter what your read.

      Better:

      It matters both what you read and how you take notes.

  26. Jan 2022
    1. Students also cited the frequent interruptions that accompanied each transition from group activities to instructor feedback (14 responses), a concern that their errors made during class would not be corrected (10 responses), and a general feeling of frustration and confusion (14 responses) when discussing their concerns about the actively taught classes.

      To what extent are these transitions, interruptions, and frustrations actually pedagogically valuable, and to what extent are they just cognitive overhead? Can they be reduced?

    1. An incredibly short, but dense essay on annotating books, but one which doesn't go into the same sort of detail as he gets in his book length treatment in How to Read a Book.

      Missing here is the social aspect of annotating a book. In fact, he actively recommends against loaning one's annotated books for fear of losing the details and value in them.

    2. Most of us have been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. T

      Where did the idea of speed reading being a measure of our intelligence stem?

      Certainly in a world of information overload there is the perception that greater consumption is better, but lack of comprehension and memory are the enemies.

      Comprehension and the ability to remember the books we read should be of the utmost importance.

    3. reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written.

      Nice to see him pay some homage to orality here.

    4. You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to write between the lines. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.

      -Mortimer J. Adler

  27. Dec 2021
    1. Discussion is led by an instructor, but the instructor’s job is not to give the students a more informed understanding of the texts, or to train them in methods of interpretation, which is what would happen in a typical literature- or philosophy-department course. The instructor’s job is to help the students relate the texts to their own lives.

      The format of many "great books" courses is to help students relate the texts to their own lives, not to have a better understanding of the books or to hone methods of interpreting them.

      This isn't too dissimilar to the way that many Protestants are taught to apply the Bible to their daily lives.

      Are students mis-applying the great books because they don't understand their original ideas and context the way many religious people do with the Bible?

  28. Nov 2021
    1. Karnofsky suggests that the cost/benefit ratio of how we typically think of reading may not be as simple as we intuitively expect i.e. we think that 'more time' = 'more understanding'.

      If you're simply reading to inform yourself about a topic, it may be worth reading a couple of book reviews, and listening to an interview or two, rather than invest the significant amount of time necessary to really engage with the book.

      A few hours of skimming and reviews/interviews may get you to 25% understanding and retention, which in many cases may be more than enough for your needs of being basically informed on the topic. Compared to the 50 - 100 hours necessary for a deep, analytical engagement with the text, that would only get you to 50% understanding and retention.

      That being said, if your goal is to develop expertise, both Karnofsky and Adler ('How to read a book') suggest that you need a deep engagement with multiple texts.

  29. Sep 2021
    1. https://fs.blog/2021/08/remember-books/

      A solid overview of how to read. Not as long or as in-depth as Mortimer J. Adler, but hits all of the high points in an absorbable manner.

      Definitely worth re-reading...

    2. The goal is not to read as many books as possible. The goal is to gain as much wisdom as you can.
    3. Using models while reading can also help you get more out of the book. Here are some examples of paths they might lead you down: Confirmation bias: Which parts of this book am I ignoring? Does this book confirm my opinions? (Okay, but does it actually affirm your beliefs or are you just seeing what you want to see? If you cannot think of a single point in the book that you disagreed with, confirmation bias is likely distorting your reasoning.) Bayesian updating: What opinions should I change in light of this book? How can I update my worldview using the information in it? Keep in mind the words of John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Incentives: What motivates the characters or the author? What are they seeking? What is their purpose? Here’s how Kurt Vonnegut described the importance of incentives in books: “When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” Availability bias: Are the books I have recently read affecting how I perceive this one? How are my immediate past experiences shaping my reading? Am I assigning undue importance to parts of this book because they are salient and memorable? Social proof: How is social proof—the number of copies sold, bestseller status, the opinions of others—affecting my perception of this book? Is the author using social proof to manipulate readers? It is not unusual for authors to buy their way onto bestseller lists, providing social proof that then leads to substantial sales. As a result, mediocre books can end up becoming popular. It’s a classic case of the emperor having no clothes, which smart readers know to look out for. Survivorship bias: Is this (nonfiction) book a representation of reality or is the author failing to account for base rates? Survivorship bias is abundant in business, self-help, and biographical books. A particular case of a successful individual or business might be held as the rule, rather than the exception. Utility: If a book offers advice, does it have practical applications? At what point do diminishing returns set in?

      This is a good list of questions to put into a template to ask both while and after reading a book.

      What other regularly recurring questions might go into such a list?

  30. Aug 2021
    1. The first step in translating experience, either of other men's writing, or of your own life, into the intellectual sphere, is to give it form. Merely to name an item of experience often invites you to explain it; the mere taking of a note from a book is often a prod to reflection. At the same time, of course, the taking of a note is a great aid in comprehending what you are reading.

      on the purpose of taking notes, annotating one's reading, or commonplacing

      highlight is a quote from

      C. Wright Mills' profound "Appendix: On Intellectual Craftsmanship," as found in his book on The Sociological Imagination.[16]

    2. Reading should never be merely passive and consist in the mere absorption or copying of information. It should be critical and engage the material reflectively, being guided by questions such as "Why is this important?" "How does this fit in?" "Is it true?" "Why is the author saying what she is saying?" etc.
    1. William Poole, “The Genres of Milton’sCommonplace Book,” inThe Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. NicholasMcDowell and Nigel Smith (2009), pp.367–81, argues that since Milton’scommonplace book was an exercise in moral philosophy (the discipline towhich his headings of ethics, economics, and politics correspond), it wascompiled for action.

      John Milton's commonplace book was an exercise in moral philosophy and it was compiled for action, not just a collection.

  31. Jul 2021
    1. Reading and listening are thought of as receiving communication from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending it. The mistake here is to suppose that re­ceiving communication is like receiving a blow or a legacy or a judgment from the court. On the contrary, the reader or listener is much more like the catcher in a game of baseball. Catching the ball is just as much an activity as pitching or hitting it. The pitcher or batter is the sender in the sense that his activity initiates the motion of the ball. The catcher or fielder is the receiver in the sense that his activity terminates it. Both are active, though the activities are different.

      Reading is a receptive active undertaking in the same way as a catcher receiving a pitch in baseball.

    2. One reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort. He is better if he demands more of himself and of the text before him.
    3. the more active the reading the better.

      How much more active can it be than also actively annotating and note taking?

    4. One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packag­ing of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements-all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics-to make it easy for him to "make up his own mind" with the mini­mum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and "plays back" the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed ac­ceptably without having had to think.

      This is an incredibly important fact. It's gone even further with additional advances in advertising and social media not to mention the slow drip mental programming provided by algorithmic feeds which tend to polarize their readers.

      People simply aren't actively reading their content, comparing, contrasting, or even fact checking it.

      I suspect that this book could use an additional overhaul to cover many of these aspects.

    1. 3. Keep it interactiveScience tells us that passive learning—dull lectures, pages of written text—don’t work nearly as well as when learners interact in one way or another with the learning material or instructor. You should use opportunities to build interaction into your in-person, online, synchronous, and asynchronous courses:

      Learning needs to move past the the one-way information model of learning.

      The upskilling Imperative talks about this a bit when talking about

      • instructivist model of learning vs constructionist model of learning

       instructivist model of learning vs constructionist model of learning

  32. Mar 2021
  33. Feb 2021
    1. I try to keep a note of what I read, which I probably would not do if I was not writing a blog

      I've recently shifted into a frame of mind where I think that, if I'm reading something (something that isn't obviously news or entertainment), I should be making notes. If I'm not making notes, then I'm probably wasting my time reading that particular piece of content.

  34. Jan 2021
    1. Introduce students to the “explode to explain” strategy. When students “explode to explain,” they closely read a key sentence or two in a source, annotate, and practice explaining what they are thinking and learning.

      This is a specific strategy to include in an active reading session.

  35. Dec 2020
  36. Oct 2020