How we learn is interesting.
When our daughter was a teenager we would occasionally have discussions that sometimes developed into arguments all about whether she should watch television while doing her homework. She swore it helped her focus. I swore it was a distraction. Studies show that music — classical music, specifically — can help your brain absorb and interpret new information more easily. I read somewhere long ago, however, that listening to songs while you study is less effective as part of your attention goes on the words of the song.
By time the two older granddaughters were studying for various exams the argument had moved on to how to make notes. Granddaughter Number Two in particular favoured reading through her notes and highlighting salient points in bright colours. My preferred method was always making notes on notes, actual handwritten notes, or even notes on notes on notes, reducing knowledge to trigger words. Again I have read somewhere that the act writing stuff down helps cement it into your memory, but best is physically handwriting it, not making a note on your phone or iPad.
This article suggests that we all rely too much now on technology to “help” us discover, learn or remember things. Because it’s too easy to “google” facts rather than force our memories to come up with those things we learnt long ago, or the name of an actor/writer/singer, we are perhaps becoming more “stupid”, certainly more lazy. Then there’s the increased use of AI in homework and the like. This has been around for a long time,of course. Fifteen or twenty years ago when coursework was a part of the assessment for Al-Level Modern Languages, I frequently had to reject first attempts by students who copied and pasted stuff off the internet; it was relatively easy to spot the different level language used. Nowadays it’s all more sophisticated - apparently people use AI to help them with answers to questions in zoom interviews. Astounding!
And here’s a cartoon about our over-reliance on AI in everyday life:
Sometimes technology can be frustrating, such as when you accidentally click on something, as happened to me yesterday and completely messed up my blog-posting until my technician, aka Phil, worked out what I had done.
Of course, I too find lots of information from technology, stuff that pops up on social media, some of it interesting, some of it connected to tedious advertising. Recently I must have “liked” a post enquiring about interesting plants and fruit that people had come across and now ai am bombarded with photos of strange fruit. This is the latest:
It turns out to be something called “feijoa”: Feijoa sellowiana, also known as Acca sellowiana Burret. Wikipedia tells me it is “a species of flowering plant in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. It is native mainly to the highlands of Colombia, southern Brazil and the hills of northeast Uruguay, but it can also be found in eastern Paraguay and northern Argentina. It is known as quirina or as feijoa. It is an evergreen shrub or small tree, 1–7 metres in height. The oblong leaves are about 5 cm long, dark green on the upper side and white underneath. The flowers have five whitish petals which are puffy, possibly filled with some gas”
There you go. I was initially a little confused as I am familiar with “feijoada”, a sort of bean stew which ai have eaten in Portugal and Galicia. Maybe there is a linguistic connection but I have not discovered it yet.
By the way, in my various readings I have some across a term for all the infomation that comes via the media: “online slop”!
A fair number of former students of mine keep in touch with me via social media, which is very nice. It’s more than 15 years since I retired so most of them are well into their thirties by now and posting information about their own children. One thing that strikes me is how many of them have succumbed to the modern trend for “baby showers” where mothers-to-be are “showered” with baby related gifts. Baby clothes are fashion items and can be phenomenally expensive but peole keep on buying the latest trends. So here is “Buy buy baby: the latest must-have baby clothes” – an Edith Pritchett cartoon:
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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