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I have been trying to learn 3D modeling. Since I have no background, this may never happen. I find in every video tutorial that I have seen, the instructor does things without explaining or even mentioning what he/she is doing. Or uses terminology I am unfamiliar with. (Someone did point me to a basic glossary). I find myself backtracking, sometimes more than once, to see what tab/button/whatever was used. I finally found written tutorials for making both clothes and props. FINALLY, things are making sense, and I'm making progress. Maybe someday.
I've found a trick to watching video tutorials that makes them work for me in an emergency. I turn the sound off. You see, while some people really DO actually only say what they're doing - as in "Now I'm holding down shift and clicking the T key" - many do not. Because I'm verbal and word-oriented, I will try to follow what they're saying and miss what is on the screen. If the sound is off I can really watch what's happening, and turn the sound back on if a shortcut is really going to be mentioned aloud versus clicking visible menu buttons.
Pete - not dyslexic in any way -- but for my money, this is the ONLY way to write procedural documentation!
Thank you namffuak for your comments. This is good to hear and with some help recently I have gotten better so the next tutorials I am working on will be better and these will be in PDF format and not on the forums.
I'm not sure what the best way for me to learn is, or if it will really help anybody else to know, as different people may learn differently. However, a few things come to mind:
Actually DOING a process is far more valuable to me than just hearing about it or seeing somebody else do it. I can watch over somebody's shoulder, or read instructions, or watch a video, and it makes perfect sense within the time frame of a few seconds, but it goes in one ear and out the other and doesn't stick. However if have to actually do whatever it is I'm trying to learn myself, the chances of the knowledge sticking go up dramatically.
Repetition helps. If I have to do it a zillion times, I usually get better at it.
Being able to refer back to something is extremely useful. I know everybody else likes videos instead of manuals, but I hate them with a passion, becuase it's impossible or nearly impossible to quick refer back to them, or to quick scan through them, or to follow a short list of steps, wheras having the identical information on paper (or in non-video form on screen) allows me to do all these things. I can quick look at the 1-page list of steps and perform them one-by-one, or back up a step, and look back and forth between what I'm doing and the information being taught to me.
Presenting the information in an interesting manner also helps. I have the attention span of a weasel on crack, and a long boring lecture or video or chapter just makes my eyes glaze over, and sometimes I find I've looked at the words, but haven't actually paid attention to them even if I'm trying really hard to focus. If my interest is maintained, so is my attention, and thus my ability to learn. I realize that isn't the responsibility of those trying to present information, however it can help those trying to learn it. Of course that's easier said than done. I sometimes see learning materials presented as if the person designing them thought people required bright colors and full-page diagrams nearly devoid of actual content, or thought that if they make it meaninglessly "interactive" suddenly it will be somehow better and fun when in fact it's just slower and far more embarrassing to use because it feels like it's geared towards somebody in 2nd grade; those attempts did not work, for me anyway, even though they sound like they might have qualified for being presented in a more interesting manner. Some things that do work, at least sometimes, are just occasional basic humor to liven up an otherwise boring subject, or providing unexpected and interesting bits of information that relate to the subject matter at hand, or perhaps a graphic that shows a complex interrelationship between several bits of knowledge so you have something to visualize and point at mentally when trying to determine what goes where or what comes before something else.
One of the best and most interesting classes I ever took was a physics class in college geared towards liberal arts requirements rather than actually a hardcore math-intensive science class. I'm weird and I like physics, but even so, it sounds like it would be really boring, lots of annoying equations and dry lectures. Not so. The class was entertaining as heck. There was a ton of hands-on demonstration and interesting presentations. To demonstrate a nuclear chain reaction, somebody took the time to set a few hundred mousetraps in a plexiglass box, each armed with a ping-pong ball (a neutron) and the whole thing was triggered by tossing one in there. A discussion that mentioned gamma rays that bombard us all the time was accompanied by a demonstration using a liquid nitrogen-cooled chamber where each gamma ray left a tiny vapor trail when it passed through, so we could effectively "see" what was happening. A lecture discussing mass and velocity using some weights on strings briefly freaked out the front row when the prof swapped out the weight for an identical-looking ping-pong ball and threw it right into the lecture hall (you probably couldn't do that one these days though). A lecture on velocity and acceleration was conducted outside at the nearest traffic intersection, where we drew chalk lines on the road, lined up with stopwatches, and had random drivers line up on the starting line. (the bicycle, not the cars, had the best initial acceleration.) To demonstrate air pressure and condensation, a soda can was boiled nearly to being empty, then spritzed with cold water, which crushed it. The demonstration was later repeated using a 55-gallon oil drum. For friction, we had races where we had to move a board with a hole in it along the table using a string running through the hole, and had to design the board, the string, the surface of the table, etc. and competed with other teams. Homework problems weren't just "solve this math problem" or "define these terms" but instead were odd challenges to be solved, like "explaining why if you are driving in a car and your kid has a helium balloon in the car, and you slam on the brakes, everything in the car is forced forwards except for the balloon, which suddenly moves BACKWARDS." The whole thing was a blast, but not embarrassingly silly, grabbed and kept your attention, was something to look forward instead of dread going to every day, made you think and question everything, and really clearly demonstrated all of the principles involved rather than just being a meaningless show; all in all, an extremely effective learning environment.
Cool thread Sickle...here's a link to some information on Gardner who is one of the experts on multiple intelligences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences for anyone who is interested.
IMO the idea of "multiple intelligences" is a big mistake which confuses the whole matter and makes it difficult to achieve a clear and logical understanding of the human mind and how it works. Intelligence is a very basic, definite and well-defined function which cannot be split up into different branches or "varieties". Basically it's just boolean logic combined with memory, just like in a computer. Those who invented the computer (artificial intelligence) got it right - they understood exactly what intelligence is and managed to create a machine that is a perfect demonstration of the basic and invariable concept of intelligence.
Those different kinds of "intelligence" some talk about are rather different kinds of complex mental functions or activities which - like all complex mental activities do - involve the use of intelligence to one degree or another. However, the intelligence factor in these mental activities is always the same and always works exactly the same way, just like a computer's intelligence always works the same way no matter what kind of complex program it is processing. The intelligence is literally hardcoded into the system and it must be for the computer to be reliable.
Basically all mental activities consist of three factors: emotion/desire, intelligence and memory. The difference in the expression of the different mental activities depends on the general context of the particular activity and the proportional emphasis on these three factors in the actual process. So you could just as well talk about "multiple emotions" or "multiple memories", for emotion and memory are just as much a part of these complex mental activities as intelligence is.
So instead of calling all these different kinds of complex mental activities for different kinds of "intelligences", call them what they are: complex mental activities.
Just my €0.05... ;)
The brain is not a simple mechanical device, it is much more complex, and the result is that the best way we can describe it is to say people are 'wired differently.' This is a very loose and inaccurate way of explaining a complex biochemical environment such as the mind, but it is light years closer then the 'mechanical / computer' model. This latter definition is much like taking a 3D environment and flattening it to 2D. It may look right, but only when looking from the angle presented, it lacks a lot of the depth.
A simple example: did you know if you cut off a mouse's whiskers when they are newborn and keep them cut off during the early growth phase that the area of the brain that controls them won't develop as a 'whisker sensing' area but rather will become (it is believed) general processing. Those mice will never be able to use their whiskers. It is believed by some scientists they will have more material for general cognitive functions then a mouse with proper functioning whiskers, although I don't know if anyone has thoroughly tested that. A child's ability to hear certain sounds depends on what sounds they are exposed to during very early childhood. These are environmental factors which directly effect the brain on a permanent basis. Mechanical systems have no mechanism for feedback loops that directly modify the base mechanism. Yes there are feedback loops in systems, but the effect the process, not the base mechanism.
Another simple example: our chemistry, hormones, fitness levels all create an environment which effect the brain in very complex ways in which people who devote their lives to cognitive studies are constantly debating, testing, retesting... these have short and long term effects in a way no mechanical system is subjected to, far more complex then running short on oil.
The genetic material that the brain evolves from equates to totally different brains right from the start. Take all of these (and more that we don't even know about) and mix them together and we have something far more complex then a simple mechanical/computer analogy could ever aspire to.
This is not to defend Gardner, I haven't read his treatise so I have no idea how much I would agree/disagree myself. There is a related issue here however in that 'Theory' is often used loosely in the cognitive field in that it is often applied when the concepts haven't been tested, validated and accepted to the level that Theory refers to. No one in the field wants to refer to their framework as a hypothesis however, when that is often what it actually is. Theory is a commonly accepted working framework, such as gravity. The cognitive field is so debated currently with little that can be nailed down to the level of actual 'theory' and that in itself causes contention as various contenders with different 'hypothesis' try to claim the title 'theory' for themselves. Having said that, there are some concepts that can be put into a theory category and the small bits I presented above falls within that. Just so much grasping at straws still once we go much beyond that.
One of the benefits to the "multiple intelligences" model is that it's helping us break away from styles of educating that are tailored to basically one learning style, or to regarding people with basically one learning style as the "smart" ones. Boolean logic combined with memory actually expresses itself very differently in different humans, and that is not always readily assessed by multiple choice tests involving "find the next figure in the progression" puzzles (yes, I hated intelligence tests as a kid, I'm not denying it). If this were a valid way of looking at things, our President should 100% of the time be the person who scores highest at math, and that is absolutely not a good idea. Acting in a leadership role requires a different intelligence than crunching pure numbers. This is the kind of thing we're groping toward expressing.
We DO have multiple memories and multiple emotions. While there are things we experience in common as humans - love, anger, the first memory of our parents - we are not equally affected by this information and we do not process it identically. If we did, art would not exist, because there would be no difference in how we would feel in any given situation.
The factors that go into how that works are still manifold and we do not fully understand them, either; but we're beginning to explore how we might.
There is a pattern I have noticed myself on two main criteria that get tested, memory and pattern recognition. These are two very different functions, both primary concepts in 'intelligence.' It seems from what I have seen that they are somewhat at odds in that people strong in memory tend to be lower in pattern recognition and vice versa. If I were in the field professionally, I would set up a test/series of tests to see if I could validate or refute this. My observations are that some people are very good at remembering names, faces, long lists of numbers, dates, doing very well at these types of tasks in school. However, when drawing conclusions from this data, seeing connections that weren't necessarily obvious, that often seemed to be less strong, even inversely related to their ability to remember details. In contrast, people who show strong abilities to infer something from seemingly disparate pieces of information often tend to have a hard time remembering things if they don't have a 'framework' in which to place the item to be remembered. I have seen reference to this in various writings on cognitive theory, but it was always vague and basically a footnote, when from my observations it should be considered a central to how we think, if it is indeed an accurate pattern. If it is a pattern, there is the further question of how much is firmly hardwired and how much is based on shaping due to learning patterns, environment... There is a grey line in how our brains evolve between base genetic patterns and environmental conditions/exercise since the latter instantiate themselves over time into the base mechanisms of the brain in a hardwired sense.
This concept of being able to change our hardwiring is central to the debate about how much we should teach to an individuals strengths and how much we should teach to their weaknesses to strengthen them. The one part of this debate I believe is lacking is taking all of the ramifications of this into account. It is my personal belief we should try to teach to an individuals strengths as a primary mechanism when possible while also engaging their personal weaknesses to strengthen them. This seems not only more efficient but a much more rounded/flexible process. Current teaching methods tend to either want to focus too much on the strengths, or beat someone to death on their weaknesses. In learning myself, I try to incorporate the more rounded approach. It is however seductive to only feed our strengths as that is what comes easiest to us.
One thing I do believe firmly both from personal experience and as a teacher is that different people do have different primary modalities for learning as Gardner discussed (at least on quickly perusing the link in Wikipedia.) We do tend to learn visually, verbally, hands on, etc.. These concepts have actually been around for a long time, long before Gardner's book. I happen to learn very well from videos, but if I don't do the exercises it negatively impacts my ability to actually do the task. People I've worked with who just want to do the hands-on often end up limited in their ability to come up with alternative methods to perform a task and alternative ways the processes shown in a given task can be employed otherwise, but are good at doing 'that task.' If we test for intelligence based on showing something and ask how this can be employed in other ways, the hands-on person will not do well typically, whereas if we test specifically for task repeatability, the visual learner will usually test poorer. This is from direct experience in teaching. (Caveat to this, it is personal experience, not a properly structured scientific test environment.) This is of course just a simple example of two modalities. Once we go into other modalities and tests the constructs become much more interesting/complex.
I tend to learn better if I can wrestle the concept behind the knowledge into a real-world situation; the often 'pure theory' approach of some teaching just whooshes over my head. Having attended a lot of computer courses (most recently mainly HP-UX) when I was in work it was often the case that the information would 'sit' with me until I could see how it related to an actual 'thing' back in the work environment and then it became working, functional knowledge (a bit like: information is knowing tomato is a fruit, knowledge means not putting one in a fruit salad).
I have also, for my sins and others' torture, taught a little. The feedback we got (the teaching was done in pairs) seemed to indicate we did ok (in a lot of cases better than ok). I think mainly due to the fact that, having had personal experience of sitting in a classroom hoping someone would ask a question to help clear stuff up or to ask for a rephrase (a failing I quickly dropped some years back) I made it very clear I was willing to go to pretty much any lengths to try and formulate the information in as many ways as I could to ensure that everyone would be able to get a grip on it.
Thus, I prefer the environment of a lesson/tutorial, where you have the instructor to hand to get immediate feedback from and direct clarifying questions at. Books come next, physical by preference, followed by electronic versions and thence to video presentations. The lack of ability to get the information in different ways (apart from turning the screen on it's side ....) plus, when dealing with on-screen tutorials, the need to flick from 'screen' to 'screen' (using Alt-tab or the task bar) can frustrate the living *^&^%*% out of me ;)
That is not to say that each and every tutorial or help file that comes with any product is not very much appreciated!
Again, the hardware is basically the same, the software (mind/consiousness) is complex and can vary in many different ways - we're all unique in that sense, even identical twins.
Genetically the hardware is the DNA, and that works basically the same way in all living organisms. The physical differences between species as well as individuals lies basically in the information encoded in the DNA, and that information is an expression of the consiousness of the organism. Just like the difference in the output of a computer depends on the information you feed it. Garbage in, garbage out. But its hardware remains the same whatever information you feed it with.
Mind/consiousness however extends beoynd and is independent of the physical organism and that's where things get complicated scientifically because materialistic science generally hasn't acknowledged that. When a human organims is formed the consciousness which decides to inhabit it enters the fetus at an early stage and begins to express itself though the genetical system, forming the body and mind of the person. A personality is therefore not formed by random genetical processes as science generally believes. I know this is highly controversial but you have to take this into account for all the rest to make sense.
The basics of consciousness can and must be understood from within, on a subjective and highly intuitive level, through meditation and psychological techniques. You can not fully understand it through scientific methods and experiments. Before science realises that, it won't get very far in this field. :)
I'm not going to respond to any of that, because TL:DR is a valid response to a page-long post in a thread about learning styles.
I AM going to also suggest the books The Way We Learn and The Way We Work as a simple way to also begin to explore the idea of different people learning in different ways, and what strategies sometimes work for different styles.
Ideally it shouldn't. Like they say, "great minds think alike".
Ideally it shouldn't. Like they say, "great minds think alike".
If there's anything history teaches us, it's that great minds don't think alike at all. It's probably safe to say Nelson Mandela and Buckminster Fuller thought very differently from one another, but both accomplished great things. Does anyone think Picasso thought and did his work in the same way as Einstein?
If there's anything history teaches us, it's that great minds don't think alike at all. It's probably safe to say Nelson Mandela and Buckminster Fuller thought very differently from one another, but both accomplished great things. Does anyone think Picasso thought and did his work in the same way as Einstein?
Edison and Tesla.
but there is no such thing as an original idea. :P
TL:DR?
I’m not going to respond to it because there is no point on my part… Taozen has such a fundamentally different view of things on this topic from me that it serves no purpose to debate it.
TL:DR?
I'm not going to respond to it because there is no point on my part... Taozen has such a fundamentally different view of things on this topic from me that it serves no purpose to debate it.
Too long, didn't read. :D
Also, as soon as someone starts using the word consciousness above once a post, I'm leaving that part of the discussion.
Hehe, gotcha... yes I pretty quickly figured out we were coming at things from very different perspectives myself.
Sure we are different, but our minds still share the same fundamental logic and the same fundamental emotions etc., in that sense we're all alike on a fundamental level. We couldn't understand or communicate with each other, otherwise.
But we should not let our sense of logic be distorted by our emotions, personal beliefs and other irrational stuff. That we do that is the reason for a lot of the problems in the world today. It's illogical and irrational to consider a person of a different race, color, nationality, religion or whatever to be inferior for example, and yet a lot of people do that because of subjective reasons. I'd even go as far as to say that love is an expression of logic. But don't ask me to go further into that.... :)
As for art it usally has little to do with logic, in most cases it's an expression of subjective feelings, emotions, preferences, opinions and worldviews and that's fine and can be constructive and useful in different ways (as well as destructive in others). It can express logic and "objective truths" as well though, which you sometimes see in a spiritual context.
This is not to debate the point but to clarify. The inability to hear the sound was expressed physiologically in the brain. No training, no meditation, no intervention could get these children, or anyone not raised in the Inuit village where the particular sound was used in communication to physically 'hear' the sound. That level of brain plasticity was no longer available after the particular developmental cycle had passed. The ability or lack thereof was 'hard wired' at that point.
Future technology may change that, but that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
People are like computers-- the hardware is all the same (exceptions noted), but the OS and software varies vastly.
That is exactly what we were trying to get across... that concept is an old one that is not only overly simplistic but follows a trend that is widely acknowledged in cognitive studies. During the Industrial Revolution, the brain got compared to clocks, and everything related to the brain was compared to clockworks. As understanding of the brain grew it became obvious that this was a vast oversimplification. With computers, it quickly got compared with computers, and the same thing happened, it was realized that this analogy falls far short of reality for many reasons. Furthermore, it became apparent that it is human nature to not only make analogies such as this but to get trapped by them, where our ability to think about something becomes defined by the very limited analogy rather then the much more complex reality. This is a known, discussed and accepted phenomena in the study of cognition.
Hmm, this is beginning to stray into the hinterlands of religion and personal beliefs, which are verboten topics.
THANK you.
On a scientific note, if anyone is on Facebook and is interested in the physiology of cognition there is a very good page Neuroscience Research Techniques that is worth checking out.
If there's anything history teaches us, it's that great minds don't think alike at all. It's probably safe to say Nelson Mandela and Buckminster Fuller thought very differently from one another, but both accomplished great things. Does anyone think Picasso thought and did his work in the same way as Einstein?
Well as I see it the expression "great minds think alike" refers to logical thinking or logical truth. There is an infinite number of logically false answers to the question "what is 1+1", but only one logically true answer. Great minds are those who think logically alike and therefore always give you the same answer: 2
I think that's the best way I can illustrate it.
Would anyone else like to share their experience with learning styles or what learning is like for them?
Yeah - one more quirk on my part.
If I'm interested in something, you can't stop me from learning about it. If I'm not really interested and you're trying to teach me something, and you're absolutely passionate about it, I'll pick it up. If I'm not really interested, you're trying to teach me, and it's just a job for you - we might as well both go do something else. And there are some areas that just don't do anything for me and won't stick at all.
Sports, for example. At age 65, and having lived in Indiana all my life, I might be able to name 3 or 4 basketball teams. With no clue who plays on them. I do slightly better on football and just as badly on baseball. No interest, don't care, and 10 minutes after you expound on the merits of a current pennant contender I won't remember what team you were talking about.
Okay. Maybe two quirks. :-)
I have a curious nature. I also solve problems for a living. So I'd say It depends on the project. Some things have to be done in order sequentially or they don't work... So I will do things that way. My preferred method is to 'play around and figure it out.'
I no longer have the capacity really to hear someone lecture or tell me how to do things. I get very bored in that type of course work. I'd prefer to be given the book and learn it myself rather than to listen to long boring lectures.
If I have to refer to directions to learn how to do something, they durn well better be well done. Nothing more frustrating to have to look something up to find out the directions are vague and undocumented.