There’s a new education conference happening in Philadelphia this month called Educon 2.0. The conversations look fascinating- from Looking at Student Motivation, to effective use of computers in the classroom, to using social networks as part of the learning process. I am so glad educators are getting together to talk about how we can make schools about more than just fundamentals, or teach fundamentals to others in a new way.
Yet as much as I am a technology gear head, I also understand the first thing I have to know about is how learning works. How do kids acquire new information? Once they have it, what do they do with it? What is the best length of time of activities to maximize learning? Do kids of different ages process information differently? If so, how do we accommodate this?
Graduate school degrees are earned studying these topics. Yet, parents really need to understand at least the Cliff Notes version of Developmental Psychology and Learning Theory in order to be better at mentoring their own kids, whether it’s helping them with homework, or teaching them to tie their shoes. Here are a few nuggets of key information you should know (and please let me know if you want more information in this vein- I could blog about this stuff until the end of time…..)
Humans process incoming information in two main ways- visual/spatial and auditory/language. This information gets fed into your “working memory”- like RAM on the computer. But unfortunately, your RAM cannot be infinitely expanded, and has limitations. You’ll hear phrases like “7 plus or minus 2″ as the number of things we can manipulate in our working memory at any one time, and this is why phone numbers are typically 7 digits long. We can process more information by remembering it in chunks- area codes as 1 piece of information in addition to the phone number, or the three sections of social security numbers as discrete chunks of information. This expands the capacity of working memory, but not infinitely.
The auditory and visual loops in working memory mean that you can multitask if you are using these loops independently, but not two tasks requiring the same loop and maintain efficiency. For example, you can drive and talk on the phone (hopefully with a head set…..) But if the driving conditions deteriorate, or the conversation is stressful, or if the kids start yelling in the back seat, then you have big trouble. One task starts to take up more and more of your working memory- and needs more concentration, reducing your ability to keep all these tasks functioning reasonably well at the same time.
Writing is a language/auditory task, and a physical one. As such, it takes up a lot of working memory space, and you’ll find you can’t write a note to your child’s teacher easily and effectively while talking on the phone or to your child, and will automatically say something to the effect of “Just a sec- let me finish this, then I can concentrate on you….” That’s your working memory saying- “okay, time to parse these tasks rather than do them all at once.” And if you find yourself getting ready to snap emotionally at someone for interrupting you, or a child trying to get your attention when its elsewhere, for example, that emotional response is your working memory buffer hitting the overload point, and verging on system collapse.
As applied to kids, this means they cannot, despite their assertions to the contrary, listen to music or watch TV and complete homework at the same time. Something is going to be given short shrift, and in my experience, it tends not to be the TV or the background music. Likewise, if you have a bunch of tasks you want your kid to do, write them down, rather than expecting them to remember them all. Their working memories may not be as good as yours, and you can bet that their priorities about the condition of their bedroom floor is not the same as yours, so lots of your “priority 1″ tasks will fall off their list quickly.
There are limits, real, biological limits, on the amount of information we can parse and deal with effectively on a daily basis. Yet my email box overfloweth, and I bet yours does, too. Consider using filters to put email into categories and deal with each category in bulk at one time, or use something like Google reader to store and help you parse your blog reading.
The core nugget of information I hope you walk away with from this blog post is this: You may not be able to become an expert in learning theory. If you take the time to understand some key concepts on how learning works, like working memory and how information gets transferred into long term memory (we’ll do that one next time…) you will be able to help your kids work more effectively and efficiently. And you’ll be able to understand the limits of your biology as well, hopefully letting you make better and safer choices about what tasks you try to do simultaneously.
[tags]brain, brains, learning, understanding, process, auditory, visual, EduCon, biology, education[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by drurydrama, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
1 response so far ↓
IntheFastLane // Feb 5, 2008 at 9:23 am
When it was time to have my son get himself out the door in the morning, with all his things, I made him a check list of all the things he needed to do (backpack, shoes, coat, turn off the TV, lock the door, etc…) laminated it and then I stored a dry erase pen next to the list. He needed the list for about a month and now is an expert.
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