Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Module 12/14 Post 2

When I am studying for an exam, I go back and look at my teachers notes and the notes that I have taken. I then combine these, and rewrite them all in a way that helps get the information for the teacher's power point slides and my information together. This way while I am rewriting it, I am taking the time to process the information again. The notes are better together because I can write down the ideas I had on the subject, the ideas the teacher presented, and then the ideas that came at a later point fro the lecture, and put it together. These notes help for me to make connections to the information and to real world experiences. In this course, I mentally think about the theories we learn and see how they apply to my camp classroom, and how I did some of these theorists ideas without even knowing about them. By being able to connect the theories, it re encodes the ideas, and makes me have a better chance of understanding it because of the strong connection. My notes and connections help me to be able to study and prepare for an exam. Thinking about thinking about my notes is key for me to understanding and preparing for a test. I use metacognition daily when preparing and learning in classes.

2 comments:

  1. When you do this, you actually write the notes and then rewrite both of them? Does this make the information in turn to be mylineated or just remembered easier? I am actually a little confused on to whether or not you actually mylineate the information or just encode it when you are doing this.. because if we are writing the information twice or three times, then wouldn't this be mylinated, or do you have to do something more to be mylineated?

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  2. I want to help clarify this, since myelination and encoding were discussed entirely separately (they're part of two theories that may or may not overlap). It's not one or the other.

    Here, I think Carly is focusing on encoding (IP theory). It's true that if you think about something over and over, the synaptic connections used for that thinking will be myelinated (which will make it be remembered easier--more effortlessly--because the signal is faster and stronger). She's doing that here as well, because she's thinking about the same ideas multiple times, and perhaps is making physical neural connections if she connects two pieces of information together.

    Information Processing Theory would describe what she's doing as encoding (moving bits of information to long term memory). She's making a lot of connections to past experience, categorizing ideas, synthesizing them in her own words, and all of these things require some connection to knowledge already in long term memory (which makes it encoding). All of this synthesis, comparison, and categorization, is also a form of higher order thinking, as we've discussed.

    All the theories overlap! (But they are just different explanations of the world)

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