sacha chua living an awesome life

From Tuesday: J- has started Grade 8, the year before high school. Last schoolyear, we invested more time into helping her learn, and that worked well. I wonder what we’ll learn about learning this year.

J- was preparing for a quiz on pre-confederation Canada. To help, the teacher had labelled the settlements with A, B, C, and so on. J had made her own mnemonics. For example, D stood for ReD River Settlement. But the letters weren’t assigned in any obvious order, so J- was memorizing an arbitrary association.

Placing the information on the map was much more useful. We scanned in J-’s handout, then J- traced it using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. With a blank map, J- could then add layers with her labels. After a few tries, she could correctly label all the areas in less than a minute and a half. (… and so could I! That will probably come in handy for any citizenship tests.)

We created a new map for Canada’s current provinces, and we quizzed ourselves on that too. For kicks, we took J’-s jigsaw puzzle of the provinces of the Philippines, mixed up the pieces, and assembled everything without looking at the picture. That was fun, although I was a bit slower putting together Mindanao’s provinces than I was at Luzon and Visayas. (More travel?)

Out of curiosity, I flipped through the other pages in her folder. One of the sheets had a timeline of events. “What if we could learn the order of these events?” I asked J-.

1. She looked at me, probably as intimidated as I was. I remember having such difficulty with trivia like that in my history classes. Time to see if I could pass on some tips from Moonwalking with Einstein and other mind-hacking resources.
2. I told J- about the idea of a memory palace – exaggerating the characteristics of items you need to memorize, then imagining them in specific locations in a place you know well. We walked through the process of imagining reminders:
3. golden blueberry bushes in the front yard for the prospectors of the gold rush
4. our cats meowing to be let out of the door – Ottawa
5. a colony of dust bunnies on the shelf – BC became a colony
6. Americans politely fighting over the litter boxes – the American Civil War
7. Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins on the sofa, discussing their impending union – Discussion at Charlottetown
8. … while Mr. Collins’ 72 relatives crowd in front of the bookcase (recalling Lost in Austen) – 72 Resolutions in Quebec
9. Mr. and Mrs. News and Mr. and Mrs. Canada getting together around the kitchen table – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada West, and Canada East
10. Tripping over a giant rubber eraser in an HBC bag blocking the corridor – Rupert’s Land, HBC 
11. Walking up the stairs and meeting a man with a big toe – Manitoba joins
12. Peeking into the guest room and seeing a busy party – BC joins
13. Going to the bathroom – PEI
14. Going to J’s room and seeing her toys in a circle – Consolidated Indian Act

We imagined it while we were in the living room. She physically traced the steps and talked about the things she imagined. Then she mentally retraced the steps. Even after watching a movie (Pom Poko, by Studio Ghibli), she still remembered the sequence. Let’s see if she ends up using it in school!

It’s fun adding tools to J’s learning kit. She picked up the strategy of inventing mnemonics. She made flashcards to practise the Gnommish alphabet from the Artemis Fowl series. Now she knows about mapping and the memory palace technique. For dates, we might try the Major system, if we can wrap our minds around it. I wish I’d learned about these things when I was in school, but hey, good to pass on the hacks! =)

Thoughts:

1. It’s better to find useful associations than arbitrary ones.
2. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and other drawing programs can be good educational tools.
3. Learning something might not be important, but learning how to learn something – ah, that can be valuable.
4. The memory palace technique is great for remembering sequences. Exaggerated images stick in your brain.

One of the reasons I signed up for piano lessons was because I’d flipped through the Alfred Adult All-in-One Piano Course Level 2 book and found myself skipping pasts songs I didn’t recognize. Light and Blue? Theme from Solace? La Raspa? Mexican Hat Dance?

I looked up Youtube videos of people playing. So, this mysterious La Raspa?

And the Mexican Hat Dance?

Is it just me, or were those in Looney Tunes or something similar?

I may have wasted hours of my life watching cartoons as a kid, but if those memories now encourage me to get through all these piano pieces, maybe they weren’t such a waste after all. =)

Then there’s the link between Looney Tunes and opera… I wonder what surprising connections these childhood pastimes will make?

I’m starting to get the hang of the first part of the overture from “Raymond” and this bluesy sort of piece from Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano course. It’s a bit mind-boggling, trying to figure out how to play staccato with my right hand while playing smooth, connected notes with my left. I find it helps to stop thinking about the music and start listening to it. Obvious, you might think, but I have to work on figuring it out. Or on not figuring it out, and going with the flow.

J- is also learning how to play the piano. She’s starting in grade 1 so that she can practise reading the notes. J- plays the piano like I type QWERTY: untutored, we hit the keys with whichever finger is closest, which is fine for pecking things out, but which can be limiting. I fixed that on the computer keyboard by switching to Dvorak and going through self-paced training exercises. Since you can’t exactly re-layout a piano keyboard to rejig your mental connections, there’s nothing to do but to unlearn those habits and then learn new ones.

I’m working on dynamics, tempo, and getting the hang of thinking in these different keys. I play the piano like I program. I get carried away by the fun and easy bits, and then I slow down for the parts I have to think about some more. One of the tricks with piano is to slow down even for the parts that you’ve figured out so that you can play at a sustainable pace throughout. Hmm. Maybe that’s like life, too.

Good mental exercise. Glad I’m doing it. Going for lessons (actual paid-for lessons that take up a chunk of my day, with exercises and homework I’m accountable for!) looks like it’s helping.

J- and I have started piano lessons at a nearby music school. The teacher evaluated her as Grade 3-4, and has assigned her some pieces to work on. Me, I’m slowly working my way through Alfred’s Adult All-in-One Piano Course Level 2. 

I was nervous. It was hard to remember to hit the keys and breathe. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of both over time.

My homework: the first part of the overture from the opera “Raymond”. This is the part that sounds like this:

… except I sound more like clompclompclomp-”How do I get my right hand to play a slur while my left hand is playing staccato!?”-clompclompslurclomp-WHEEZE-”Right, must remember to breathe”-clompclompclomp-”Oops!”–clompclompclompclomp.

Well, everyone’s gotta start somewhere. =)

J- brought home her report card this week. She did well in so many subjects that it’s hard to pick which strength to build on first. Her mathematics study group sessions and science projects paid off, as did her personal interest in music.

To celebrate her work, W- and I made a colourful card. She likes making greeting cards for us, and it was fun making one for her.

It’s important to acknowledge good work. One time, W- was reviewing J-’s answers to the math exercises he gave her. “Very good,” he said. He crumpled the finished piece of paper.

I plucked it from his hands and smoothened it out. “Ahem,” I said meaningfully.

“Oops. I tossed the other one already,” confessed W-. I retrieved the previous paper from the recycling bin and uncrumpled it. W- made a point of scoring both papers and adding smileys. J- beamed.

Ah, behavioural psychology at home. You can influence people’s motivation by acknowledging or devaluing their work. In The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home (Dan Areily, 2010), I read about experiments that explored how motivated people were if they thought their results were meaningless. As it turns out, people are strongly affected by the immediate perception of the usefulness of their work.

In a task involving assembling Lego figures, participants who completed figures and put them into a box did more and enjoyed the task more than participants whose figures were disassembled right after they finished completing them. Another experiment described in the book involved finding pairs of letters on pages, a small payment scheme that stopped at the 10th sheet, and three scenarios where:

• people wrote their names on the papers they completed, and they were positively acknowledged by the experimentr
• people completed and submitted papers with no names and without acknowledgement
• people submitted papers that were then shredded, unread, right in front of them

49% of the people who were acknowledged went on to complete ten sheets or more, while only 17% of the people whose work was immediately shredded completed 10 or more. Only 18% of the people whose work was ignored completed ten sheets or more.

Verbal acknowledgment of good work is good, but could it be at odds with the physical message of tossing the paper into the recycling bin? Best to be coherent. So the paper is celebrated, labeled, and put into a folder.

W- reminds me of this principle too, when I forget. On the way home from work one day, I brought up how he spent some time selecting and copying items from the workbook onto a piece of paper for J-’s exercises. “Should we get a workbook without explanations, so J- can test herself?” I asked W-.

“No, it’s okay. Besides, it shows her that I value this,” W- said. “If I give her a workbook so that I can do something else, it’s not the same.”

We invest learning with meaning and value, and that helps.

As part of the grade 8 graduation ceremony, J- and the other grade 7 students spoke about the students who were going on to high school.

J- was initially unsure about her speech. She didn’t know much about her honoree beyond a few short facts and a couple of stories from her interview. Her speech reflected it: generalities like “nice” and “funny”, and two pieces from the interview that were strung together with little transition.

We helped her edit her speech. She found ways to connect the pieces, trim unneeded words, and become more specific. Larger fonts and more space between lines simplified reading. Slashes helped her find places to breathe and remember to make eye contact. It wasn’t perfect, but it had fewer filler phrases, and it flowed more smoothly than her first draft.

She rehearsed with the cat-tree as an ad-hoc podium. She didn’t drill it endlessly, but she practised it enough to get a sense of how the words felt.

When she delivered the speech, she got laughs – and high-fives, fistbumps, and compliments afterwards.

There’s a beginning, perhaps – that feeling of competence, that “hey I can do this”, the way that the music notes of her favourite songs are beginning to melt into melodies and her writing is becoming more about thought instead of mechanics.

One of the key things in helping people learn, I think, is to nudge people over that hump and into that “I rock” experience, so that they get to the point of being able to enjoy it.

I wonder how more people can get over that hump and enjoy exploring and sharing ideas.

Also, it turns out that you can learn a lot about speaking from watching students. A few of the other speeches drew on clear, personal experiences. Others were delivered confidently and capably. Many echoed a common outline – perhaps the suggested questions from the interview: How long has the student attended the school? What are some characteristics you would use to describe the student? What’s a memory you can share about the student? Students were described with generic adjectives: “nice,” “funny,” “athletic.” Stories were left in the air, with little connection to the beginning or end of the speech. But that’s okay, they’re still learning. (Aren’t we all?)

Worth the time.

2011-06-27 Mon 21:36

(From April 23:)

I’m helping out with a proposal at work. The team asked me to condense a 250+-page requirements document into a spreadsheet of use cases. I’m new to architecture, but I gave it my best shot, sending the architect quick drafts so that we could zero in on something useful.

My first draft was too low-level, too detailed. My second draft was a bit better, but still too granular. My third draft was at about the right level, but some use cases were still too big. My fourth draft was workable. Hooray!

When you’re learning something that’s hard to pick up on your own, figure out how you can iteratively improve with feedback. Even if an expert doesn’t have the time to walk you through the process, he or she might be able to quickly tell you if you’re on the right track. See if you can break your work down into small portions you can work on until you get them right, and apply what you learn there to the rest of the work. Good luck!