Month: March 2019

Bookmarked The Surprisingly Powerful Influence of Drawing on Memory by Myra A. Fernandes, Jeffrey D. Wammes, Melissa E. Meade ( Current Directions in Psychological Science)

The colloquialism “a picture is worth a thousand words” has reverberated through the decades, yet there is very little basic cognitive research assessing the merit of drawing as a mnemonic strategy. In our recent research, we explored whether drawing to-be-learned information enhanced memory and found it to be a reliable, replicable means of boosting performance. Specifically, we have shown this technique can be applied to enhance learning of individual words and pictures as well as textbook definitions. In delineating the mechanism of action, we have shown that gains are greater from drawing than other known mnemonic techniques, such as semantic elaboration, visualization, writing, and even tracing to-be-remembered information. We propose that drawing improves memory by promoting the integration of elaborative, pictorial, and motor codes, facilitating creation of a context-rich representation. Importantly, the simplicity of this strategy means it can be used by people with cognitive impairments to enhance memory, with preliminary findings suggesting measurable gains in performance in both normally aging individuals and patients with dementia.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418755385

Replied to a post by Davey Moloney (daveymoloney.com)

Interestingly, this article (https://www.edutopia.org/article/science-drawing-and-memory) highlights recent studies where “researchers found drawing information to be a powerful way to boost memory, increasing recall by nearly double” #​OpenBlog19

Syndicated to: Twitter

I’m glad that there’s some more modern research around this general idea. Of course the reliance of humans on the power of visual memory goes back to ancient Greece with the method of loci and from the Renaissance (or earlier) with the mnemonic major system.

I know both systems intimately well since the age of about 11, though I haven’t written much about them on my site. (I should fix this, though there are some related tangents within my memory category.) I did notice a large overlap with the major system and Gregg shorthand a while back, which leads me to believe that they’ve got an even richer back history than most may presume.

I’ve always been confounded that these systems aren’t better known in modern culture, though some sources have indicated that religious influences tamped down their proliferation in the 1500’s.

 

❤️ jmsclee tweeted I’m absolutely crying at this. Sound on. https://t.co/BibRtM10sc

Liked a tweet by Clee Clee (Twitter)
Read How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (castel.dev)
A while back I an­swered a ques­tion on Quora: Can peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly keep up with note-​taking in Math­e­mat­ics lec­tures with LaTeX . There, I ex­plained…
This is awesome though I’ve also heard of cases in which students use shared Google docs to collaboratively take notes like this as well.
I’m planning on proposing an OER or other book related session at the upcoming IndieWebCamp New Haven next weekend. If you’re interested or want to propose other ideas for or , I hope you’ll join us either in-person or remotely.

Not sure what to expect at a camp? Here are some additional details for both in-person and remote attendance.

Followed Domains Conference

Followed Domains Conference (domains.reclaimhosting.com)

Reclaim Hosting is very excited to be running our second Domains event in 2019. We figured it was high time to get together again and we’re hoping this provides a fun and creative opportunity to explore a wide range of topics in educational technology. We are framing this event around the theme of going “Back to the Future,” a dreamvision of technoir and utopianism wherein the neon possibilities of EdTechs past merge with the shadowy data that reflects the uncertain futures of data ownership, privacy, access, targeted teaching tools, cloud infrastructures, as well as the home video market!

The conference will be held on June 10th and 11th at the 21c Museum Hotel in Durham, North Carolina, and we hope you can make it. You can see the call for presentations below, but we want to make a concerted effort to encourage folks to submit not only presentation and panels, but also dynamic talks that use art and technology to communicate their message. Our featured speakers, to be announced anon, will be using art and interactive explorations to interrogate their topics and we hope that those of you considering presenting will follow suit.