So, moving on to the actual subject, I read in the latest book about how we learn and understand things. The two ideas I liked best were symbols and metaphors. Symbols are amazing because they combine two in one: first, they force you to summarize an idea (reminiscent of the last book); second, to visualize it. This appeals to me as an artist as well as a scientist, wherein I believe symbols, when done well, are beautiful. Street signs must communicate rules very quickly and in a universal language. Hazard signs on a doorway must communicate just how dangerous that room is, in a way that cannot be misunderstood. Students able to come up with symbols to express an idea learned in a unit will be able to easily recall those same symbols and translate them back into a principle.
Moving on to metaphors. I often confuse them with analogies (also to be discussed) so I'll look up the definitions to get them right. Apparently metaphors are to apply words not typically associated with things in order to express better what it means. Analogies are to compare and sort of translate ideas into another realm of understanding. For students to appropriately apply metaphors and analogies from a subject they do understand into a subject they don't quite is incredibly powerful. I did it today when we were talking about forms of understanding and note taking. Just like compression in media, I can't write down and/or remember every single thing, but I can compress it into an analogy or a symbol--something very easy and small to remember--and decompress later. The trick to decompression is to actually understand the long version before compressing, so you can still understand it after.
And that's enough for reflection right now. Auf wiedersehen.
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