Wish I had more time to chat here, but lately I just can’t seem to find the time.
Learning faster than he was before? I wouldn’t say so, not in any noticeable way. If anything, we have to read more slowly because time to record and review questions is time taken away from reading. Still, even if we aren’t reading as much, I think it’s totally worth it, because he remembers so much more than he was able to before. I think his ability to produce a quick answer has increased a little, perhaps; perhaps his capacity for memory has improved since we started doing this memory work.
In a certain way I guess it does help, a little, to have learned certain facts more reliably. In both history and science we go over the same topics sometimes several times, in different sources. We get it in one source, start memorizing the basics, and then when we go through it the second time, we can start focusing on more of the details or filling in the gaps. But this is a feature of how we study that others might not use. Where they might do a bunch of exercises or a project, we’ll read another book…not to say we never do projects. Mostly, though, beyond math, Latin, and piano, studying means either reading, writing, or reviewing with SuperMemo.
Thanks for the video. I have been very interested in how the super memo application would work. It makes sense that if you are going to teach you would teach in a way so that its retained.
I have been using Memrise on myself lately. I find it to work very well. I have expanded my vocabulary garden in both Chinese and Spanish to 200 words each. I have noticed that the more you add the more your time spent on the site grows. I have wondered if this levels out at all. I spend about twenty minutes a day total on the site which isn’t too bad at all considering that in the last 2 and half weeks have have grown my vocabulary in two languages by 200 words. I can say though that I will have to create my own courses if I want to use them with my children as some of the vocabulary is very adult oriented.
I have thought about Anki cards because it free. Someone made a course for the first Story of the World book. I thought it might be interesting to try out, but I am waiting to get the book to start.
As you add more information and words it does appear that time studying grows in order to retain the information for the long term. Have you found that right amount of information to put into the memory card systems that isn’t too much that slowly adds a steady amount of information without becoming too overwhelming? Five facts a day per subject? Two or three facts a day? Would a unit study regiment be more preferable with this technique where you focus on a particular subject at a time (for example studying the human body for a week or month or greek myths) or is it preferable to just study several different unrelated subjects (like biology, history, Latin, etc) and add a few facts of each subject per day to your memory card system?
Thanks for any insights. Love his enthusiasm for Super Memo.
To chime in with an answer to cokers… I’ve found in using Anki that study time is directly related to NEW content. When I was introducing 20+ new things per day and they were “cold” (having to learn it via Anki and not refreshing my memory necessarily) my study time was substantial (like 30 minutes plus and probably more on the plus). When very few items are being introduced, it’s all review and it goes much faster. I’m just starting back up from not doing it since Cub was born, and in all my decks, I have about 8 hours to catch up on 4 months of missed review (it gives you a time estimate until you’re finished). I’ll get there… slowly! Fortunately, most of it is now review, but I’ve been adding things here or there the last 4 months just so that I didn’t forget, ha ha.
Thanks, PokerDad and cokers4life. I agree with PokerDad’s answer, study time is most closely related to new content. That said, even if you stop inputting new content, while you’ll fairly quickly drop down from any ultra-high review levels, your daily review commitment goes down only very slowly. At least, that’s what we discovered last summer when we went for 4-6 weeks without adding any (or very few) new questions, but were still reviewing religiously.
We do not review all of the questions assigned to a given date. We always, every day, “postpone” 40-50 items. But it’s OK! It still works out quite well! SuperMemo has a nifty (but time-consuming) feature called “prioritization” to assist with this. Basically, it makes sure that the higher-priority stuff remains at the highest memory levels, while the lower-priority stuff can be more hit-or-miss. Works quite well, except for the clunkiness of the interface for inputting the priority data. Right now I’ve got a backlog of hundreds of items I need to estimate priorities for…
Hi… I love this memorization method. I am also closely watching this. I do wish the softwares were more integrated with the iPad because it is easier to review for the kid on the go.
Daddude, thanks for the informative video. Your sin is doing great, you are inspiration to many of us, as I am sure you already know. Just one other thing, I noticed his glasses at such an early age. You might have already looked over this, but I really recommend going here: http://www.preventmyopia.org/faq.html. I really thing you should give plus glasses a try otherwise his eye sights will only get worse with negative powered glasses because I assume he is reading quite a lot.
Okay, I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but since someone else did (and no, it’s not me ha ha)…
This:
plus glasses
+1
In my former life, I authored an entire program that I sold on this very topic, and assuming it’s myopia you’re dealing with, the prevention and somewhat simple solution at this stage (ie, very early on) is to attack the problem with reading glasses. This will make it more difficult to read but will alleviate or mitigate the near-point stress. And… never, ever, ever, ever (to infinity) allow a myopic child to read with corrective negative lenses - that’s like adding fuel to the fire… I mean, unless they’re just legally blind or something, but for 99% of the people this will hold true.
Arielz–thanks for the feedback. I’ve never heard of using reading glasses, like ever. Is that weird? Should I have? Am I out of it or something? If it were so obviously a good idea, why didn’t my optometrist recommend them?
If it makes you feel better, there are legit ophthalmologist that specialize in this sort of thing (though I don’t know if they’d necessarily say to do plus lens therapy in particular)
James who just turned 3 last month has just received his prescription for reading glasses. It was what our ophthalmologist (we use an ophthalmologist as opposed to an optometrist due to my eye disease) suggested as a way to prevent myopic degeneration due to stress. James already has mild astigmatism and mild near sightedness, but not enough for full time correction.
Our Opthamologist recommended reading glasses because of the close work he does. I just thought I would mention it because this is the thead where I first saw anything about using reading glasses as a prevantitive method for myopia.
Korrale4kq, Excuse me if my sentiments are different as I come from a different culture. Wearing glasses at 3 yo is unheard of in our communities and I am constantly worried about my son as we started very early reading with him. Do you think that near-sightedness is genetic or is it because of reading a lot. Can it be prevented in some ways or reducing reading is the only way?
It is both. My son most likely will be needing glasses full time because both my husband and I are near sighted. Close work like reading, does incur stress on the eyes and exacerbates near sightedness. What little I can do to prevent my son from having it worse I will do.
And yes he is young to have glasses. And it is only because he does do so much reading that our Ophthalmologist recommended them. In most cases they don’t do reading glasses until the child is 5 or in school.
If it makes you feel better, there are legit ophthalmologist that specialize in this sort of thing (though I don't know if they'd necessarily say to do plus lens therapy in particular)
So I was right?
It’s been about ten years ago now, but I wasn’t lying that in my former life I put together an entire packet of information on this subject and did quite well with it. I sort of became the internet expert du jour as people would ask me a lot of difficult questions that I was able to answer.
Now, as someone that has researched this topic at great length, I can easily answer the following question with near certainty:
“Do you think that near-sightedness is genetic or is it because of reading a lot.”
It’s almost entirely from near-point stress… this can be reading, this can be video game playing on a PSP, this can be non stop threading & knitting or basically anything that you’re doing close up. I’ll give you a good example. Alaskan Eskimos never suffered from near nearsightedness. Then compulsory education came to the USA. Those Eskimos that enrolled in western school saw myopia rates similar to the rest of civilization while those that remained outside the education system had the same non-existent myopia rates that the older Eskimos enjoyed. In another study, researchers made caged monkeys wear negative contact lenses for two weeks. After two weeks, each of them had this “genetic” myopia (in other words, it’s not genetic).
I would be hesitant to put any lenses on a child, but with the sort of near point work EL kids do, I wouldn’t be concerned with mitigating the risk in using some mild plus lenses while actually doing some of the prolonged work such as reading.
I’ve always been using this method! I also try to build a small list of key points too. it’s a really good brain exercise.
I sometimes use Coloring pages like Wild Kratts Coloring Pages in the process. It helps me to focus.
So out of interest (as someone gradually getting long-sighted with age) - PokerDad can doing close work delay the development of long-sightedness i.e. does it work the other way round?
