Learning people's names

Over the weekend I used Memorize-It in a new and unique way. On our Africa trip we worked at a boarding school (Bridges Academy) for students from the townships we have adopted. It's hard to learn the names of thirty kids and I was still struggling with a few people after our two weeks were up.

We are now helping train the team for the December trip. Since I had a bunch of pictures of all the students I created flashcards for the next team so they can have a head start in learning the names. I put the picture of the student on the front of the card and their name on the back. It was actually helpful for me as well as it helped me refresh my memory of a few of the student's names. Very cool.

Repetition Is Good

Recently I had to recreate the section of the website that described the principle of repetition in the learning process. It is something that I personally have used in my own studies over the years and built my own learning system (Memorize-It) around how I learn, knowing that there are many others that use flashcards like I do. In automating this learning process I was able to increase the speed at which I was learning.

In searching for case studies on repetition, the one I found most interesting was The Dana Foundation study on Better Teaching Through Brain Biology. It says: "Without this step of converting new learning to long-term memory-through repetition and elaboration, students are unlikely to be able to use it for a lifetime." The Dana Foundation is a non-profit organization interested in brain science, immunology and arts education. The article I found is a very interesting discussion on the learning process.