There's a magic moment in learning that they call the Ah-hah! moment. It's that moment when, as they say, "the penny drops", or the "lights come on".
As a trained educator, I've always sought to go for the "Ah-hah! Moment" whenever I am sharing other people, but most people are self-centric in their teaching and just don't know how to teach. I mean R E A L L Y teach!
A mate of mine a while back gave me a tip in relation to teaching that was a pretty good "one-liner" about learning. He said something along the lines of:
I hear and I forget;Wise words.
I see and I remember;
I do and I understand.
Now he didn't use English because that wasn't his natural language, and he lived half a century before JC graced the earth. He's my mate, only because he and I are pretty much on the same page with many of life's stories, and I reckon that if he and I were alive in the same town, we'd have a hoot philosophising together and doing all that intellectual stuff that kindred spirits do.
The guts of it this . . .
Most people try to teach by talking. They spiel it out of their mouth and expect others to miraculously hear everything they say, then understand everything they just said, simply because they said it.
Well most of the time it just doesn't work like that especially with me. For a start, I've got slow ears - yup I meant that one - SLOW EARS. I can hear a pin drop at 50 yards. I can differentiate the unique sound of a French Horn in an orchestral masterpiece. I had perfect pitch when I was playing it professionally, but to pick out the words of someone at a party with background noise, is way too hard. Then to take those sounds and convert them into
meaning, it takes my brain TIME. That's what I call slow ears.But draw me a picture and speak in the big-picture, then I'm right with you. I see and I remember.
Go one step further, and give that piece of paper and pen to me and let me do the drawing - ahhhhhh! Now I'll really understand.
A US educator Edgar Dale, developed a cone of experience that put verbal experience at the top of a pyramid. Since then it has been butchered and copied and developed ad hoc to help make the point.
Sure there is a time and a place for every type of teaching (and yes I know that Will Thalheimer has questioned the source data for this graph) but whoever kindly helped us with this lovely sky-blue pictorial representation of the above teaching has my vote:
Tagwords: confucius, learning
