Hands-On Learning is a Breakthrough

Hands-On Learning is The Breakthrough

Speed Reading Rules

My best friend in elementary school Bob, was lousy in learning from class lessons,
and semi-lousy when learning by deciphering text. He was plain suicidal when his report card came back and stunk up the room with two Cs.

I had no preferred style of learning because I majored in playing ball, and
had no time for school in my lifestyle. But I was a reader with a fat boy’s
appetite for discovery in the local library.

One day after three-hours of stickball in the park, I astounded Robert with the
comment: there are four kinds of learning styles: auditory, reading, observation,
and kinesthetic. He was convinced the authentic me had been kidnapped by the Cleons and taken to a far distant galaxy.

I read it in a book at the library picked up by absolute serendipity, a word I
discovered by looking for something else.

So What

Based on the hubris of a 12 year-old, I proclaimed he was a Kinesthetic (touch, muscle sense, movement) learner, one who had to be hands-on to absorb ideas. I explained: kinesthetic was tactile, hands-on, a/k/a haptic (sense of touch) learning.

I explained sounding like a demented professor; the reason he aced arithmetic and science was because he could feel it in his bones. He moved ideas from equations and calculations to his brain by doing physical work on them to make them real.

I added this idea to the mix, which really weirded him out: Bob, play a game with
the teacher’s class lesson and when reading a chapter in a textbook. Your job is to
prove how stupid the writer and teacher are by summarizing their entire
lesson into a one or a two-word phrase.

Later I learned it was called abstracting. I continued my solution:

Write the keywords down and later in your own words, write one-two sentences
with the essence (gist) of the 45 minute class or entire chapter. Use that to review
before exams, not the textbook nor class notes.

No, it wasn’t my idea, but from a college textbook on how to ace law school.
Later worked for me in passing the Bar on the first crack.

Why he believed me I’ll never know, but he did experiment, and really got
into it. Bob the new kinesthetic learner suddenly became a star, and never looked
back. He really did it all himself, and aced high school and went to MIT to be a
physicist.

Update

The latest neurological research reports: a contest between visual – haptic –
and visuohaptic training indicates, recall is significantly greater when the
student use visuohaptic training to learn sensorimotor skills like surgery.

In plain English it means – look-see-touch is better than just look or just touch
in isolation. Oh yeah, mental rehearsal is a very powerful learning tool.

Google: Prof. Dan Morris, Stanford University, Nov-Dec 2006, National Library of
medicine. Still cited as the authority in 2009.

And

My personal fixation is the use of Peripheral (ends, circumference, perimeter)
vision for speed reading. It is really life changing. The key (gist, essence) to
tripling your ability to learn is the use of a Pacer in your fist while reading text
or listening to a expert lecturer.

I can tell you all the intellectual reasons, but we are seeking Behavioral change,
not a change of intellectual assumptions. Wait – that means don’t worry about
getting your mind around the idea of holding a pen (Pacer or cursor) in your
hand when learning.

Just do it enough times to create the firing of Synaptic connections using Semantic and Episodic (experience) memories. Repetition creates a new neural network for peripheral vision learning, permitting it to go on autopilot – a physical habit of mind. Folks will believe you a genuine Einstein.

Endwords

Would you practice reading text holding a pen in your hand or computer cursor,
underlining the words of each sentence, to be able to permanently read three (3)
books, articles and reports in the time your career competitors can hardly read one?

Sure, your basic assumption is that it is weird reading with a Pacer in your hand.
Fight your fear of change, fear of failure, and fear of loss of your comfort zone of
not using a crutch to learn. You wear glasses, right?

Exercise your Prefrontal Cortex (executive brain structure) to experiment because
you command free will, (volition) to learn by Trial-and-Error.

We want behavioral change not intellectual change, nor how it makes you feel.

For details ask us how.

Speed Reading Rules

See ya,

copyright © 2009 H. Bernard Wechsler hbw@speedlearning.org
www.speedlearning.org 1-877-567-2500

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