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When I learn something I create good short notes. Notes is memory that is external from your head. Once its written down, I’m not worried about forgetting it.

So I think one way is to create better notes for people in different fashions that suite however they learn or take them and adapt them into their own. If only there was a note-taking app that could do this. =’(. Tell me if you know of any good ones

I would literally go mad without my Google Notebook… and then there are also all the paper notes on my desk and in my kitchen and in my purse and in my portfolio…

The trouble is that I have file cabinets full of other notes and papers. And the stream of important information – about things I want to connect to other things – goes on 24/7 now. I really do think we’re entering a time when human beings are going to have to THINK differently than we have been trained to think. When we’re living in a world where, as David Weinberger says, “Everything is miscellaneous,” the human brain is an insufficient machine. It’s not just remembering everything, it’s making MEANING out of it.

Sorry, but I dont get it.

Not only there is the punch-line “What’s at the core of happiness? Good health and bad memory!”; I doubt that our memory is any worse than that of our parents and grand-parents.

Next point: Information is highly overrated. Nearly all of the incoming information is simply garbage/junk – you miss it – you’ll live healthier. In most cases you’re just not able to tell the juwels from the junk. So Sheldon Kopp is still right: ” All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data. ”.It is a random universe to which we bring meaning – cant see this as a sign of insufficiency. Deep thinking and deep insights are definitely not correlated to the amount of unfiltered information you absorbed.

In my opinion, quality of analysis may be strict correlated to the amount of processed data, but quality of understanding is NOT. So: “Don’t be afraid!” ( Matthew) or “Don’t panic!” (Hitchhikers guide) – You don’t have to know to understand!

That understood, keep your mind open, so the flow of information can pass through, play with that information, as you would do dipping your hand into a small creek on a warm summers day -just stay open-minded, don’t hunt, just gain information and knowledge, and THINK, understand and make meaning out of the meaningless. The best game ever!

So, I hear you saying that the anxiety isn’t useful, Peter, and that when I feel my feet slipping out from under me in the torrent of information, that I might just play with it because that’s all we can really do anyway. That would be my paraphrase of what I’m understanding from your comments. Did I get what you were saying?

Yes, homo ludens. Learning to play with this learning architecture here at LH and learning to play in this architecture are requiring me to discard some of my fondest notions of what constitutes mastery in teaching and competency in learning. Not all of my fondest notions, but a lot more than I ever bargained for six weeks ago when I stumbled in here.

I feel like I’m building the boat I need to cross the river right in the river, not on the shore. Does that make sense?

As we go on with this conversation here, I’m laughing more about this interesting opportunity instead of complaining about being thigh deep in the water and needing to find new ways to hold onto the materials since the water keeps trying to carry them away. I’m much more used to building on dry land…

And I’m really enjoying this exchange of perspectives, Peter. I wonder what others think about all this?

I am so enjoying your dialogue with Peter. Both of you have a great vehicle for expression and draw in enriching references and visual imagery to explain your thinking. (Peter, I wish I could express myself as well in a second language)

My thoughts on memory, learning and forgetting come from long years of fretting about it. Many things contributed to this anxiety: 34 years of teaching high school, where loss of information and any visible weakness exposed your jugular, a poignant experience as a teen with a dear grandmother, ensconced in our home, and suffering from Alzheimer’s, a second career as a trainer layering complex pedagogical concepts in an interactive manner in front of an audience of 60 people after an 8 1/2 flight over the Atlantic and of course, as referenced in the article, “The Great Forgetting”, numerous embarrassing experiences, even at a young age, with people that, to this day, I can not identify.

Ultimately, it has come to this. I don't care!!! The wonderful part of having a modicum of success in your life is that I now have the courage to laugh at my forgetfulness. I always try my best. I write endless lists, which give me great comfort. I believe I am a lot more honest when I am caught short with the wrong or NO answer. And most importantly, I really am enjoying learning more, for as Peter so aptly said, it is the quality, not the quantity of what i am learning that gives me joy. I cull out of the mass of information that flows by me daily that which I need and that which connects with what what I already know. The "magic" days are those days so aptly described by Robert Browning-those "infinite moments", where like the waves on the ocean, things come together in an astoundingly satisfying and enlightening way, surprising you with the intensity of the experience, and for that wonderful moment, making your believe that you really have "got it!!"

Kathy, your enthusiasm here betrays your passion for lifelong learning, so I hear a kindred spirit and that feels great, especially when I’m literally living in a place where I can’t find too many like us.

What comes up in me when I read your response to this public conversation about memory and what’s really important anyway is a sense that the whole topic of “assessment” is turning inside out as more and more information is set free – i.e., posted online where anyone can get to it anywhere and anytime we need it. When our criteria for “mastery” begins shifting towards whether or not we’re able to generate a quality of life that makes each of us happy, the domain of education is, finally, beginning to transform.

We may have said that one’s ability to generate a happy life was part of the goal of education…but we certainly haven’t been measuring or testing for THAT outcome, have we?

And I’m not at all sure that’s happening inside conventional systems NOW, at least not most of them.

Maybe this is part of the reason that only 1 in 3 ninth graders in the US is choosing to complete a conventional degree program … and over 500,000 teachers per year are leaving… and 1 in 100 persons living in the US is living in some kind of a correctional facility.

When I contemplate these facts, I cry and laugh. Corrections is receiving a lionshare of resources in the failing US economy, instead of education.

What we’re still measuring in education is whether or not everyone can give the same ‘right’ answer. Since it’s getting to be a bigger and bigger challenge to discern what’s ‘right,’ the pressures are truly breaking the system apart.

And the huge wave of babyboomers is having trouble just remembering what we ate for lunch.

Hi – The conversation here is thought provoking and wise beyond my simple abilities. But here goes, today our memory is less what we have for gray matter or how quickly the synapses process the information we take in or need to retrieve, fortunately or unfortunately (dependent upon your point of view) much of what “we” as a species need to remember is now at our finger tips and facts and ideas an be retrieved as quickly as you can “google” it (or whatever search engine you decide to use).

More and more our intelligence is becoming how we access, process and finally synthesize this information into something that is useful to yourself or others. So are we reaching a tipping point in our development as a species of where our intelligence and how we think depends significantly on tools beyond our personal experience or body?

So our feet are slipping around on the use of the new technologies we have available us. Many of the thoughts, ideas and communications that we have had like this would have taken months to accomplish and yet we have done it in a few days and if we really wanted to could do it in a Wiziq session and talk to each other in person and discuss this subject together and still be miles or continents apart. So is this a good thing, yes. But it is very different than many of use grew up with. If knowledge continues to grow exponentially, where will it be in another 20 years? Did I go off on too much of a tangent? I seemed to have lost focus, if I did I apologize. Harold

I enjoyed this conversation very much. Each of us have experienced the idea of insufficiency and failure in a world of growing information. I agree with Peter when he says that our good old brain is not worse than that of our ancestors but it isn`t much better either. It is a survival organ not meant to handle any bit of information we could possibly get about any event in the world. And why should we? I agree with Peter: It is the quality that counts, not the quantity. The best ideas and concepts were born at a time when information was limited. We get nervous by the idea that the very thought we have at this moment might have been uttered a few moments ago by an even more sophisticated person – which makes our own ideas not that original as we presumed it to be. But is that really important?

If we have a closer look at our brain, we must realize that in fact it was rather made to forget than to remember. There has always been an overload of information and the brain has its own way to deal with it. What we call failure (out-put oriented as we are) can also be called the greatest gift that we have. It is self-protection. (Well, you shouldn’t really remind me of this when I’m standing in front of my class or trainees trying to remember the nice idea that struck my mind a second ago or the vital information I wanted to give…..). It is not us that are dysfunctional. There has always been a flood of information around us but today we have more access to it than ever before. That is great in a way but if we feel minimized by it, we underestimate ourselves. Information is like social contacts. We can have lots and lots but they only make us happy when we can connect them meaningfully to our lives. There might be thousands of wonderful people outside in the world – out of reach – but I can cope only with a limited amount of contacts. So it is important to make those contacts meaningful and deep.

On the other hand it is really exciting to meet people here who I can share my thoughts with. It is not the availability of information and the flood and speed of information that should scare us. We should be worried about our reaction of inferiority as to this process.

Carmen, Mawstools, Peter and Harold,....like Carmen, I am really enjoying this blog!! Each of us is thoughtful and showing a lot of honesty in our comments. Interesting how often we come around to the feelings attached to remembering or NOT!! In the original article, if my memory serves me correctly, the author expressed(tongue-in-cheek) that we are upset because we are forgetting salient details about ourselves, hence shorter autobiographies. I believe that the weightiness of all of this comes from the fact that, not only is the amount of information absolutely impossible to process and remember, but that as educators, we seem, universally, to have unreasonably high expectations of ourselves. Herein lies the pressure and the “fear” of forgetfulness. It all gets back to the “Sage on the stage” concept of teaching rather than the “Guide on the side”. Couple the collective knowledge of our students and ourselves and we are doing just fine!! Cheers.

In fact I’m thankful for the gift of forgetting at times. Think of all the worries and arguments with students or colleagues. How could we go on if every sad detail lingered on our minds?

Besides, my forgetfulness gives my students the chance to show their mastery. So I agree with you, Kathy: if we can join and work collectively we not only experience support, we also achieve much better results.

I’m just loving this exchange here, friends! I started out feeling overwhelmed and a bit discouraged one day (who doesn’t experience this at least once a week in the avalanche of Web2.0??)... read a funny article that put those feelings in context… shared it here and asked who wanted to discuss the issues intelligently… and VOILA! A colorful revelation of all sides of a polarity ensued.

I’m going to post a lesson this week in this course about polarity management. This conversation is turning out to be a fabulous illustration of those principles at work!

Carmen said: Each of us have experienced the idea of insufficiency and failure in a world of growing information.

Why do many of us feel that we have to memorize or remember information? Why can’t we be satisfied with knowing where to retrieve information; like in an online library? Isn’t being able to think critically more beneficial than storing information?

I think the process of storing and retrieving information should be pleasurable and not frustrating. However, there is another aspect to being frustrated and sensing discomfort and confusion. Being in a state of chaos or being overwhelmed by information can also promote learning. George Siemens has developed interesting ideas on Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age where he explains how chaos can sometimes be good for professional development.

Hi Meri,

I love your enthusiasm. George Siemens is here on the leanrhub but has been inactive for some reason. I am not doing my research on connectivism but I did attend a free online conference organized by George Siemens.

Here’s a great passage from George Siemens’ article Nellie referenced above:

“Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.”

I can’t think of a better argument than this to explain the value I’m deriving from participating here at LearnHub or any of the other social networks in which I’m learning.

As Karen Stephenson said, “I store my knowledge in my friends.”

Profound.

I really appreciate what you add to LearnHub. Your comments are insightful, appropriate and heartfelt. Herein lies the value of this opportunity.

Thanks for your kind words, Kathy. Your whole family is making an enormous contribution with this experiment… I really look forward to seeing where we’ve gone together in another 6-12 months… I can’t really even imagine it from here.

This is just the kind of experiential learning that keeps my motor running!

Just about ten years ago now I helped lead 14 14-year olds on a rite of passage trip. We biked around Puget Sound 500 miles, sleeping on the ground, cooking all our food from scratch every night, and taking turns reading The Alchemist aloud to each other before we fell asleep around the fire at night. The kids each took a Vision Quest deep in the woods on the Olympic peninsula in the middle of the ride…and then we brought them back out of the fasting state, got back on the bikes, and rode back to Bothell.

None of the kids were the same when we got back. Neither were any of the four leaders.

It was one of the best experiences of my life.

There’s something about what’s going on here that reminds me of that experience every day. I can’t put my finger on just what it is… but then I couldn’t have put my finger on what made the bike trip so special either.

Big grin on my face.

We just bought The Alchemist last week to read again. Coincidence?? Another great topic to talk about- coincidence :)

Why am I not surprised to hear this? ;-) I’d love to hear what comes up for you reading it again… It’s a wonderful novel.

I usually disagree with David Brooks, but he has hit several home runs lately.

Anyway, I didn’t see any mention of mind-mapping in the above discussion. I think it’s a promising tool. I have used www.mindmeister.com fairly extensively, and it’s free. There are of course many mind-mapping programs and sites, but that one stands out for me.

The problem of now is that there is so much information, much of it unwanted and even harmful (as in SPAM), we have all become specialists in flushing away excess information. We are good at forgetting because we have to be.

I long fantasized about writing about “speed reading,” and how the most important tool is a large trash can.

We want to remember the things that are significant to us, and we want to remember why they are significant. Memory mapping is one way to remind the thinker about the thought and its relationship to other thoughts. That is what “significance” means.

An important point, Gene! I’m mindmapping more and more myself and asking my clients to do it, too. I find I can keep the “big picture” in mind better with a mindmap than an outline, a to-do-list, or even a list of priorities. Things change so quickly when learning becomes a central strategy for success, not just an activity you do sometimes ;-). When I mindmap, I can – as you say – better remember the relationship of one thought to another.

A program I like a like, by the way, is Mindomo, which offers a free membership and quite a lot of functionality for free, too. I use it with clients because we can share their maps online…

You can see it work here: Mindomo.com.

Thanks for adding in this important perspective…

Anyone want to take on the challenge of “mapping” this conversation?

I guess no one wants to map the conversation!

People are apparently in quite a state of anxiety, as mentioned above, about mind mapping and note taking. I have been noticing a big rivalry among web sites devoted to notes lately. For two examples, Google Evernote and Ubernote. They are both undergoing major development efforts to grab the note-taking communities of users, and they are not alone.

I had a simple note-taking strategy in college. I would listen to the lecture and take notes as it struck me to do in a class. Then, after class I would throw my notes away. Note-taking was an attitude of mind, helping me to focus. Once I grokked what the instructor had to say, I really didn’t need notes any more, in written form.

I’m not saying this was wise, but it is what I did.

Have you seen the ads lately for a note-taking pen? It records the content of a lecture while you take notes. Then, after the lecture you can hear the words spoken as you read a specific note! This seems like an interesting idea for me.

BTW: One of the seminal books in my business education is called The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge. I was in a technical bookstore specializing in computer books, when the book found me—somehow it grabbed my attention from a bookshelf and forced its way into my hand. I hadn’t had that experience for many years, when a book called In Search of the Miraculous did the same thing.

There are many things to get from Fifth Discipline, but what I got is that modern companies are essentially “learning organizations”. What they are about is absorbing the information out there and applying it. Organizations that survive are those that can learn and change.

This is even truer today than it was when I read Fifth Discipline.

Well, I guess no one feels a need to map this conversation, Geneven. It’s delightful to me that LearnHub sends me notice of everything people ARE responding to here so I can keep up with what happens when I start something… and others take it where they want to go with it.

I love your response here and share your love both of The Fifth Discipline and In Search of the Miraculous. This conversation has begun some great online friendships and nourished some that were already underway. The fact that you’re joining it now, fully 6 months after the last post, is remarkable and miraculous to me.

Over the course of this year, since some of us first signed up as Beta users, I have reoriented my whole idea about “note-taking,” especially as it relates to “acquiring” knowledge. Tools like this that allow us to interact and leave “tracks” which we can then come back to ONLINE later are changing the way I think. Sometimes I’m worried about that. I spent a long time creating my personal ways of thinking and learning… But these days, I’m getting more comfortable with the idea of “accessing” what I need to know when I need to know it. Like I’m doing right now… checking in on this conversation… For at least the last 90 days, I’ve “forgotten” I even started it while I’ve been focused on new learning and creating some new webs.

The fact that LearnHub is set up to “remind” me this is still a live conversation is stunning…

And I’m so glad you took time to contribute to it… Anything more you’d like to add knowing that someone’s listening?

Well, I have my random thoughts of the moment, which are related to the topic here anyway.

I realized that Mind Mapping is an attempt to create a GPS for the brain. It is difficult to find one’s way without one.

We need to find the plot of our own lives, which will help us focus. Many great people throughout history sometimes talk about themselves in the third person; you can imagine Napoleon thinking to himself, “What would Napoleon do now?” He has formulated a series of principles and decided that they are Napoleonic.

Maybe the reason that we feel adrift in a sea of information is that we haven’t figured out the plot to our own lives, so we don’t really know what is important to us and what is not. I need to know what geneven would do here.

So I think I’ll start a mind map of the influences that go into geneven, mainly books, to start with.

And here is less-related thought. The two extraordinary moments I referred to in my previous message, when The Fifth Discipline and In Search of the Miraculous seemed to jump off the shelves and mix themselves into my life are joined by another moment in which a story seemed to take over like an active force.

I am surrounded by books, as most of us are, and I might flip through the pages of one or another without thinking much about it.

This can be more dangerous than one realizes.

Once I discovered that I had started reading a story by Henry James called The Aspern Papers, without even realizing it. But it was more than that—I wasn’t just reading it, I was TRAPPED in the feelings of one of the characters. Worse, they were not pleasant feelings. The character had aged without realizing it. Inside, she was just a girl. Outside, she was a “crone”, which a definition I just found says is “An ugly, withered old woman; a hag.”

As I read, something like what happened to her happened to me, except it was worse for me, because I fully realized it, and the character was more or less unaware.

Some books leave wounds.

My experience mirrors yours in the sense that I notice, too, that many people have “dropped the plot” of their lives. I haven’t dropped it, but I certainly took a sharp right turn three years ago on what looked like it was going to be a straightaway forever. Finding my bearings in this new landscape – both literal and metaphorical – has been quite an adventure. My online friends have helped me with in ways I could never have imagined. Nothing like the ways my local friends have helped! Some of the help has been delightful…some of it has been a little like your description of the James story. The mystery of becoming is no longer something I think I can “master.” I do my best to hold it in wonder…

I’m glad you’re joining in here at LearnHub, Geneven, and look forward to learning more with and from you!