Took a break from drilling vocab, to drill vocab with flashcards and brainstorm things that the vocab learned so far reminds me of without paying attention to the definitions. Spaced repetition for the jargon and association brainstorm for fun.
I'm currently working my way through the first chapter of the book Geometry by Construction. So far, my strategy has been to sketchnote the vocab in a way that I can understand, and recap them in my mind or through writing the next day.
Instead of working through the next section as normal, I want to try out some different learning strategies.
I really don't like the idea of flashcards. It makes me feel like I'm force feeding my mind knowledge that it wouldn't care enough to keep around otherwise. I also don't know for sure if the definitions I have come up with are correct, so it feels like forcing myself to memorise naive definitions, when I have the least understanding.
To get around the accuracy issue, I Googled pre-made Geometry flashcards and found a set for Anki that cover a high school level geometry curriculum. The definitions are very jargon heavy. There are 122 cards in the deck, and I finished one round of 20 cards which is the limit per day.
At some point, I'll learn how to make them once I'm confident in my understanding of the definitions.
This had nothing to do with what I have learned in the book so far though, it covered basic algebra terms which I guess is the precursor to geometry basics. That's good too. I think.
Update: After doing this, I realised I didn't do the connecting to what you already know properly. I did an association brainstorm which is a different exercise.
Another learning technique, is to connect what you have learned to what you already know. It takes less mental effort to learn something when you can connect it to what you already know. This technique usually goes hand-in-hand with the concept map, where you organise ideas in a mind map.
Instead, I'm going to go through each of the vocab terms so far, and try and relate it to anything at all I already know. It'll be like an association brainstorm where I write down anything that comes to mind when I think of a term.
While doing this exercise, I realised how much my mind is thinking about the principles and elements of art all the time. It also hints at why Geometry is so interesting to me, because while it is math, my mind is viewing it as art.
I'm also thinking of the skittle sorting robot and trying to find relevance in the concepts, where they might be useful in my project. I'm most primed to pay attention to thinks that will help me understand movement, and constructing pyramid like shapes from 2d shapes.
Also, this definitely isn't what is meant by connecting to what you already know.
I have a Notion database of all the best nuggets of wisdom I've come across over the last few years while reading. There is a section just for learning techniques. When it's not nearly midnight, I'll scan through and brainstorm ideas for ways I can make learning this Geometry vocab even more fun.
I can see a note saying "only study info you'll actually use, otherwise drop it". At the moment, I don't know what the vocab terms are going to be useful for. They are all apparently foundational concepts and critical to geometry by construction, but I don't know enough yet to know why.
I also see a note that says "Find a practical real-life example of something you're learning". I already have a skittle sorting robot project in mind which made me want to learn, so that's partly covered.
I'm not used to wanting to deep dive into a topic just because. I'm actively choosing not to learn just what I need to move forward. Something about Geometry makes me want to learn it for the sake of it.
This is fun!