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"we need to provide our children with better cognitive maps of the subjects we want them to learn" This style of learning works for everyone -- including child

• maus42 11y ago
  ...I'm fairly sure that by 'cognitive map', Minsky means that student should have an idea what the given subject / field is really all about, where it is useful and what kind of problems it tries to solve, even if they are taking the first baby steps on studying it. Visualizations would be only tangentially related.
• oftenwrong 11y ago
  Also http://setosa.io/ev/ http://setosa.io/ev/
• wodenokoto 11y ago
  I'm not sure that is what he means with a "cognitive map". I believe, he means that children need a better understanding of what is possible to do with, and what the point is with math.
  • conistonwater 11y ago
    Indeed. This is actually related to a very simple idea: it is generally much easier to learn things that are related to other things that you already know. It also has something to do with how salient those things are. But that's nothing to do with learning styles or visual learning (recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10858573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10858573).
  • wanderingstan 11y ago
    Agree. For me it was games. While other kids complained about algebra, I recognized it as exactly what I had been doing with my little Apple II games, basically fumbling on my own. Now each math lesson was a chance to make my games even more interesting. My first graphing calculator had a simple example of 3D point rotation. It was like learning a magical incantation! (This is pre-internet.) My friend and I were so excited at the possibilities and immediately wrote a primitive ray-tracer. The point is: by connecting it to games, we were literally hungry to learn more math.
    • PeCaN 11y ago
      The other benefit is a lot of math intuitively makes sense in the context of using it for games. I started learning linear algebra when I was ~14 or so because I was trying to make a 3D game and had a specific idea of how the camera should operate—quaternions, once I got past the sci-fi name, just made sense in the context of rotating the camera around. That, in turn, made complex numbers a piece of cake when I got to them in school.
• 50CNT 11y ago
  That reminds me of a pet peeve of mine: Why are we assuming kids will learn about learning through osmosis? Cognitive maps (or mental models) are part of that. I struggled a lot with this, and other meta-learning topics. Got it eventually, after much independent reading and testing, but why was this never a topic in school? I'd have gladly sacrificed a year of schooling just to learn about it, and I'd have made it up within another. It's also the reason why I no longer believe that intelligence is the most significant factor in our capacity to learn. The same course done by the same person may be finished within a decade, a year or a week, with the only difference lying in approach. The difference is so striking that calling kids that fail at it dumb or the more politically correct challenged is lazy pedagogy. It shifts the issue onto something outside of our control. But I don't think it is. We can do a lot better. And it may be due time for a new approach. We don't need a large populace educated enough to man machinery or a filing system, as they're starting to man itself. We need youth that is confident in its ability to stride across vast depths of knowledge without getting lost. And current processes of education seem ill engineered to that goal. Like I said though, pet peeve of mine. I'm sure we'll figure it out.
• pault 11y ago
  I'd just like to give a heads up to anyone that needs to get any work done today, don't visit the educational gifs subreddit.