Comments on: Sitting and talking http://blogs.linux.ie/balor/2005/09/28/sitting-and-talking/ We eat cats whilst you code. Thu, 17 May 2012 00:31:11 +0100 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 By: testanchor143 http://blogs.linux.ie/balor/2005/09/28/sitting-and-talking/comment-page-1/#comment-124 testanchor143 Sun, 16 Oct 2005 03:58:54 +0000 http://blogs.linux.ie/balor/2005/09/28/sitting-and-talking/#comment-124 testcomment850 testcomment850

]]> By: Des Traynor http://blogs.linux.ie/balor/2005/09/28/sitting-and-talking/comment-page-1/#comment-95 Des Traynor Sat, 01 Oct 2005 01:32:39 +0000 http://blogs.linux.ie/balor/2005/09/28/sitting-and-talking/#comment-95 Information retrieval through in person discussion is the most effective method of finding out stuff you need to know. It beats Google, textbooks, and everything else. Thats why from chatting to someone about a topic, you'll generally learn stuff, whereas through perusing a book, you'll generally gain fragile knowledge or indices. (i.e. you don't know how to do X, but you know where to find it in a book) The above might seem really obvious, but most people ignore it. If I need to know the best way to use Perl to process XML, I'd be better served talking to Dave Cahill about it, than googling, cause I will retrieve, store, and learn the info. Also, discussion tends to encourage meaningful learning, as the discussion usually relies on knowledge anchors. E.g. "You know HTML yeah, well XHTML is the same thing but with blah blah blah" , If I was explaining a concept to you , I'd be able to select some knowledge anchors (i.e. stuff you know really well) and use them to make the learning process really easy. For more about meaningful learning, have a read here http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=356841 You may have already read this. The real deal in this area is a book by Ausubel, Information Learning and Retention. Information retrieval through in person discussion is the most effective method of finding out stuff you need to know. It beats Google, textbooks, and everything else. Thats why from chatting to someone about a topic, you’ll generally learn stuff, whereas through perusing a book, you’ll generally gain fragile knowledge or indices. (i.e. you don’t know how to do X, but you know where to find it in a book)

The above might seem really obvious, but most people ignore it. If I need to know the best way to use Perl to process XML, I’d be better served talking to Dave Cahill about it, than googling, cause I will retrieve, store, and learn the info. Also, discussion tends to encourage meaningful learning, as the discussion usually relies on knowledge anchors. E.g. “You know HTML yeah, well XHTML is the same thing but with blah blah blah” , If I was explaining a concept to you , I’d be able to select some knowledge anchors (i.e. stuff you know really well) and use them to make the learning process really easy.

For more about meaningful learning, have a read here
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=356841
You may have already read this.

The real deal in this area is a book by Ausubel, Information Learning and Retention.

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