I would like to know of a community where I can post things that I write to myself. I’m not capable enough to make my own community yet, and I’ve got a lot to say.
My question, though, is about learning. What’s your single most essential defining piece of advice, to share the love of learning? To make someone who isn’t interested, interested?
Other than necessity, I guess. I hope that doesn’t just answer the question.
You can’t make someone interested in learning. You can investigate what excites someone and foster that excitement. You can also show your excitement and hope it’s contagious. But, sometime it’s not.
What about your self, though? How do you know when you’re being “contagious to yourself?” Is that nonsensical?
I don’t think it’s nonsensical :)
There’s a certain level of fake it till you make it, or even “gaslighting yourself” that you can do. Sometimes pretending that you’re interested in something (and actively trying to justify it for yourself) is enough to make you grow interest. You can also look for the aspects of the topic that interest you to motivate you to learn the bits that aren’t, with the logic that you can’t get better at the interesting bit without also learning the less interesting bit.
Other times, especially if you have a choice to try something else, it’s better to try something else and see if you can get into it more easily
Learning for the sake of learning is nice, but sometimes it’s nice to learn for the sake of figuring something out.
So, try asking yourself an easy-to-ask question to which you don’t know the answer. Sleep on it. Come up with your own explanation. After a while you may find yourself itching to find out a “proper” answer. The best part is, a lot of questions aren’t completely answered. But you’ll have to do some learning to see which ones.
Yeah I really need an end goal. For example
I want to add solar panels to my house.
Well in researching that I have learned about electricity, solar panels, inverters, roofing, batteries etc…etc…
An interesting thing about learning random things is that the knowledge you acquire will come in handy in unexpected places.
For instance, I learned to play guitar. Then I wrote songs, then I wanted to record the songs to see if they were any good so I learned about recording so then I ended up in a band with other people and recorded a few albums with them, which didn’t go anywhere.
Not long after, people who were aware that I recorded music asked me to help out at a church and I got experience running live audio.
And eventually I moved away so I had to quit and then I ended up having a job where editing audio for training sessions was a part of my job responsibilities and my previous experience with recording albums and running live music prepared me to do a job that paid a hell of a lot more than I was making before which then advanced into another job and another job and all of these random little tidbits of information and skills that I’ve picked up along the way keep becoming crucial to my future successes in ways that I could have never anticipated back when I was learning them to record some dinky guitar.
When you’re passionate it radiates and sometimes it makes the subject more interesting for people who might not have otherwise paid attention.
This exactly. My favorite teachers throughout every level of education were first and foremost passionate about whatever it was they were teaching.
I had an absolute goober of a football coach as a teacher for an earth-science/physical science (blanking on what it was actually called) class in middle school. Coaches were required to be teachers, and every coach me or my friends had up till then was boring, even though they knew the material well, being middle-school level amd all.
But my science class that year was my favorite class I’d ever taken in school. Even though I’d already learned most of the material outside of school, I paid attention every single class because coach was genuinely interested in the topic, and you could tell. I remember when we had a unit over the geology and makeup of the earth, he was literally giddy the day we started it because he was planning on showing us the movie The Core at the end of the unit.
This underpaid coach and teacher had actually found the time to fight for a movie not approved for use, despite having a list of plenty of other media he could’ve shown. I remember that really impressing me too. You could tell he was excited about the lessons, and I can’t remember a single student who wasn’t interested in class discussions at some point.
Be interested, and genuine.
I’m not sure if you mean gearing yourself up for learning or inspiring others to learn, but my answer might be the same for both.
Analogies. They’re primarily how I learn and understand things, as well as how I try to convey things to others. Being able to connect some dots to what you already know, even if they’re vastly different ideas, really helps (me) solidify new information and find a driving force to uncover more.
It could just be my wiring, but I think a lot of how we understand the world is in the terms of our previous understanding. There’s a real possibility of misguided bias though, like knowing all about hammers so everything reminds you of nails.
I can make one for you and transfer mod to you when you are ready if that is what you are asking.
Let them play. Give them the pieces and let them play with it for a long time before trying to do any guiding.
If you want deeper analysis, read almost anything about learning by https://sciences.social/@alfiekohn
He covers a lot about intrinsic motivation for learning.
It’s important to practice
I try to be kind, inviting, respectful and curious.
I think of those teachers who marked me and how they made me feel and then try to apply their ways.
You can’t directly share the love of learning. You can share the thing that got you interested in partucular subject. your passion for specific problem.
Give them the tools to learn and start them on a topic they care about
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I’m not quite sure what you are after here. If it’s about how to motivate other people to learn, those are teaching skills, and I am pretty lacking in that regard.
In terms of self-motivation, I think it is important to take stock once in a while of how far you’ve come. For example, say you’re learning a musical instrument. It’s so easy to get frustrated. You can’t figure out how to play that new song or master a technique. And then you see some other guy playing the same instrument in a different band and they’re killing it.
What I find helps in that situation is to think back to where you were a year ago. You’re doing stuff you couldn’t before and it shows. Give yourself some credit for putting in the work and getting results. Pat yourself on the back and be proud for once.
Let them learn by doing.
That is, don’t have them try to sit down with a book and “learn”. Get them to start a project and learn what they need to learn to complete it as they work on the project. (Maybe even work on the project with them.)
That said, it’s probably beneficial to do “small”-ish projects while they’re learning so they can get some quick wins early on.
But if they’re not using what they’re learning, they’re going to forget it faster than they learn it.
Echoing what others have said:
For yourself: Do what you want to do.
Wanna write? Write, read, play with Chat-GPT, do what it is you’re wanting to do.
Wanna music? Play, compose, play with Musecore (it’s free), listen, go to concerts, do what it is you’re wanting to do.
Wanna art? Draw, sculpt, craft, go to museums, google art (it’s free), do what it is you’re wanting to do.
For others: Show them how much you enjoy it. Discuss the small, simple parts, if it gets too complicated, step back and focus on the small parts that makeup the whole. If it’s not interesting, only the one’s who want to will learn.
Here’s what not to do:
Don’t try to learn it all and become an expert in 5 minutes. I wanted to learn programming, and tried the free developer stuff online, but gave up because it’s boring. Later, I came back to the stuff I enjoyed about programming and enjoy it.
Don’t try to lie to your students about how much you know. They can tell, and you will feel fake. The wonder of, “I don’t know the answer, let’s find out together.” and “Here’s the answer, and that’s how it fits with this. Isn’t that crazy!!!” is so engaging and not only increases student engagement, but also your knowledge and gives you a fun teaching story about how you found out.
Whatever the goal, if you don’t have a reason to keep learning, you will stop.
Enjoy the journey!
Echoing what others have said:
For yourself: Do what you want to do.
Wanna write? Write, read, play with Chat-GPT, do what it is you’re wanting to do.
Wanna music? Play, compose, play with Musecore (it’s free), listen, go to concerts, do what it is you’re wanting to do.
Wanna art? Draw, sculpt, craft, go to museums, google art (it’s free), do what it is you’re wanting to do.
For others: Show them how much you enjoy it. Discuss the small, simple parts, if it gets too complicated, step back and focus on the small parts that makeup the whole. If it’s not interesting, only the one’s who want to will learn.
Here’s what not to do:
Don’t try to learn it all and become an expert in 5 minutes. I wanted to learn programming, and tried the free developer stuff online, but gave up because it’s boring. Later, I came back to the stuff I enjoyed about programming and enjoy it.
Don’t try to lie to your students about how much you know. They can tell, and you will feel fake. The wonder of, “I don’t know the answer, let’s find out together.” and “Here’s the answer, and that’s how it fits with this. Isn’t that crazy!!!” is so engaging and not only increases student engagement, but also your knowledge and gives you a fun teaching story about how you found out.
Whatever the goal, if you don’t have a reason to keep learning, you will stop.
Enjoy the journey!
