Hashtat ed from Phillip S
Monday, December 28, 2015
Think and pause
How often do you stop in the middle of reading a passage or article, and think about it?
There are many times when we read and we forget what we are reading. Our mind has a very short attention span, some say 8 seconds. The truth may be closer to that, I think. Just recall your last experience of reading a book (or you can enact the scene now). Did you reread what you've read on the same paragraph because you seem to lost the direction of the writings? It is especially evident when the book is expressing complex ideas, which our mind needs more time and attention to dissect the words into meanings to us.
Think about Product Differentiation.
What can you think about product differentiation?
Do you have prior knowledge about it, or is this the first time you heard about this term? If it's your first time, perhaps you're googling the phrase and trying to read it in a wikipedia entry of the term. When you read it, take note on your attention span. Where did you pause? Which part did you re-read? Which part you are interested but not sure of, that you highlight it, right click, and search on google? Notice the pause, because that's the moment when you are building new knowledge database in your brain.
We stop when we are unsure. Inside our mind we have a missing linkage where new entry that we've observed on the article could not register quickly into our existing knowledge, and thus we take a pause to further analyze it. Are we going to perform another reduction and understand it from smaller parts? (For example, differentiation is reduced to being different, act of differentiating, etc) Or are we going to employ external information to supplement the current puzzle? (Eg. non-differentiated products, niche market, etc) There are many angles which we could penetrate when we deal with new encounters.
Teach yourself new things, you may be surprise by how much we can learn from even the smallest things in life.
There are many times when we read and we forget what we are reading. Our mind has a very short attention span, some say 8 seconds. The truth may be closer to that, I think. Just recall your last experience of reading a book (or you can enact the scene now). Did you reread what you've read on the same paragraph because you seem to lost the direction of the writings? It is especially evident when the book is expressing complex ideas, which our mind needs more time and attention to dissect the words into meanings to us.
*speaking of meanings to us: In average, people can not understand something new and complex in a very short time. Our mind requires us to associate new knowledge with existing schemata, and that for each item, we can relate it to a few schemata by different categorization methods, eg. color, shape, size, etc. We can only internalize new information when we separate it into different categories*
Think about Product Differentiation.
What can you think about product differentiation?
Do you have prior knowledge about it, or is this the first time you heard about this term? If it's your first time, perhaps you're googling the phrase and trying to read it in a wikipedia entry of the term. When you read it, take note on your attention span. Where did you pause? Which part did you re-read? Which part you are interested but not sure of, that you highlight it, right click, and search on google? Notice the pause, because that's the moment when you are building new knowledge database in your brain.
We stop when we are unsure. Inside our mind we have a missing linkage where new entry that we've observed on the article could not register quickly into our existing knowledge, and thus we take a pause to further analyze it. Are we going to perform another reduction and understand it from smaller parts? (For example, differentiation is reduced to being different, act of differentiating, etc) Or are we going to employ external information to supplement the current puzzle? (Eg. non-differentiated products, niche market, etc) There are many angles which we could penetrate when we deal with new encounters.
Teach yourself new things, you may be surprise by how much we can learn from even the smallest things in life.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
In a lecture
What is learning and what is business?
You can access the book definitions on your fingertips. Flip through the dictionary (who does it anymore nowadays?) or punch the alphabets onto the keyboard in the blank space on Google website, you will see the definition displayed on the search results. It is simple but doesn't mean it is easily understandable.
To understand business and to learn it, one needs to not only reading business books and observing real setup, but also experiencing the trade hands-on. We called this "creating" in education, as you are applying various knowledge and theories to solve an actual situation. You can read more at HERE (Bloom's Synthesis)
As a learner, there is no clear distinction between student and teacher. To me, an ideal learning experience consists of both learning and teaching, as what you've learnt will be verified, modified and rectified when you communicate the message with others. People who are experts in the same field can enhance your input in the subject matter; people from different expertise could expand your tools for the next creation; and finally sharing with people could assist you in reorganizing your thoughts while adding new knowledge to keen listeners.
In a typical lecture session of 1 hour, we can divide it into segments based on sub topics. For each subtopic, it is recommended to allocate 1~2 minutes of break. This key break is to allow students to reflect on the knowledge they imparted with, and to raise questions for further clarifications or application. This is especially important for teachers when conveying business concepts as theories are condensed information formed by past literature and thus students would not have deep understanding on a "synopsis" of previous works by referring to a few slides and 10 minutes of description on the theories.
One more thing to add, and that is every student should conclude the lecture session by writing down the messages delivered throughout the class and the writings are to be checked by the teacher. This is a healthy practice for learners to continuously reflect on the knowledge they receive and perform simple internalization and memory reinforcement in order to be brought forward to the next class and to fill up the big picture (road map) of the entire course.
You can access the book definitions on your fingertips. Flip through the dictionary (who does it anymore nowadays?) or punch the alphabets onto the keyboard in the blank space on Google website, you will see the definition displayed on the search results. It is simple but doesn't mean it is easily understandable.
To understand business and to learn it, one needs to not only reading business books and observing real setup, but also experiencing the trade hands-on. We called this "creating" in education, as you are applying various knowledge and theories to solve an actual situation. You can read more at HERE (Bloom's Synthesis)
As a learner, there is no clear distinction between student and teacher. To me, an ideal learning experience consists of both learning and teaching, as what you've learnt will be verified, modified and rectified when you communicate the message with others. People who are experts in the same field can enhance your input in the subject matter; people from different expertise could expand your tools for the next creation; and finally sharing with people could assist you in reorganizing your thoughts while adding new knowledge to keen listeners.
In a typical lecture session of 1 hour, we can divide it into segments based on sub topics. For each subtopic, it is recommended to allocate 1~2 minutes of break. This key break is to allow students to reflect on the knowledge they imparted with, and to raise questions for further clarifications or application. This is especially important for teachers when conveying business concepts as theories are condensed information formed by past literature and thus students would not have deep understanding on a "synopsis" of previous works by referring to a few slides and 10 minutes of description on the theories.
One more thing to add, and that is every student should conclude the lecture session by writing down the messages delivered throughout the class and the writings are to be checked by the teacher. This is a healthy practice for learners to continuously reflect on the knowledge they receive and perform simple internalization and memory reinforcement in order to be brought forward to the next class and to fill up the big picture (road map) of the entire course.
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