This monthly article will feature a different learning skill each month and instead of talking theory will ONLY give ideas for targeting/strengthening that learning skill for ages 2 to 102! Remember that you can find ALL the learning skills in a free interactive tool.
Recording: capturing information and representing it some medium
Before children are able to write quickly enough to capture information, simply introduce the idea of recording. Use pictures and video of special occasions (birthdays, etc.), journaling, and even memory (telling them about something special you remember from when you were a child). A nice way to work with journaling before a child can write is having the child tell about their day, each day, and you record it. Ways to explore recording might include trips to places like a zoo, park, or farmer’s market and then encouraging the child to draw what they saw. Other media work well too, including clay, Legos, matchsticks, and so forth. A sketch book and colored pencils makes for a terrific gift for grade school children, especially if you take them places and encourage them to capture and represent things they see.
The point for most college students is to deal with recording BEYOND NOTE-TAKING! The idea of recording should be dealt with in its own right as selectively capturing information, no matter the course or medium used. Comm students might study sub-titles and transcripts for what was captured and what wasn’t. History courses might use Civil War journals, memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies to grapple with the same issue. Philosophy students can deal with the difference between a thing and its representation. All students need to learn to be skeptical about representing information for specific purposes and with an agenda.
The point for most college students is to deal with recording BEYOND NOTE-TAKING! For STEM students, ask “What goes into a lab notebook?” and offer historical examples of scientists (Darwin, Einstein, Margaret Mead, Marie Curie, Watson & Crick, etc.) capturing information. How did they ultimately represent that information? Work with math students and ask why we prefer that students in math show their work (record it). Introduce “math as a representation of ideas” and number theory. For all STEM, “What are models?” is well worth asking and having students deal with. Try to build sensitivity to representation and how we choose to capture and represent information; why don’t we trust statistics? The topic of reverse engineering is rich; with it, we take a representation and try to recover the information within or represented by it.
Everyone experiences the same thing (a trip to a museum or similar) then represents their experience. Choose a medium for all to use or draw for your medium out of a hat (words, drawing, re-enactment, etc.) Have everyone draw an experience and see if others can guess what the experience was. Visit an art gallery and talk about information and representation as you view the art.