Case in point: check out this video demo for a new service called Smart.fm.

The science behind this is good, and I think it is going to be really helpful as we start to see more innovations like this come to education.  The public school system is going to be slow to innovate and adopt new techniques like this, but they can enter the private sector (like tutoring) much quicker.

If you create an account on Smart.fm you can generate study lists for your students (or for yourself) and see the effect right away.  Or if you are trying to study something for yourself outside of a classroom there are already hundreds of study lists available on the site (rated by other users).

By the way, this is the same sort of research done by Piotr Wozniak which was covered in Wired magazine recently.  I’ve included an excerpt below from the Wired article:

SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you’ve learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you’ve forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you’re about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they?

Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially. A graph of our likelihood of getting the correct answer on a quiz sweeps quickly downward over time and then levels off. This pattern has long been known to cognitive psychology, but it has been difficult to put to practical use. It’s too complex for us to employ with our naked brains.

Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting if he could discover the right algorithm. SuperMemo is the result of his research. It predicts the future state of a person’s memory and schedules information reviews at the optimal time. The effect is striking. Users can seal huge quantities of vocabulary into their brains.

You can read the rest of the article here.

What do you think, will this be useful in education?  What techniques have you developed on your own to aid in studying the right material at the right time?

The basic idea behind it is to summarize as you go:

• On the right side of the page you take regular notes
• On the left side of the page you summarize main concepts on the right into a word or two
• At the bottom of the page you try to summarize ALL the topics on the page into a sentence

I can imagine this would make it easy to go back and study, reviewing the keywords on the left and sentence on each page.

But I think this might be effective for another reason: it boils down to the psychology technique of “chunking” (which is also discussed in our eBook, 10 Ways To Raise Your Grades By Studying Smarter, Not Harder).  The human brain isn’t good at memorizing more than about 7 similar items with any distinction.  But if you can group items, then you can remember 7 groups of 7.  Further grouping is basically endless.  This is the technique used by people in memorization marathons where they will remember a sequence of thousands of random 1’s and 0’s, or similar feats.

So what do you think, will it work?  Do any of you use this technique already?

While studying and practicing can help improve test taking scores, there is something more important, especially for success on the SAT.  Because a large part of the test focuses on reading and writing skills, extensive vocabulary is a must.  This can be gained through practice.  There are lists of good vocab in SAT study books.  There are “word of the day” calendars and emails, and you can buy flash cards and study guides.  The best way to improve vocabulary, however, is to read.  By reading, I do not mean pulp, or Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel.  I mean classic books.  Authors like Dickens and Hugo can be difficult to tackle in any situation, especially six weeks before the SAT.  Even more fast-paced books such as The Three Musketeers and the Lord of the Rings Series (yeah, the books, seriously read them) can be difficult to get through.  The main point should be to focus on the vocabulary usage in the writing.

The chosen book should be by an author who really knows his or her English (for example, Tolkien was an English professor).  Fantasy and science fiction books, however, such as Tolkien’s or Herbert’s (Dune) are not the most appropriate because they may confuse some students with their made up words (character names, places).  Because of these, students with little experience in literature might confuse these made up words with real words or be unable to find good context clues.  For these reasons, works of historical fiction, biography, or simple novels would be better.  They provide normal writing structures, vocabulary, and experience in how English writing should sound (for proofreading skills).

To a recent tutee, I suggested reading “Twilight” after hearing my mother read it to my reluctant little brother.  She had to stop every few minutes to explain a word’s meaning or a metaphor to him.  Although the book does not have the most complex vocabulary, it does have the necessary depth to instill new words into a reader who is paying attention.  I suggested this book to the tutee because she, like many high school juniors, does not have much time to dedicate to reading.  For this reason, “Twilight” is appropriate because it is enjoyable, as well as being not too long or involved.

Although getting a student to read before the test to increase vocabulary skills is a good idea, the problem begins with the student’s education before his or her arrival in the junior year.  The lack of reading experience of good literature is the cause of this problem for students.  While catching up in the months and weeks before the SAT is a necessary object for students, they would be better prepared by reading in the years before the SAT.  Additionally, their vocabulary would be much improved if their parents read to them at a young age.

In summary, flashcards and rote memorization are often neglected by students studying vocabulary.  Reading is a great alternative that can be enjoayble and effective at the same time.

Lamarck’s theory was simple: if an organism used a certain feature of its self, then that feature would survive in the animals evolution, if not, then the feature would eventually disappear. The reason that this theory put up such a fight is because it seems to make some intuitive sense. In fact, our memories work according to Lamarck’s theory of use and disuse.

Our brains learn things by making special connections between neurons in our brain. If we use what we learn on a day-to-day basis, then those neuron connections are likely to survive. Otherwise, those neuron connections will degrade and what you once “learned” will be forgotten.

Neuronal connections

The process seems quite simple. Based on this model, all we need to do to remember something for a long time, is to use it over and over. In fact, this model has been used for hundreds of years! We go to school, we are taught something, and then we are assigned homework. What is the purpose of the homework? It is a way for us to call upon the information we previously learned in the classroom, and this makes us more likely to remember it.

Here are a few surefire ways to remember things, in no particular order of effectiveness:

1. Teach someone else about what you learned/what you are learning
2. Rewrite notes from memory, checking back to the original copy only sparingly
3. Create mnemonics to remember things (see the mnemonics post)
4. Use index cards to quiz yourself (see the index cards post)
5. Do practice problems
6. Apply what you have learned to the real world

These are just some of the methods that I use when I tutor students, and I’ve found them all to be quite effective. Generally, the more methods you use to remember something and the more often you use them, the more likely it is that you will remember it.

About the author: For more information or to request Kunal as a tutor please check out the reviews on his tutoring profile. He is based in New York and available for tutoring in most math and science related subjects.

You can also test yourself in other ways such as true/false, multiple choice, matching, and written answers. 

What makes it particularly useful also is that there are already over 300,000 “sets” of flashcards made for common test questions.  For example, here is one on the state capitals.

The site was created by a 15 year old, Andrew Sutherland.  Congrats Andrew you are going places!

Take a look at the video demo here or sign up for free.