Mastering Sequential Learning

Why Instruct Step-Wise Learning? Although the average person does not understand how sequencing memory works, parents and teachers are beginning to recognize the critical necessity for teaching visual and listening sequential memory as a separate supplemental instructional piece, as it is so integral to academic learning proficiency.

Now, students at all learning levels can be trained to optimum achievement levels with powerful learning solution outcomes.

Not only is serial learning critically fundamental to all technical and skilled trade operations, but it is at the root of all academic and athletic learning – reading, writing, spelling, mathematical equations, learning foreign languages, communicating through written composition, athletic plays, musical compositions, recipes, including operational procedures.

Every movement in your day is a series of orchestrated steps. The faster you can sequence, the more organized you are, and get more accomplished.

Creating adequate working memory resolves often unidentified learning problems. Schools have not overly taught memory organization as an independent course. Not only have there been few available programs, but they have not fit into traditional educational curricula as adaptive learning instruction.

For years, textbook companies did not have a niche for this type of training, and curriculum's absorbed this concept necessity within the routine teaching of math equations or reading comprehension exercises.

Technically speaking, step-wise learning is called visual and listening (auditory) sequential working memory training. Much research was conducted in the 1960s and 1970s in this arena, but few training programs existed, and even today, very few academic or professional programs teach sequencing and coding operations as auxiliary “How To” course.

Now, various supplemental academic learning options abound with digital, online learning, but the question is how to find as an academic companion, like a sequencing training program with evidenced validity. It becomes a question of sorting out options.

Online working memory courses offer teaching visual figural memory matching, and with few
sequencing operations (as in algebraic equations). Two-dimensional cartoon characters lead the way through rapid pacing activities, which actions may be difficult to follow. Video games develop fast visual processing speed, and leave operational logic devices up to the player. Serial operations, or step-wise learning, that instructs formal chunking and coding “How To’s” are not systematically taught.

Now that we have touch screens, we are relegated to visual figural, tactile learning, through tapping interfaces. We are not offered listening/auditory serial processing that is critical as a gateway into our technical world.

It should also be pointed out that any supplemental, accelerated training should not be considered “remedial”. Since listening and visual sequential memory creates conceptualization or the integration of information, parents should step forward to ensure that their youngsters have this necessary foundation to excel in academics at any level.

As a classroom teacher, recognizing the critical need, I researched and developed a training system to optimize fast sequential or operational learning. As the root of all technical operations, it had definite instructional merit.

As a result, my graduates have since risen to top administrative/executive/official levels with the ability to make fast and decisive decisions. Serial training is not only administratively beneficial, but it adds personal power, as it opens access to logic, reasoning, and problem solving, not to mention creating optimized school and workplace efficiency.

For example, recently, an electronics store’s sales clerk inadvertently gave me incorrect operational sequences, leaving out two steps, when programming a newly purchased television remote. Of course, the remote did not operate. Unabashed, I referenced the manual (which most of us are reluctant to do), and noticed that steps were verbally inaccurately transmitted to me. This results in a loss of time, not to  mention the ensuing frustration receiving inaccurate instructions.

To resolve these daily ineptitude issues, schools will emphasize the teaching of reading comprehension, or deep understanding and retention of classroom assignments. There will be alternative forms of practice recitation to create deep learning. Work process flow states will be introduced, and speed of careless input work will be deemphasized.

Professional educator development will be instrumental in learning these new training procedures and processes. The school culture will become one led to continuous personalized student improvement. Now students will move into secondary school levels optimizing their ability to follow directions, compute, read, write, and communicate effectively. All, of which, have the basis of serial learning.

Questions for consideration: Does your student listen, remember, and follow oral directions and/or procedures easily? Can they spell words correctly? Can they complete serial answers clearly? Are mathematical step-wise procedures easily understood and followed without missing steps? Technical operations will not operate correctly if a step is omitted, removed, or out of proper sequence.

Our nonprofit organization, Innovative Learning Stratagems, Inc. offers an information portal
www.edstretch.com to ease parents’ search for applicable online resources. As a result, parents will become more involved and supervise online learning sessions at home, where their child is not lost in a classroom quantum of multiple, asynchronous activities. Students will have their school computerized dashboard transferred to homework assignments. Supplemental online supplemental help – will be utilized and applied at optimum levels.

Brain Gaming Merit: Finding Transfer

The topic of this blog is determining the value of brain games, in follow-up of Ted C. Fishman's May 9, 2012 USA Today article "Gaming Our Brains: Do online mind exercises really improve our mental processing? As the article indicated, the internet is being flooded with a variety of visual memory games and is a $300 million a year business with millions of hours spent playing these exercises.

The concern is that many games are random, non-progressive visual memory for detail exercises that simply measure "right and wrong" speed recognition answers. which can be discouraging to the learner, if not completely beneficial.

Although our cognitive skills have been shown to diminish as we age. i.e. auditory memory (listening) declines at age 35, but varies greatly depending upon the actual task coordinated with the person's innate ability (Craik & Grady, 2000. Changes in Memory Processing with Age). And, there is a high correlation to our sensory acuity of visual, hearing, gait, and balance (p.2). Additionally, Many have cognitive processing discrepancies that they compensate for on a daily basis, and can be improved through the correct intervention.

This indicates that we all would benefit from brain exercise, but what programs will be beneficial specifically to our own personal needs? Subsequently, are short, random, visual brain exercises worth our time, effort, and money? Although the exercises do no harm, how will we know which programs will work most effectively for us?

The key to these exercises is whether they can create "clinical transfer" to every day life work and learning activities. The Mem-ExSpan thirty years of independent research has documented cognitive skills-memory transfer (five published, juried, award winning, longitudinal reports) with remarkable changes in academic and work proficiency. This work is at least a start in the vast research to be continued by many around the globe.

The program that has shown work and academic proficient transfer is called, "The Bridge to Achievement". (The BTA) The question is - how does the BTA differ from other random exercise games offered by competing companies?

My former blog commented on how we each have our own brain map of cognitive skills that make up Intelligent Quotients (IQs). This topic has been explored for decades by various psychologists and scientists evaluating the role that memory plays with daily functioning.

The BTA offers more than mere self-taught memory games, and works as a prescriptive system to strengthen visual AND auditory memory segments and sequencing in gradient, rehearsed steps. Craik and Lockhart"s Hierarchy work (1972) demonstrated the various incremental levels of memory absorption, and the influencing factors create "cementing" to our minds. The BTA steps encompass rapid right-and-left-brain cognitive shifts applying tonal patterning through musical phrasing. Subsequently, synapses strengthen.

Few specialists have conducted in-depth, standardized cognitive skills diagnostics to the extent of examination that I have completed, applying ten standardized cognitive skills test batteries individually and group pre- and post-test (6 hrs. intensive measurement per student), and evaluating them with schools' yearly standardized assessment batteries. Only through this type of correlated, tracked assessment can future change processes and trending be determined and predicted.

I was fortunate that I tested individuals in small town, small group settings, where the schools had students that remained and moved lock-step through the grades. Otherwise, they could not be tracked longitudinally.

Having our own personalized cognitive skills tested has high personal value and will direct to your training options. Yet, psychological assessments are expensive and hard to come by, as they must be conducted by a certified psychologist/clinician/diagnostician. Whether you utilize "indicator" free tests, or pay for a thorough psychologist's evaluation, it is helpful to know your visual and listening area strengths and weaknesses, as this information will be key in determining your required specific intervention, and that you are not wasting your time working on the wrong cognitive area.

It can not be deduced that ANY game will produce desired results, or are similar to the BTA program. Will tracking the random answers of millions playing games produce significant clinical trial information? This is unlikely, because each person has their own cognitive brain map, which processes uniquely to themselves, and gaming tracking systems will not measure specific cognitive improvement in directed areas.

Only by thoroughly assessing each of the millions through prescriptive cognitive skills diagnostics, will it be determined the effectiveness of random brain games. Longitudinal assessment through learning management systems (LMS), will be unlikely, as people will not commit to independent, self-instruction on a continuous basis, nor can cognitive assessment be administered effectively online. Subsequently, it will be unlikely that the games played will have futuristic measurement capabilities of seeing if the memory for visual detail exercises "transfer" to higher work and academic learning proficiency.

Yet, we can not overlook the possibility that the games are fun to play.

Theatrical Puppetry Exercises with Musical Choral Speech Serve as a Tool to Enhance Memory and Learning Proficiency

Today, there are many brain exercise programs online that expect the client to have the motivation and interest to stay focused with an often tedious program. Many are random visual figure exercises to learn a series of images. The various types of visual and listening memory are not over-viewed, and, what is presented are visual memory exercises that are difficult to complete.

What is obviously missing from this paradigm is the crucial "listening-auditory memory" facet. Researchers have long written that auditory memory must couple with visual memory for the learner to understand or comprehend new information. Auditory/listening memory exercises must accompany the visual ones, and obtain effective results in the process. This challenge becomes a complex measurement and evaluation process to discover what is effective and works with all learning levels and capabilities. Following years of test-train-testing iterations, puppets were found to be an engaging, differentiating tool.

Yet, it can not be “any puppet, with any instructional purpose, or with any filmed procedure”, but should have a specific rationale and lesson objective in mind. Students are taught how to interface, react, and engage effectively.

To teach rapid auditory-visual memory, and to make the training palatable and exciting, I engaged a family of historical vaudevillian ventriloquist puppets that taught sequential learning to children age 9, up to the adult learner, who appreciated “the Charlie McCarthy – Edgar Bergen retro Hollywood radio days”.

Puppet characters offer the following beneficial qualities:

1) They offer a non-threatening, stress free, fun-like presence, and can become a “family affair” for the learning process. The learner remains in an abstract "one-up" position. Although they can challenge your capabilities to the next level, they do not intimate. When they back-talk, you are not personally offended, as they become your friend.

2) Their messages are rapidly understood. For example, they have been used in political cartoons and comic strips for decades.

3) Their vocal intonations penetrate the memory system.

Becoming an effective learning tool, we can learn from speaking puppets, but only when uniquely presented, are programmed effectively, and engage the learner.

Rather than fighting your way through a labyrinth of random, abstract memory lessons, as an alternative, instructional Mem-ExSpan puppetry games can improve our cognitive skills and memory uniquely and easily. We can learn visual and auditory factual names, words, and sequential memories, as in learning technical procedures, having jumped past outdated, rote memory systems.

And, if we find that these puppet characters do give us "guff," we really do not mind!

To find out more about Jan’s 5-Gen’s of classroom instruction backed by published, juried research, visit http://www.memspan.com

"Good Reasons to Understand Your Tablet's Operating System "

My recent article, “Electronic Tablet Devices: Questions to Ponder” drew some criticisms from family members. I was advised not to write such heavy technical articles that no one can understand. I agree that eyes glaze over when you start talking about operating systems or platforms, but – there are several simple reasons why you need to know just the basics, and not ultimately regret your purchasing decision.

Carefully consider why you should chose a tablet according to its operating system (OS), and not depend on a friend’s selection or advice. Or, totally ignore the OS process.

The primary reason is that your tablet's basic functions, or “how it works”, depends upon its OS. That includes settings, features, and controls like its operational rules, and the complexity of your use of them.

First of all, new, updated OS’s are coming out all the time. That very fact makes this discussion confusing. When I wrote the article, there were primary ones (Apple iOS, Google’s Android, RIM’s Blackberry, Hewlett Packard’s Linux, and Windows 7), and now there are multiples by many companies. Furthermore, the tablet may seem like a larger “handset device” that you already have.

To top it off, Windows 7 has morphed into its “Surface” tablet with Win 8 and its NT OS coming out later this Fall with new, updated features trying to resolve some of the iPad “non-productivity” shortcomings.

The initial tablet focus was on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Now, both companies are in subsequent gen's of rapid, sequential development; Android is in its’ 3rd version called “HoneyComb”, and Apple’s iPad sells the iPad2 and 4G light. At the end of this article, I will point you to where you can find excellent tablet comparative insight, with blogs by Dan Grabham.

Before going to these Techradar sites, review my final points:

• My main point is: conduct online research in advance so you understand what features your device’s OS offers.
• Understand your tablet’s productivity functions, in other words, what can you do with it?
• Understand the maintenance requirements with possible ongoing costs.
• Understand that tablets are not cell phones; will it interface with your cell phone device?
• Understand that your OS decision will determine where you will find your tablet device. Who will be your carrier? The same one as your cell phone carrier? Splitting company families is unwise. Consider monthly contracts and binding costly obligations.
• Understand the software compatibility – will selections be primarily in the clouds or various apps to purchase to make it functional like your desktop/laptop? 

Understand that application purchases (apps) vary from company to company as far as selection, price, and download ease. Which apps do you want and need; does it matter? Each carrier offers thousands of choices, all different from each other. That means you will have to sort through them and make purchasing decisions.

Finally, How much time do you have to spend on multiple devices that you may own? Consider why you want a tablet device over your basic home PC or e-Reader? Yet, tablets function as e-Readers. Are you aware that there is a Kindle app for the iPad? Or, should you invest in an e-Reader rather than the pricier tablet? It becomes a matter of personal preferences.

To help decide among the multitude of choices, compare e-Readers online: Kindle Fire Vs Nook Tablet to understand the pros and cons. There are many directions to go.

Understanding that there will be significant improvement updates every few months, you may be tied into a two-year service agreement contract. Are there significant advantages for the increased monthly cost? Or will your tablet investment become another surfing entertainment toy that you replace frequently, or will it become a helpful tool that proves to be a wise use of your time?

For this tablet comparison review, check, “Techradar blog's” by Dan Grabham: "OS Tablet Comparison Articles" and additionally, "Tablet News, Reviews, and Advice".