Reflect on the Method of Loci in your blog. What worked? What didn't? How could you use such a cognitive activity, mental or visible to users, to improve the acquisition of knowledge in your designs? Write a blog entry on this.
Reflect on the implementation and evaluation: What changes will you make before implementation? Why? What did you ignore in the client's feedback? Why? What did you ignore in your peer's feedback? Why?
This exercise immediately reminded me of the ancient Greek technique Sherlock Holmes uses to reconstruct crime scenes and organize his information. According to myth, the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos invented what we call memory theatre, art of memory, or most popularly, the memory palace (Zielinski, 2014). This practice allows a person to remember information based on the location of information or objects. The Method of Loci (MOL) “is a mnemonic device that relies on spatial relationships between “loci” (e.g., locations on a familiar route or rooms in a familiar building) to arrange and recollect memorial content” (Qureshi, 2015). In this way, the MOL is a familiar idea from books and movies though I’ve never really tried to employ it so intentionally before.
Step 1: Focus
I am a visual learner and often am able to visually recall my notes based on the location of the information on the page, color of highlighter, or annotation location on a page. So the practice for me was to expand the MOL from study notes and into a 3D room instead of 2D paper. The first step for me is always the hardest: to stop my mind from bouncing from one idea to another. The act of focusing on one idea for so long is a hurdle, but my attempts to practice mediation are similar and I’ve managed that so I was able to reign in my thoughts and still my mind for this exercise.
Step 2: Building
Building the room was easy: picture an arched double sliding door leading to a home library with heavy carpets, plush reading chairs, heady wooden in-laid shelves, a sliding ladder, and large windows letting in the light and feeding the flora. I see the stacks (columns) as major, umbrella-like categories of thoughts, shelves (rows) as groups of related information about that topic, and individual books as memory items. There is also meaning in the objects supporting the room like lamps, plants, gargoyles, windows, rugs, and maps. There is a large working table scattered with notes and images from what’s on my mind at the moments that needs to be filed.
Step 3: Associate and Assess
I enjoy making a home for objects so I know where things are but often find myself moving the locations to better account for new items that are better places within a space. This often leaves me revisiting the old homes of items, like retracing my steps just mentally trying to find where I decided the "new" location for information is. Also, The act of reflecting and picturing my knowledge in the room with me, left a pile of miscellaneous to-be-sorted information which prompted me to make a rule. Any information entering my mind palace had to first be assigned an association even if that association changed over time or needed to be duplicated in multiple locations for the duality of the association.
I targeted some of the mnemonic devices I still remember from 20 years of learning and these include:
KISS: Keep it simple stupid
CRAAP: Evaluating sources
FANBOYS: coordinating conjunctions
SMART: goal setting
FOIL: math multiplying binomials
OYGBIV: colors
Please excuse my dear aunt sally: order of operations
My very eager mother just served us nine pizzas: planets
Every good boy deserves fudge: music notes
Something I could do to help my students remember information that may not be relevant (yet) in their careers when I teach them is to create a mind palace in conjunction with them and deliberately place mnemonic devices for learning information, digital, writing, media, and other diverse literacies so they will have it when the information becomes relevant.
Zielinski, S. (2014). The Secrets of Sherlock’s Mind Palace | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved March 6, 2021, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-sherlocks-mind-palace-180949567/
Qureshi, A., Rizvi, F., Syed, A., Shahid, A., & Manzoor, H. (2015). The method of loci as a mnemonic device to facilitate learning in endocrinology leads to improvement in student performance as measured by assessments. Advances in Physiology Education, 38(2), p.140–144. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00092.2013
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