Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

dry facts learned at school may soon fade away’ (Carter 1988); I still feel resentment when I think about how, if I had spent more time learning to play the piano as a child and less time learning algebra, I would be spending more time playing the piano, as an adult, than I do using algebra); ‘Interesting’ (I repeat, ‘dry facts learned at school may soon fade away’!); ‘Naughty’ (What’s the French for seal?) and a ‘Giggle’ (remember positive emotions and the limbic system).
    To what extent do your lessons RING?
    I was doing some work, once, with an A-level psychology teacher who was about to deliver a revision lesson and was probing me for ideas. I asked him what were the sorts of things that, if his students could memorize them and then regurgitate them in the exam hall, would help them to remember to pass their exam. Aspects of the course that, as soon as the examiner said ‘Pick up your pens and start’, they could scribble down on their papers and it would be the equivalent of having their books in front of them. With the lessons minutes away he showed me the revision guidehe had produced and in it there was a section on ‘Methodological Issues’ listing eight factors to take into account. (They were, however, just listed, not numbered. Yet numbering things serves to improve our memories too.) The list was, from memory even though it was about eight years ago, as follows:
    Ecological validity
Sampling
Ethics
Generalization
Strengths and weaknesses
Quantitative and qualitative assessment
Psychometric testing
Reliability.
    All of these are abstract concepts and, therefore, hard to memorize, entailing about 20 minutes of rote learning in a repetitive way. Yet turn them into a story (another strategy that helps – we have great memories for stories, especially as they link things together in a linear way, something else that helps) and you’re onto something. So, in about 20 seconds and under the heading ‘EMI’ for ‘Eight Methodological Issues’, the list above became:
    I was getting my library card validated when an eco-warrior (ecological validity) came in and started urinating (sampling) on the library books. Then a vicar came in (ethics) followed by a general (generalization) whereupon they started arm wrestling (strengths and weaknesses) trying to force the other’s hand down onto sharpened ‘Q’s pointing up (quantitative and qualitative). Suddenly a psychopath (psychometric testing) came in, chopped their heads off and drove off in a Robin Reliant (reliability).
    Now, if that happened to you, you
would
remember it!
    I employed a similar strategy to help my son
remember to pass
his English GCSE. So, the list of factors to consider when analysing a piece of text or poetry:
    Irony
Metaphor
Oxymoron
Alliteration
Onomatopoeia
Repetition
Syllables
Imagery
Theme
    Quickly transmogrified into:
    I was ironing (irony) a horse (metaphor) when a stupid person came in on an ox (oxymoron) being chased by an alligator (alliteration) so I hit the alligator over the head with an encyclopaedia (onomatopoeia) again and again (repetition) and, when it was dead, lay it out on a slab (syllables), took a photo (imagery) and the moral of the story is … (theme).
    And yes, he got his ‘B’ target in English.
    Effective registration is not entirely limited to whacky pictures though. If you think about memory from a VAK perspective, that we have memories for pictures, memories for sounds and a physical memory too, our muscle memory, and that these memories are stored in different places in our heads, you will start to understand the importance of VAK-ing our memories too. If all I use is one channel for remembering then I only have one channel for recalling. Yet if I use all three channels then I have three times the chance of remembering the learning when I need it.
    For example, I have worked with History teachers where we took the ‘Five Most Important Reasons People Went From the Countryside to the Towns in the Industrial Revolution’ (a superlative is always useful to generate interest and improve memory I find), namely money, industry, education, quality of life and housing, and ‘anchored’ each in turn to one of the fingers on my left hand. For example, my ring finger becomes ‘money’ because of the link to gold, my middle finger (the one I drive with) I imagine as all oily and greasy or maybe even missing thanks to some horrible industrial accident; my pointy finger I put on my bottom