Book Review - Make it Stick - The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roedige

Overall, I was really impressed with this book. Having no teaching/training experience, a lot of this material was very new to me. Honestly though, to me, the most intriguing part and the part I would like to learn more about was the section on mnemonics. I like how the chapter started out by explaining that true masters of their discipline are not so much blessed with natural ability, but actually have just spent insane amounts of time dedicated to perfecting their craft. However, I feel like while the actual perfection of their desired craft may not be directly attributed to a god-given gift, I do feel like the people who reach that true "master" level were blessed with the desire to pursue and put the time and effort in to meet their goals.

The reason this chapter interested me so much though, was the examples of actual mnemonic devices. I'm not particularly familiar with them, but am hoping to be more so in the near future. The company I work for, Peterson's, recently started selling products by an author named Dean Vaugh. What Mr. Vaugn does is write books on particular subjects, focused on how to learn them using mnemonic devices. His biggest sellers (which are sold to colleges, universities, trade schools, medical/nursing schools, and insurance companies, to name a few), Medical Terminology, Dental Terminology, and Human Anatomy. From what I can tell, it's similar to some of the techniques used in the book. He takes a term, relates it to a picture, and a word (usually a silly picture and word) and somehow that helps you remember.

I've always found mnemonic devices strange. It seems like if people put in the same amount of time studying the actual content instead of coming up with ways to remember it, it would be just as (if not more) helpful, but apparently that's not the case. Like the book said though, "The value of mnemonics to raise intellectual abilities comes after mastery of new material...".

Anyway, after reading this book, and this chapter, and being introduced to the new products we are selling at my work, this is an area I would like to learn more about.