The act of guessing, failure and pre-testing first.

Testing is studying of a different and powerful kind, its one that should be deployed sooner, rather than later. Testing is now seen as an important feedback loop in the Continuous Integration process.

Recently, i picked up a book called “How we learn” by Benedict Cary, I made a few notes and here are some that stuck out…

A test is not only a measurement tool, it alters what we remember and changes how we subsequently organize that knowledge in our minds. And it does so in ways, that greatly improves performance.

Minecraft is more popular than I can believe

When it comes to learning, testing is better than learning. From watching kids obsession with Minecraft and how learning is engaging, fun, challenging with the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence, it makes my old school reports seem a bit funnier to read.

Through simulation, you can test without even being aware its being done, students in Singapore can be assessed in the class room VIA Twitter and predictive analysis tools.

Also, simulation software testing is fair, the software doesn’t know your gender, sexual preference, if your black, white, Jewish or Christian, you could get hired for a job or accepted for a course, purely based on the result of a game that tests your ability solely.

On some kinds of tests, particularly multiple choice, we learn from choosing incorrectly, especially when you are given the correct answer afterwards. It makes sense, you first get a bad accountant, then you will end up with a good one, the same can be said for many things in life.

Simulation for pilots

Also, making an incorrect choice in a simulation is a lot cheaper that making an incorrect choice at fifty thousand feet.

The act of guessing engages your mind in a different way that straight memorization does.

Depending on the imprint of the correct answers, the pretest drove home the information in a way the studying as-usual did not.

Introducing Winston Churchill

At the age of twelve, Winston encountered his first examinations.  Unfortunately, the examiners were less accommodating and chose subjects he found dull, resulting in poor results.  His attempted entrance into Harrow was a complete disaster.  After writing his name and depositing a few blotches and smudges, he could only stare at the otherwise empty paper since Latin was totally alien to him.

Perhaps his latent Latin was known to the Harrow Headmaster, Reverend Welldon, who decided to give Winston a chance. Welldon was subsequently credited with vision but at the time he was severely criticized and accused of gross favouritism.

Perhaps the truth was that Winstons father being at the summit of national politics, Welldon preferred to avoid the embarrassment of rejecting his son. Yet Harrow historians have declared that not even Lord Randolph’s son could have been admitted at that time knowing no Latin.

Pre-testing primes students to notice important concepts later, failure had the crucial effect of making young Winston realize that failure was something to be overcome and not to be crushed by and primed him to learn in a big way…