Extreme Meme

ExtremeMeme is the name of a technology for authoring and playing back educational content in a format suited for optimal absorption. It is the technological backbone for developing and transmitting curriculums of OufshaHome.

How It Works - Playback'

According to research quoted in SuperLearning2000 (ISBN 0440223881 ) ( http://superlearning.ca/ ), there is a pretty well understood format for presenting information in a manner that can be optimally absorbed:

a single fact is presented every 8 seconds
the spoken portion is broken down to a simple 4-9 word phrase
the spoken portion is read to the student in the first 4 seconds of the 8 sec. cycle
the visual portion contains the text of the audible portion being read
the tone of the spoken portion is changed from fact to fact (seductive, excited, whisper, yell, repeat)
the student practices something like yogic breathing for the entire session - inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, repeat
this yogic breathing is synchronized to the rhythmic presentations of the facts
the breath is held during the spoken portion
while the spoken portion is being read, the student highlights the phrase's text on the visual portion using a marker
an optimal number of facts for one ExtremeMeme session is about 150 or 20 minutes of material
it works best if the student is lead through a guided visualization immediately before being lead through the sequence of facts
finally, the audio portion of the session is repeated immediately over background music of 50-60 bpm with harmonics similar to Baroque Largo movements while the student relaxes with eyes closed and breaths at whatever is their natural rhythm

A typical use scenario might be a nursing student, massage therapy student, or medical student wanting to learn or review a given set of muscles.

For each muscle, the student would probably want to know:

name
location (relative position in body)
actions (joint articulations)
origin (attaches to what bone?)
insertion (attaches to what other bone?)
innervation (what motor nerve controls it)

That's about six facts for each muscles, which means we could present about 25 muscles in a twenty minute session.

For a simple example session, let's assume a low tech approach. First, the teacher hands out a stack of 4" X 6" fact cards and a transparent colored marker to each student. She has her students get into a comfortable position. She has them close there eyes while she guides them through a guided visualization to deeply relax them and prep their minds for optimal learning.

The teacher also has two cassette tape players at her disposal, two pre-recorded tapes, and one blank tape. One pre-recorded tape is called a click tape that simple emits an audible click every eight seconds. The second pre-recorded tape is a collection of Baroque Largo movements. The blank tape will be used to recored her reading of the material, so she doesn't need to read it a second time.

Towards the end of the visualization, the teacher starts playing the click tape on one cassette player. Her voice sinks into the slow, rhythmic pattern matching the four second interval marked by the clicks coming from the tape. But the durations of her phrases only last about four seconds, so there's about four seconds of silence in between speaking. She is now guiding her student slowly open there eyes and to begin yogic breathing synchronized to her spoken phrases as described above. Just as she is about to start presenting the actual lesson, she turns on a cassette tape recorder to capture her voice of the lesson.

She segues into the actual material, alternating the tone of her voice for every fact (seductive, excited, whisper, yell, repeat). As she reads a fact, the students look at the corresponding fact card, reading and highlighting the corresponding text. They hold their breath while the fact is being read. They breath either in or out during the silent interval. They move the top card to bottom of the stack, so they can see the next fact as the teachers voice begins.

      '(describe the six fact phrases for three sample muscles here)'

After reading the entire list of facts, the teacher stops both click tape and the tape recording of her readings. She rewinds the tape of her spoken facts. She pops the pre-recorded music tape into the cassette player that contained the click tape. She has her students close their eyes, relax, and just breath normally. She starts both the music tape and the tape on which her reading of the fact phrase where just recorded. At the end of the reading, she shuts off both of the tapes, and gently guides her students back into their bodies and off to their next adventure.

If this actually works, the students have now learned almost verbatim the six facts about the 25 muscles in a little over 40 minutes.

How It Works - Authoring'

Yes, but does it actually work ?

Other learning techniques are discussed on the MentatWiki.

See Also, or possibly Instead: MemesShmemes.

CategoryEducation CategoryMemes