Intro

If you’re anything like me, you have a billion little nuggets of information in your head at any given time. Remember to pick up this, remember to do that, don’t forget to not forget that you always forget that.

It feels like every time I learn one thing, something else goes squirting out my brain only to find itself flopping on the ground like that goldfish in the music video for the song “Epic” by Faith No More. A little melodramatic? I think not. That’s exactly how it happens.

Well, I have a solution for you today. If you’re a student this is for you. If you’re a teacher, use this technique. If you’re not in one of those categories, I’m sure you’ll think of a way to use this technique. In the comments section, let us know what you think.

Memorization

Memorizing stuff was definitely one of my gifts as a child. My memory was so good that it made my parents nervous. They knew that if there was ever a question about an event that happened, I would remember every detail. I will leave it up to you to read between the lines on what an event was. Definitely a mixed blessing.

My technique for memorizing things in school was a bit of a mixed bag. There were times that I would just go over something a million times in hopes that it would sink in, but other times if I was say minutes away from taking a 6th grade geography test, survival mode would kick in. Survival mode went something like this…”Darn (yeah, I’m sure that’s what I said), I’m under prepared and I have a test in 5 minutes. What can I do to remember where all these provinces are located? 9 out of 10 times I would make up a mnemonic. (the 10th I would just bomb…) Most of the time it would be goofy and involve farting or something gross that only a 6th grade boy would appreciate. I’m happy to report though, that it almost always worked. At least in the short term.

Mnemonics

What is a mnemonic you say? Simply it’s just an aid that helps you remember something. For example, when I was learning about stalagmites and stalactites (those pointy things that hang from the ceiling of caves and that come up from the ground) I couldn’t remember which ones were on the ceiling and which ones “grew” up from the ground. That one was easy, my mnemonic was all in the letters of the two words. The first parts of the words are the same, but if you look at the ends of the words you have “tites” and “mites.” For me the “t” means “top” so stalactites are the ones that are on top or on the ceiling. Thus “mites” are the ones on the bottom. Mnemonics in action! I’ve never forgotten that one.

Example

Maybe a concrete example would be good at this point. To show the power of this technique, I’m going to teach you something you hopefully don’t already know. If you have heard of it, you have probably already forgotten it and so this will be a nice review. I’m going to try to stay at a high level so we don’t get too techie here, but here goes.

Today I’m going to teach you the 7 layers of the OSI Model. (OSI stands for Open Systems Interconnection).

It’s really just a conceptual model of the path a piece of software takes in going from the user interface all the way to the hardware.

What it is and how it works isn’t that important right now though, let’s focus on burning it into your brain.

With this example you will learn a new memorization technique and info about the OSI Layers (a little something us Computer Science nerds use daily). Hopefully you will also see that Spinscape is a great tool for bringing these techniques to students, teachers, and everyone in between.

Peg Board

The first step in this example is to review some basic nursery rhyme principles. The idea here is that we are going to relate the layers to something that you are probably already familiar with, or if not, that you can commit to memory very easily.

We’re going to start with numbers and rhymes. (This will all make sense shortly!)

We are going to use the numbers 1-7 and each number is going to be associated with an object. Some people call this the Peg Board technique. You think of the numbers as slots or holes in the Peg Board where you will assign meaning later. Ok on to our Mother Goosery:

One – Bun

Two – Shoe

Three – Tree

Four – Door

Five – Hive

Six – Sticks

Seven – Heaven

Go over the list a couple times until you have it.

Spinscape is geared for this kind of thing. You can make nodes that behave like flash cards…more on that in the video!

Now the next step is to take that object and create a mnemonic that relates to the OSI layer.

The layers are:

1. Application

2. Presentation

3. Session

4. Transport

5. Network

6. Data

7. Physical

That’s a touch difficult to remember for me. Especially the order, which it turns out is important.

So, if we use our method, we get something interesting.

One – Bun

One – Bun – Application: When we look at the picture, we see it is a bun that is “Applying Makeup”. Applying makeup – Application.

Two – Shoe

Two – Shoe – Presentation: This one has a shoe in a gift box…or think of it as a Present. Present – Presentation.

Three – Tree

Three – Tree – Session: Now you’re going to say, what the heck? It turns out, sometimes the goofy ones are the ones you never forget. Let me explain this image. We have the tree as you would expect, but when you look closely, you see that the tree has a judges wig on and a gavel. The idea of court should pop into your mind. So when I think of this one I think of “Court is in Session.” Session is the third layer.

Three

Four – Door

Four – Door – Transport: This is another one that needs a little explanation, but if you’ve seen the movie Monsters Inc. it may not be a huge stretch. In this case we have the door, but in the movie the doors transported the monsters into a child’s room. Hence, door – Transport Layer.

Four

Five – Hive

Five – Hive – Network: This one isn’t bad if you look at the picture. Not sure if this is how it works in nature, but in my mind, bees operate in networks of hives. If not, the picture is at least trying to illustrate that with the lines! Thus, Five – Hive – Network.

Five

Six – Sticks

Six – Sticks – Data: If you’re even remotely techie, you probably know what a Memory Stick is. It’s one of those USB devices that you can put a bunch of Data on. Yup, you guessed it, Six is the Data Layer. We’ve gussied up the picture to make the memory sticks look like actual sticks. Hopefully that will stick your mind. Six, Sticks, Data.

Six

Seven – Heaven

Seven – Heaven – Physical: There are two ways to think of this one. You can look at the picture and think wow, God is Physically fit. Or you can think, in Heaven you are no longer in your Physical body. Whichever works for you!

Seven

Flash Cards

Hopefully you can see that combining visualization, mnemonics, and the flash card idea in Spinscape can really help you memorize and more importantly learn quickly.

My daughter has used this technique and many others to learn Explorers, Science Concepts, and much more.

As always, thanks for checking in. For more information on mind mapping, collaboration, writing tools, and a lot of other topics, feel free to peruse our site.

Watch the video: