We should start looking more at teaching methods using technology
This post will be a bit off-topic and belongs in the FFA, but if I were advising students today, I would recommend making
very heavy use of Anki -- described
here. I've been using it faithfully, 20-40 minutes each day, for the last 11 weeks, and it's remarkable how well it works (and it becomes more efficient, as compared to cramming, the longer you use it).
It's an app that helps you memorize things for good, putting them in your long-term memory, with as little time-investment as possible, using spaced repetition (like flash cards to be reviewed at optimized intervals).
The applications are obvious to subjects that require a lot of rote memorization -- foreign languages, medical school, etc.
But if you use it right, it's also very helpful in subjects that don't
seem like they involve a lot of memorization -- e.g., calculus. A deceptively big part of understanding complicated subjects is just keeping the basics straight in your easily accessible memory. See the essay I linked in the first sentence. It does take some practice and trial-end-error to get the hang of using it for complicated subjects, but it's well worth it, IMO.
(Disclosure here that everyone learns in different ways, so what's helpful to one person may not be as helpful to someone else. But it's hard for me to imagine Anki, or something similar, not being helpful for someone.)
When I first started using Anki, I didn't have a specific goal in mind. I just read about a cool memory app and looked around for something to memorize just so I could try it out. In the first week of using it, I memorized (a) the 45 Presidents of the US in order (if you say "23," I'll instantly shoot back "Benjamin Harrison"), (b) the top 20 NFL passers of all time (if you say "13," I'll instantly shoot back "Vinny Testaverde"), (c) the top 20 NFL rushers of all time, and (d) the top 20 NFL receivers of all time. That was all 10+ weeks ago, and all of them are still in my instant recall. The next week I started in on geography: where all countries are on the map, their capitals, and their flags. I've always been terrible at that stuff and I figured it would be worthwhile. Learning 20-40 new things a day while reviewing old things, it took maybe 6-7 weeks to get through all the countries, capitals, and flags, but it worked. After learning all that stuff for no particular reason, a friend randomly showed me the QuizzUp app by doing the World Capitals game, and I knew all of them. Turns out I'm now pretty much world class at the World Capitals and the World Flags quizzes on that app after knowing very little just a few weeks prior. I then memorized
a long-ish essay I like (using the LPCG Lyrics/Poetry Cloze Generator plug-in), though not precisely word-for-word.
Now that the rote memorization aspect (Presidents, NFL players, geography, an essay) no longer interests me so much, I've been using it more to remember stuff that I read. Whenever I read a book or essay or Wikipedia article, etc., I (a) put any unfamiliar words into Anki with their definition [quizzing me both ways -- give me the word and I'll tell you the definition, or give me the definition and I'll tell you the word], and (b) put any substantive points into it that I want to remember. I've found this extremely useful. Until I'd done this (and had to later answer quizzes from Anki), I didn't realize how easily and quickly I typically forget things that I've read. Just one day after looking up the definition and putting "amanuensis" into Anki, I'd completely forgotten the definition. But when it quizzes me on it today, and then a week from now, and then a month from now, and then a year from now (the spacing is roughly geometric), it will stay in my long-term memory along with everything else I'm putting into Anki, all for a relatively minimum investment of time. And substantive points are just like vocabulary in that respect. I read a little about the succession from William Henry Harrison to John Tyler (a constitutional crisis!) about a month ago but didn't Ankify it, and when I read it again a few days ago, it was only vaguely familiar -- I'd forgotten the details. So now I've put the interesting aspects into Anki and can be confident that it will remain in my long-term memory.
I recommend reading
the essay I linked to, then playing around with Anki. The shared decks are fine for stuff like memorizing Presidents or World Geography, but the real value is in creating your own cards with stuff inherently interesting to you.
In any case, I think school would be more worthwhile if students permanently remembered the stuff they learned, rather than forgetting it shortly after the test, which seems to be the general norm.
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You shouldn't be speaking about education if you believe what you just typed.
