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HOW LEARNING CAN BE FUN (PT 1)

LEARNING IS FUN, A MUST. If you are not having fun in your learning, youare in a deep shit; not only you will not learn anything but worst, you will beliving a dreadful life, especially if you are a learner or a student.

But this is the biggest challenge isnt? How can we turn something that hasbeen perceived by many and for so long, as the most BORING life-relatedactivity ever? Everybody eats, watch TV, play games and go to school. Thefirst three activities are always fun (except when youre sick) but never thelatter. But the TRUTH is, like any other life-related activities, LEARNING ISFUN, SHOULD BE AND ALWAYS BE! There is no reason for it not to be.

Actually, LEARNING CAN BE FUN if the process of learning contains thesefour aspects:

1.

Easy

2.Driven by curiosity

3.Playful

4.Mathematics and Science

You might ask, Only these four? Are you sure?. Yes, positive, I wouldreply.

LEARNING IS FUN when it is easy. Memorizing is difficult and the solereason for my ancient stance that LEARNING IS BORING; it is just too damndifficult. But how can it be easy? Learning is easy if you can hold on to theprinciple that makes up the argument in the first place. For example, 1+2 is 3,10+20 is 30, 100+200 is 300, and so on. Easy isnt? It is easy because youhold on to the principle of Addition; the rest is just the application of the sameprinciple, applied to an increasing value of numbers.

LEARNING IS FUN if we can be curious about it. Human are born withcuriosity and that what makes us human. I read (I couldnt remember and

dont bother to find the exact quote at this instance), Einstein once said Onewithout curiosity is as good as dead. But, the grand question remains, howcan we be curious in our learning? In my observation, we start to be curiousafter witnessing some serial and recursive occurrences which leave us withthe feeling of wanting to know what will happen next. In simpler words, we getcurious when we start seeing patterns. This is it! We can be curious in ourlearning if we can trace or show some trace of patterns within the argument,making us wanting to know more.

LEARNING IS FUN when you can play with it. Playing is always fun, isnt?But, how can we play in our learning? There can be two types of game that

we can play; Guessing game and Wanabe game. This Guessing game isclosely related to the previous discussion on pattern tracing. Once you traced

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the pattern, then you guess whats going to happen next; thats how you playit. For example, after reading some paragraphs on a topic and after youtraced some patterns out of it, you then guess what is going to be in theupcoming paragraphs. Believe me, when you guess it right, you will be veryhappy but if you guess it wrong you will still be happy because that what

game is all about, either win or lose, you will always get the high out of it. Ifyou keep doing this, believe me, you will get hook or addicted to these highsand become knowledge addict.

Another game that we can play is the Wanabe game. Although this will sounda bit kookoo, but believe me, it can really make a different. Let me give you ananalogy. What keeps a ten year old boy playing football for hours withoutfeeling tired is the imagination of being Messi. A guitar player will keep playingfor hours imagining himself as Gary Moore on Still Got the Blues. This istherefore the reason for the compulsory watching of A Beatiful Mind, Pirate ofSilicon Valley, The Arrow and many more bibliographical movie imposed onto

my postgraduate students as well as the compulsory reading on Einstein,Feynman, Imam Ghazali, Syed Hossein Nasr and alike. I can read for hoursbecause I am Feynman wanabe! It works you know!

Finally, LEARNING IS FUN if it contains mathematics and science becausethese are the enablers of the first three aspects which we have just discussed.Ahah! I Knew it you might say He is no difference than the others. Simplybecause he understands a bit of math he thus said all these rubbishes.Should not he know better that math and science is the father of allBORINGNESS. Wait, I would say. I do understand your prejudice but if youcan bear with me, I will show you that mathematics and science, either theykill the fun or they the ones that make LEARNING IS FUN.

Now, I would be like any other Malaysian philosophers who only know how tobe rhetoric in their writing and words if I leave this article without a concretedemonstration on what have been said. So, I am going to demonstrate to youwhat I practice in my Theory of Structures lecture. It is going to be a bittechnical though but dont worry; you still can follow even if you are not trainedin engineering. This is because, it is the story telling is what important, notthe equations. But, I am going to do this in Part 2, please wait for it.