Episode 075 – Russ’s Journey, Part Two: Learning to Read by Sight (1h2m)

Episode 075 welcomes Russ Fugal to the podcast in a two part conversation with Skyler and Morgan. The topics covered in this second part include his background as a reader, cryptography and peer 2 peer technology, mathematics and his desire to make it simple for his children, cognitive development on how we count, why people are born with the ability to count to 4, the language he developed early on to count in base 4, a conversation on base 10, base 12, and base 60, origin of Roman numerals, his daughter’s stronger interest in reading than in mathematics, switching tracks from mathematics to reading development, how children teach themselves to read, speed reading, Chinese characters and reading, his new program called EAR (Engaged Aided Reading), why phonics is a crutch to fluency, reading well is reading by sight, not by phonics, why are brains are good at pattern recognition, the development of his mobile app based on EAR and sight reading, and his hopeful presentation in the SXSW 2018 conference.

Spanking is Hitting, Period

“Let people parent how they want to parent” is for things like what time your kids go to bed. You cannot say that when you are being violent to children. And I will say this one more time. Hitting anyone is violent. I will defend the right of children over your assumed “right” to hurt them. If someone starves their child of food, do you protest, “let people parent how they want to parent?!”

The 4 Keys to Learning Anything

OK, so we all want to learn skills — new languages, programming skills, physical skills, history, math, writing, games, so much more. But these four problems stand in our way. Let’s take them on. We’re going to discover four keys to overcoming these four problems so that we can tackle anything we want to learn.

Meaningful Learning Is Just-in-Time, Not Just-in-Case

Average people learn what they need to avoid pain. Elite people learn what they need to get the grade, ace the test, win the award, gain certification, impress people, and obtain honors. Ascendant people don’t care about accolades or awards or tests or stickers or stars. They learn exactly what’s needed to solve a problem that matters to them, exactly when it’s needed. No more, no less. No sooner, no later.

My Kid Learned More from Mario Maker than I Did from a Marketing Major

So my son builds these levels on the WiiU game Mario Maker. He’s posted some of his favorites to the network so others can play them and, if they like them, give them a star. He checked in the other night only to find two of his favorite creations had been removed from the network because they did not get enough stars in a given time span. Here comes the pain. And the learning.