A visit to Japan!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week’s book recommendation is The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness, by Todd Rose, recommended by our Lead Mentor Linda Walker. (Todd also read the Audible edition of his book.) No one is average, asserts Todd, and the New York Times found much to praise in his premise. Rose has himself gone from high school drop out to become the director of the Mind, Brain, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education  Take a look at the description of Todd’s book (or better yet, read his book!), and join the discussion forum to let us know what you think of the idea that no one is average.

The Benefits of the Imposter Syndrome

Here’s an article by Barb in Time Magazine: “How Impostor Syndrome Is My Career Superpower.”  (Bonus sour cream in the coffee!)

Unleash Your Inner Company

As you may have realized, we’re keen proponents of entrepreneurship as a great path towards helping others while simultaneously helping you live the life you want to live.  Here’s a video (scroll down on the page) by our friend John Chisolm (president of the MIT Alumni Association), that conveys some of the ideas of his insightful book Unleash Your Inner Company: Use Passion and Perseverance to Build Your Ideal Business.  (John also reads the Audible version of his book.)

The Upswing of Awesome: Advice for Self-Taught Coders

One of our friends, an excellent self-taught coder, pointed us towards this excellent article—“Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard.”  Our friend noted “When I was learning how to code apps, after finishing the first tutorials (“handheld honeymoon”), I felt very frustrated and confused because I didn’t know how to do what I wanted to do. I found this article—after reading it I felt that there was light at the end of the tunnel (because this article is like a road map of your emotions) and I just had to keep pushing. Now, I feel I am in the “upswing of awesome” where I know what I have to learn and where to learn it from :)”  We think that the ideas in this article apply to learning in many different disciplines!

Barb in Kyoto, Japan

Barb’s in Kyoto, Japan this month.  Please post on the discussion forum here if you’d like to come to a meetup in the Kyoto area.

Behind the Scenes: An Interview about Developing Learning How to Learn

Here is an informative interview from Online Course Report about the making of Learning How to Learn. Alexandra Urban, Coursera’s Teaching & Learning Specialist (and one of the most upbeat people you’d find anywhere!) provides an informative big picture perspective on what these approaches mean for online learning in general.  Barb, on the other hand, just lets loose with her thoughts.

Memorizing a Deck of Cards

Here’s a new video from Nelson Dellis, 4 time US memory champion, on how to memorize the colors of a card deck.  As Nelson reveals, memorizing a deck of card like this is a terrific exercise to help develop your general memorization abilities. (If you would like to join Nelson in helping to support research on memory, please take the Extreme Memory Challenge.)  

More Memory with Mindshift

And here is an intriguing article-podcast by memory expert Anthony Metivier on “time travel secrets” related to learning.  We’ll admit that we never quite framed learning the way Anthony does—he’s got a unique way of bringing out the best in how to understand the learning process.

Amazon Prime for Students

We personally make great use of Amazon Prime in our book reading—the free shipping makes it well worth our while.  Here is a way for students to use the service for six months for free to try it out.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team
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