Author: barboakley

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Happy New Year for all 2.4 million Learning How to Learners who receive this Cheery Friday newsletter!  You’re an inspiration for all of us with your desire to learn and grow. May your 2021 be bright and filled with new and happy discoveries in your learning!

Book of the Week

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier.  This book is fantastic as a New Year’s gift to yourself that will give to many others in the future.

If you’re like us, you like to help other people.  One of the best ways to do that is by serving as a sounding board and coach for your co-workers, friends, children, bosses, and partners.  But what’s the best way to do that?  Stanier’s The Coaching Habit is basically the best book we’ve ever read about how to truly change other people’s brains for the better.  As Stanier notes: “…our brains are wired to have a strong preference for clarity and certainty, it’s no wonder that we like to give advice. Even if it’s the wrong advice—and it often is—giving it feels more comfortable than the ambiguity of asking a question. In our training programs, we call this urge the Advice Monster. You have the best of intentions to stay curious and ask a few good questions. But in the moment, just as you are moving to that better way of working, the Advice Monster leaps out of the darkness and hijacks the conversation. Before you realize what’s happening, your mind is turned towards finding The Answer and you’re leaping in to offer ideas, suggestions and recommended ways forward.”  Read Stanier’s wonderful book to learn how to tame your advice monster and be the mentor you’ve always wanted to be.  Highly recommended! Also great for audio listening.

ASEE Presents: Barb’s Synchronous Master Class On Effective Teaching

Next week, Barb and colleagues (and a special mystery guest!) will be doing the first live webinar presenting practical insights and ideas from their groundbreaking new book Uncommon Sense Teaching. This workshop, on the afternoons of January 6, 7, and 8th, 2021, gives an unprecedented look at new insights from neuroscience that give you practical tools that can help your students learn more effectively.  Wherever you teach, you will find this workshop provides great new insights on learning that aren’t even contained in Learning How to Learn. There are a few seats left, so reserve your seat now.

A Fantastic Strategy to Help You Finish Books 

4-time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis and polymath Nelson Dellis has a new and wonderful video on how to read more books.  This one’s worth watching. Barb uses a somewhat similar strategy, but since she often reads Kindle books, she just sets a goal of 5 or 10% (or perhaps 1 or 2% for heavily math-oriented books, or when she’s tired).

Don’t forget Nelson’s informative books on memory:

• Remember It! The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget 
• Memory Superpowers!: An Adventurous Guide to Remembering What You Don’t Want to Forget (10 – 14-year-olds)

The Hayek article on Fast and Slow Learners

We recently mentioned our inability to find the full link to a paper on fast and slow learners by slow learner Friedrich Hayek, winner of the Nobel Prize. Several intrepid LHTLers send us the link.  The article is Chapter 4 (page 50 of the book, which is actually pdf page 28). [Hat tip: Ben Strauss, Mattheus von Guttenberg, Evelyne Theodose, and Geoff Phillips.]

Are You a Teacher? You Can Help Your Students Learn How to Learn Better!

One teacher writes “I just finished reading your book Learning How to Learn and I am dying to teach these concepts to my students. (If only I had known these things as a teenager!) I found an article on your blog titled “Integrating Learning How to Learn into a High School Setting” and am interested in knowing if there are materials or resources already available for teachers to implement in their classrooms. If so, would you be able to direct me to them?”

We’ve got so much to help the many teachers in this situation!  If you might go to our MOOC  Learning How to Learn for Youth, and check the resources for teachers, you’ll find a mountain of activities pertaining to how to help your students incorporate useful new learning strategies into their studies.

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

• Get in early on the upcoming critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching!
• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents. 

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Our happiest holiday wishes to you during this traditional time of joy. The year 2021 promises to be a happier one worldwide, with vaccines finally on the near horizon!  If you’re looking for a little more joy and cheer, remember that learning something—anything—new can be just the ticket to getting neurons doing their neurogenesis thing, leading to brighter outlooks and more happiness!

Book of the Month

SELF Journal: Undated 13-Week Planning, Productivity and Positivity System for Max Achievement and Goal Success — Track Gratitude, Habits and Goals Daily and Weekly, by BestSelf.  We were given this wonderful book not long ago, and were stunned by both its simplicity and effectiveness.  Just as is recommended in one of our favorite MOOCs (Yale’s The Science of Well-Being), each day begins with a little place where you can annotate what you are grateful for—this helps you start your day on the right foot. (There are many other proven tricks from positive psychology interwoven in the pages.) The journal serves as a coach to help you prioritize your most critical tasks and budget your time, including your also-important time off, effectively. The SELF Journal is also a flexible book that allows you to skip vacation days, even while it helps you be consistent in heading toward your long-term goals.  We love it!  If you are looking to start 2021 off with a productive, up beat bang, this is the book to get!

Different Aspects of Intelligence

Barb became aware of different facets of intelligence when she worked in the fields as a teen picking raspberries.  She’d get up at 4:00 am and head off to work—pay was given by the number of hallocks (berry boxes) picked. Barb would watch some of the champion pickers—of the same age and background as she—and marvel at how they quickly mastered their picking in a way that Barb just couldn’t manage.  Later in high school, Barb worked evenings as a waitress. Here, too, her clumsiness, along with her laggardly working memory, made things difficult.  (When she finally gave her two weeks’ notice, her boss kindly responded “It’s okay Barb, you don’t need to wait two weeks—you can quit now.”)   

All this is a way of introducing this silent movie animated presentation of the many different facets of intelligence by educational psychologist Kevin McGrew.  This paper on African approaches to quantifying intelligence by Seth Oppong at the University of Botswana provides an enlightening contrast. Also relevant here is a paper on slow and fast learners by slow learner Friedrich Hayek, winner of the Nobel Prize. (Unfortunately, we can’t seem to find a direct link to Hayek’s full article.)

Learning to Play a Musical Instrument Does Seem to Help You Do Better in School

Here’s a wonderful article about research that is beginning to tease apart the causal link between learning music and learning in general. As Terra Marquette notes in Study Finds: “It  can be hard to admit when we are wrong, but sometimes the strongest proponents are originally among the ranks of the non-believers. Such is the case for some music professors who set out to debunk the theory that music can play a major role in learning. A recent study reveals having an ear for music really does help children with their reading and math skills.

“Although previous studies have uncovered a relationship between musical and academic achievement, researchers of the current investigation wanted more proof.

“‘There has been this notion for a long time that not only are these areas related, but there’s a cause-and-effect relationship,’ says lead study author Martin J. Bergee from the University of Kansas in a media release. ‘The more you study music, the better you’re going to be at math or reading. That’s always been suspect with me.’

“Bergee and co-author Kevin Weingarten from the University of Washington created a complex controlled study that included such factors as race, income, and education. The team was sure that greater scrutiny would break the so-called link between students’ musical and mathematical achievements.”

A Final Reminder to Check Out IDoRecall

Barb’s favorite flashcard system, IDoRecall, iDoRecall, has a free version but if you are interested, they are offering 20% off the LEARNER ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION during the rest of December. Use the code BetterDaysAhead during checkout. Basically, iDoRecall is a fantastic product, beautifully designed by David Handel, MD, who graduated at the top of his medical school class by using the techniques he shares in iDoRecall.  One thing we especially love about iDoRecall is its intuitive simplicity, but if you’d like to do a deep dive into its based-on-solid-science underpinnings, here’s an hour-long exploratory video.  Educators are encouraged to reach out to David from their school email addresses to arrange a free trial for their classes. 

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

• Get in early on the upcoming critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching!
• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar, by Peter Stothard. The Roman Empire is an endless source of fascination—this new book lends a different perspective to the Empire’s most pivotal event.  Frankly, we have never read a book of history that had such a great starting hook, as Cassius, the last living assassin of Caesar, awaits his fate.  While dangling on this hook, we were led through the often self-serving saga of the Caesar’s killers and the civil war that the killing provoked. A book like this helps you appreciate the comparatively benign politics of today. Incidentally, we kept our cell phone handy to look up place names and found ourselves discovering all sorts of fascinating new geographic spots we hope to visit post-COVID. 

Barb on the Jim Rutt Show 

Jim Rutt is a polymath who the New York Times once referred to as “the Internet’s bad boy” due to his reputation for creative mischief. Jim has been affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute since 2002, serving as Chairman from 2009 thru 2012. This podcast conversation moves in rapid-fire fashion to discuss fluency across domains, understanding-centered learning & the limits of procedural understanding, cultural-based education differences, slow educational evolution, online education, primary vs secondary biological learning, the direct instruction education method, the role of confidence in learning, comparing learning sports to learning math, and more. Well worth a listen!

The Second Year of the MOOC: A Review of MOOC Stats and Trends in 2020

Dhawal Shah, CEO of Class Central, writes a prescient overview of what’s happened in the world of MOOCs since the advent of COVID-19.  Key graf: “Of all the learners that ever registered on a MOOC platform, one third did so in 2020, making 2020 MOOCs’ most consequential year since the ‘Year of the MOOC”.  In 2020, the big MOOC providers got bigger, and the biggest one [Coursera] pulled further ahead of the rest. Now in its ninth year, the modern MOOC movement has crossed 180 million learners…”

Barb Discusses the Future of Online Education 

On December 22nd

• At 6:30 am Eastern, Barb will be speaking for the IT Ukraine Association conference about how to battle inertia in education.
• At 8:00 am Eastern, Barb will be speaking live with one of her favorite digital learning experts (and favorite people!), Talia Kolodny, about the future of online education. 

Don’t miss Barb at her friendly, provocative best. 🙂

Puzzle of the Week for Schools in the Pandemic

Here’s an intriguing puzzle posed by Statistics.com: What explains the increasing drop-off in math scores as students get older? Email them if you might have a solution to the conundrum. [Hat tip: Kelly Papapavlou]

A visionary seminar for Freshman, “BLD 121: Survive and Thrive,” at Michigan State University

Professor Kathleen Hoag of Michigan State University writes:  “I co-teach a freshman “Survive and Thrive Freshman Seminar” at MSU. We have used the book A Mind for Numbers since 2017 when the course started. It really is very well received by the students as a whole and has helped quite a few overcome their procrastination. Procrastination, poor sleep hygiene, and cell phones are the bane of so many students! We do what we can to provide them a stark realization of how it adversely impacts them and a roadmap to get past it.  I was just grading the final exam reflection we ask the students to write. The topic must be an impactful experience from any of their courses this semester. I thought you would appreciate reading what one of my students wrote:

• WHAT? In BLD 121, I read the book A Mind for Numbers (Oakley) which specifically provided insight on procrastination as well as techniques to overcome it. 
• SO WHAT? This book had great advice for how to stop procrastination. At first when I was reading it I felt bad about myself because I realized that in high school I had a very fixed mindset and a problem with procrastination. However, as I kept reading I got hopeful because the author provided some really good strategies to overcome procrastination and explain why it happens in the first place. It made me feel assured and almost optimistic because procrastination is something a lot of people face but can be fixed with effort and work. 
• NOW WHAT? After reading this book, I began writing lists daily, giving myself rewards for assignments, and using something like the pomodoro technique. Every day I would write a new list according to my semester calendar with each class and assignment I had to attend/complete. Then on the days that I felt super unmotivated to finish a task I would reward myself with something afterward. Some rewards included getting 10 minutes on my phone, watching TV for 5-10 minutes, or getting a snack. I also used something like the pomodoro technique while I did some bigger assignments that I felt unmotivated to finish. I would set a timer on my phone for 20 or 30 minutes (depending on how big the assignment was – bigger assignment meant 30 min) and work on a paper or worksheet during that time with my phone completely out of sight. I did not let myself stop working while the timer was on, and then once the timer was done, I would give myself five minutes on my phone and do it over again. Overall, A Mind for Numbers drastically changed the way I complete schoolwork by eliminating procrastination through three techniques that I tried this semester. 

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

Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Fantastic New Rollout of Features on IDoRecall

The new, useful features just don’t stop coming with Barb’s favorite flashcard system, IDoRecall.  The new native desktop apps for Windows and Mac computers has just launched. This desktop version works even when you don’t have an Internet connection, since all of your content is stored locally on your machine. It syncs with the cloud when there is a connection so that if you switch back to the browser version on your computer or phone, your account will be up to date. 

With the new notetaking feature, you can create linked spaced-repetition flashcards (recalls) to the facts, formulas, and concepts in your notes that you want to remember, just like you do with the other files and videos in your iDoRecall library. When you practice a recall linked to a note, if you struggle with an answer, just click the source link, the note will open at the relevant location.

Since spacing over time is important in the consumption of materials, not just in retrieval practice… iDoRecall now tells you how far along in reading (or watching) for each file in your library. This is the concept of “progressive reading.”  

Basically, iDoRecall is a fantastic product, beautifully designed by David Handel, MD, who graduated at the top of his medical school class by using the techniques he shares in iDoRecall.  One thing we especially love about iDoRecall is its intuitive simplicity, but if you’d like to do a deep dive into its based-on-solid-science underpinnings, here’s an hour-long exploratory video.  Educators are encouraged to reach out to David from their school email addresses to arrange a free trial for their classes.

 iDoRecall has a free version but if you are interested, they are offering 20% off the LEARNER ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION during the rest of December. Use the code BetterDaysAhead during checkout. (Barb’s iDoRecall’s Chief Learning Science Advisor, because she enjoys working with them and watching them continually improving their system.)

Book of the Week

Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation, by Peter Cozzens.  Tenskwatawa was a klutz who, as a youth, managed to shoot one of his eyes out with an arrow—he became a debauched alcoholic living on handouts. But, as Cozzens book reveals, after a near-death experience, Tenskwatawa turned away from alcohol and became known as the Prophet. Together with his brother, Tecumseh, the siblings worked hard against long odds to unite Native Americans against the American “Long Knives” who were constantly encroaching on Indian lands.  

This fascinating book gives insight into the margins of the nascent United States during the latter 1700s and early to mid-1800s. What makes the book all the more interesting is that, despite the heroic nature of their cause, It’s not like the siblings were perfect people. Tecumseh, who hated torture and treated even his enemies with respect, abandoned women and divorced his wives with the most trivial of excuses, even such minor transgressions as a few feathers left on a plucked turkey. And the Prophet was still a self-serving wheeler dealer even after his near-death experience—although he never drank again.

This fascinating, little known era of history about iconic Americans also is a fine book for audio listening (although you may want to keep your cell phone handy to look up place names). Enjoy!

A Running Argument about Color

Barb and her Hero Hubby Phil have long had a running lively discussion: what Barb sees as sand-colored is seen by Phil as olive-colored. (Neither Barb nor Phil tests out as color-blind.) They’ve never gotten an answer to the question. But while we’re on colors, here’s a wonderful video on cultural effects of how people analyze colors.  

How to Give a Public Talk, by MIT’s AI Expert Patrick Winston

Terry recommends this terrific video by his former AI colleague Patrick Winston, who gave a version of this talk at MIT for many decades before sadly passing away last year.  What’s particularly fun about this video is how Patrick will tongue-in-cheek violate half the dictums he gives, showing why those dictums shouldn’t be violated.  And you’ll never forget the broken pointer.

Vodaphone on the New Era of Connected Education (in Spanish)

Vodaphone has conducted a great set of interviews, (overlaid into Spanish), including one with Sugata Mitra and another with Barb, about the future of learning.  

And Here’s a Nice Letter We Received in Russian 🙂 (“Уважаемая Барбара Оукли”)

Я бы хотел выразить благодарность за вашу книгу, думай как математик. То что вы описали в начале книги это точно про меня. В школе математика для меня была сущим адом. Учитель по математике говорил на непонятном языке, и я реально думал о том что я не то что к математике а вообще ни к чему не способен. Но как то учась в колледже я нашёл в интернете вашу книгу она перевернула мою жизнь. Я поступил в колледж в 26 лет, поздно конечно но благодаря вашей книги и я изменил жизнь и закончил колледж по электротехники. Все ваши советы реально работают. Я безумно вам благодарен. 

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

• Get in early on the upcoming critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching!
• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Inferno: The True Story of a B-17 Gunner’s Heroism and the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History, by Joe Pappalardo, a contributing editor at Popular Mechanics. A critically important aerial front in the WWII battles against the Nazis was the daylight forays of the US Army Air Force (USAAF) over the skies of Western Europe from 1942 until near the end of the war. Over 30,000 USAAF personnel were killed—as author Pappalardo notes “For some scale, the U.S. Marines suffered 24,500 killed in action during World War II.” Barb’s bomber-pilot-to-be father, Al Grim, caught pneumonia during training in 1942. This nearly mortal illness held him back as his initial pilot training cohort went on to be killed virtually to a man over Europe in circumstances similar to those Pappalardo describes in Inferno. (Barb’s gifted uncle, Rodney Grim, was killed during training when another young pilot rammed his plane, as poignantly described in the Grave Discovery: Discovering Grave Stones and Stories blog. (Yes, Rodney Grim is Barb’s brother’s name, too—it was a bit of a shocker for the living Rodney to see “his” gravestone in the Opheim Montana graveyard, although, of course, the military got his name wrong.)

Pappalardo uses the unlikely tale of a ne’er-do-well winner of the Medal of Honor, Maynard Harrison Smith, as a narrative device to help readers understand the horrors endured by men who were often facing near certain death. The central sections of Pappalardo’s book, describing what it was like to be flying a burning, just ready-to-snap-apart “flying fortress” while being strafed by German aces, are enough to keep you on the edge of your seat (don’t even try reading at bedtime.) The undercurrent theme of the book is precision bombing—a will-o’-the-wisp target if ever there was one. If you enjoy learning about important, but little-known topics of military history, this book is for you.

ASEE Presents: Barb’s Synchronous Master Class On Effective Teaching

Coming up soon, Barb and colleagues (and a special mystery guest!) will be doing the first live webinar presenting practical insights and ideas from their groundbreaking new book Uncommon Sense Teaching. This workshop, on the afternoons of January 6, 7, and 8th, 2021, gives an unprecedented look at new insights from neuroscience that give you practical tools that can help your students learn more effectively.  Wherever you teach, you will find this workshop provides great new insights on learning that aren’t even contained in Learning How to Learn. Space is limited, so reserve your seat now. 

Chocolate and Cognition

There’s been plenty of research evidence that cocoa is helpful for not only cardiovascular function, but also for cognition.  This recent study “Dietary flavanols improve cerebral cortical oxygenation and cognition in healthy adults,” strengthens those findings even further.  If you’re already in the peak of physical health as an exercise buff, cocoa may not make much of a difference. But for non-athletes, a little cocoa seems to be a genuine day brightener, especially if you are doing difficult cognitive work.  Just be careful that the cocoa hasn’t had all the goodness stripped out of it.  (Barb uses CocoaVia, which appears to use some of the most effective commercially available processing methods for retaining flavonoids.)

A tanulás tanulása: Learning How to Learn for Hungarian Speakers!

Terry and Barb’s book Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens is now available in Hungarian as A tanulás tanulása—it’s at all the bookstores and via e-shops in Hungary. Dr Lilla Kocsis has done some wonderful short videos videos in Hungarian about the book on Facebook, (it’s enough to make Barb want to squeeze in time to be learning Hungarian!). And don’t forget, the MOOC Learning How to Learn is now available in Hungarian as A tanulás tanulása: Hatékony mentális eszközök, melyek segítenek megbirkózni a nehéz tantárgyakkal.

Politics in Academia: A Case Study

Academic environments form a vital underpinning for all of education. This post relates the sad saga of trying to publish scientific findings informatively critical of that environment. As psychologist Glenn Geher notes: 

“The most difficult paper that my team (the New Paltz Evolutionary Psychology Lab) and I have ever tried to publish was a paper on the topic of political motivations that underlie academic values of academics. 

That paper, inspired by a visit to our campus from NYU’s Jonathan Haidt, founder of the Heterodox Academy, was, a bit surprisingly to us, so controversial that it was rejected by nearly 10 different academic journals. Each rejection came with a new set of reasons. After some point, it started to seem to us that maybe academics just found this topic and our results too threatening. Maybe this paper simply was not politically correct. I cannot guarantee that this is what was going on, but I can tell you that we put a ton of time into the research and, as someone who’s been around the block when it comes to publishing empirical work in the behavioral sciences, I truly believe that this research was generally well-thought-out, well-implemented, and well-presented. And it actually has something to say about the academic world that is of potential value.”

Geher’s experience seems to involve a situation related to academia being run like a business. Big Business is rightly criticized for influencing researchers who then mislead the public about the efficacy or harm of their products. This is an obvious problem for the public that might be using their products, and it is the reason that conflicts of interest must be revealed, for example, in publishing papers and applying for grants.  But academia seems to censor research that might show them in a bad light. This is a more insidious, invisible problem for a public who relies on academia for education and sound scientific advice. It seems that unlike conflicts of interest involving researchers with ties to business, journal editors can have their own profound academic conflicts of interest that remain unacknowledged, perhaps most especially to themselves. The result, sadly, can be an erosion of public distrust of published findings.

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

• Get in early on the upcoming critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching!
• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents. 

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Hit Lit! Top Books of 2020 for LHTLers!

It’s been a wild and crazy 2020. But one thing we can say with certainty is that learning through reading is one of the best ways around to boost your spirits!  With that, here are the top books LHTLers have loved during 2020. (We won’t count our own Learning How to Learn, A Mind for Numbers, and Mindshift, which blew everything else out of the water as perennial favorites.)

• Memory Superpowers!: An Adventurous Guide to Remembering What You Don’t Want to Forget
• Excellent Online Teaching: Effective Strategies For A Successful Semester Online
• Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn
• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
• Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life
• Online Teaching with Zoom: A Guide for Teaching and Learning with Videoconference Platforms
• Engaging Learners through Zoom: Strategies for Virtual Teaching Across Disciplines
• The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts
• Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
• The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life
• How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now
• The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
• Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College
• Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

Learning Tools

LHTLers also find the following learning tools to be perennially useful: 

• 3M Peltor Optime 105 Over the Head Earmuff, Ear Protectors, Hearing Protection, NRR 30 dB
• Palomino Blackwing Pencils (Barb’s favorites)

The Science of Learning

Barb was fortunate to recently speak with some of the folks behind Learning Science Weekly.  This site features weekly emails with updates on the latest research relevant to how we learn. What we love about these emails is that, not only are they packed with links to a broad range of education-related research, but the commentary is insightful and fun—weekly email author Julia Huprich, Ph.D. is a real find. (Julia, next up, we’re looking for a book from you! 🙂 ) The emails also feature up-and-coming graduate students and their projects. And, well, animals. (All in line, as Julia notes, with research showing how cute critters can enhance focus.) Enjoy! 

More on the Science of Learning

This fine overview article on learning in general, and our Learning How to Learn MOOC, by blogger Mark Koester, provides a great overview of key points of our course and also takes readers on to other great resources.  Mark has created a few online courses himself, including one on learning travel Burmese—he’s clearly a man who loves learning. Mark’s concluding comments in relation to gaps in the tracking of learning are especially thought-provoking. 

Check out mmhmm for a Great Way to Present PowerPoints with You Inserted “Inside”!

We’ve looked with longing at mmhmm, a program that provides a way for you to speak online while appearing to be sitting in front of your slides, rather than boxed in a corner. Sadly, it’s not yet available for the PC—but if you’re a Mac user and you teach or make presentations online, it’s time to have a field day! [Hat tip: Jeffrey Perrone.]

The Epigenetic Secrets Behind Dopamine, Drug Addiction, and Depression

Dopamine plays a key role in learning (animals with selective damage to their dopamine systems can’t learn new responses).  But researchers have recently made dramatic new advances in our understanding of neurotransmitters like dopamine.  As this fine article by neuroscientist R. Douglas Fields in Quanta reveals, “…serotonin and dopamine can regulate transcription of DNA into RNA and, as a consequence, the synthesis of specific proteins from them. That turns these well-known characters in neuroscience into double agents, acting obviously as neurotransmitters, but also as clandestine masters of epigenetics.”  And at last, an explanation for why serotonin reuptake inhibitors have a delayed response when used to help alleviate depression. [Hat tip: LHTL Lead Mentor Steven Cooke.] 

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

• Get in early on the upcoming critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching!
• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents. 

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place, by Janelle Shane.  Shane is a Colorado-based artificial intelligence researcher who makes computer-controlled holograms for studying the brain. She also runs the blog AI Weirdness, where she writes about “the sometimes hilarious, sometimes unsettling ways that machine learning algorithms get things wrong.”  Shane knows her stuff, and she’s also hysterically funny—a rare, killer combo of talents for an author.  If you’ve ever wondered about how machine learning and artificial intelligence works, this book is for you. And if you’re an expert on machine learning and artificial intelligence, but want to learn more about its bizarre antics and foibles, this book is also for you. We love the simple, bizarre illustrations, but this is also a surprisingly good book for listening. Enjoy!

Barb at SXSW—with Your Help!

Barb is planning to share insights on how to engage zoom-fatigued students at @SXSWEdu in March. She needs your help with getting the talk selected. Please upvote Barb’s two panels today—the last day of voting!

• With Course Hero!
• With Barb’s Visionary EdTech Friend from Kazakhstan, Aigerim Khafizova!

Learn to Solve a 3X3 Rubik’s Cube

Four time US Memory champion Nelson Dellis is back with a video on solving a Rubik’s Cube—blindfolded! And don’t forget Nelson’s terrific books on memory: 

• Remember It! The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget 
• Memory Superpowers!: An Adventurous Guide to Remembering What You Don’t Want to Forget (10 – 14-year-olds)

The Learning Ideas Conference

One of Barb’s favorite conferences, filled with friendly people and fascinating ideas, is the International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace (ICELW), now in its 14th year. In keeping with its innovative nature, the conference is changing its name and expanding its audience to include higher education as well as workplace learning, and to focus more clearly on new ideas and new uses of technology—hence the new name:  “The Learning Ideas Conference: Innovations in Learning and Technology for the Workplace and Higher Education.” It will take place June 16-18, 2021, both online and in New York. Proposals for virtual or online sessions are due by December 15.  

The University for Parents

We’ve become aware of a free resource to help parents help their families: The University for Parents. This great Atlanta-based institution focuses on “helping parent learners improve their self awareness, parenting skills, and workforce development skills so they can overcome the barriers to self sufficiency and become more empowered advocates for themselves and their children.” This program uses an “ecosystem approach to this community-restoring work with a laser focus on loosening the vicious grip of inter-generational Black poverty.” The program is also being built for replication nationwide.

Public School Enrollment Plummets, Private Schools See Gains

The nimble nature of private by comparison with public schools mean that, sadly, unequal access to quality education is increasing with the current pandemic.

The Queen’s Gambit TV series

We’ve been hearing great things about The Queen’s Gambit TV series. Along these lines James Haupert, Founder and CEO of the Center for Homeschooling, tells us:

“The Queen’s Gambit, season 1 on Netflix, is an extraordinary show.  It is set during the cold war era, about an orphaned chess prodigy Beth Harmon and her quest to become the greatest chess player in the world. While the plot is a little predictable, the sets and the clothing create a great “midcentury” (still getting used to that term) feel.

“What makes this show stand out is how they portray the chess matches. They do this in such an interesting way that even non-chess players find the action interesting, and understandable.  This show has created a great buzz about the world of chess among people who normally know nothing about it. I am amazed by how creative the productions are… I think it provides an inspiring example for all of us educators… This show proves it is possible, if done with imagination and with the audience in mind, to get people interested and excited about things they might not otherwise be interested in. Maybe there are some lessons we can extract from examining the production and storytelling that we can incorporate into our teaching?”

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

•  Get in early on the upcoming critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching!
• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Incredible Journey of Plants, by Stefano Mancuso. Have you ever wondered how avocados spread their seeds when their pits are so large? (Hint, when the mammoths died out, avocados almost did, too.) Or where the world’s most forlorn trees reside? Or what happened to the trees that survived the blast at Hiroshima? This oddly appealing book by neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso of the University of Florence (translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti), describes Mancuso’s unlikely admiration for invasive species and unusual plant survival-and-spread stories. 

As Mancuso notes: “One plant that truly has a terrible reputation in many parts of the world, and with all of the national and agencies involved in some way with invasive plants, is without a doubt the Eichhornia crassipes, or water hyacinth. Its rapid diffusion and its sovereign contempt for the vast majority of means with which humanity tries to fight it have combined to make it commonly considered the worst aquatic invasive species known to humanity. Furthermore, it has the dubious privilege of membership in the elite club of the ‘100 worst invasive species’ established by the Invasive Species Study Group… In short, deemed the vegetable personification of evil, it is hated by everyone. Without reservation. As you might imagine, it is exactly the kind of flora non grata that I find irresistible.” 

Gotta love such a contrarian, who also sagely observes that attempts to eradicate invasive species often simply make matters worse. Looking for a fun, yet nicely calming reading experience in today’s turbulent times? Settle back and enjoy!

Dan Pink’s Wonderful Masterclass on Sales and Persuasion

We are huge fans of Dan Pink’s books.  (See, for example, his recent Time: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.) So when Barb discovered that Dan’s Masterclass on Sales and Persuasion came out recently, she dropped everything to watch every video. It’s a wonderful class, chock full of clever strategies for everything from persuading a teenager to clean his unkempt room, to getting your boss to buy you a new computer system, to keeping yourself upbeat in the face of rejection and failure. Dan is a genuinely caring  instructor-persuader who epitomizes his own statement: “To be a good persuader, the best way to do that is to be a decent human being.”

Feel Free to Do a Good Deed for the Day 🙂

If you liked Learning How to Learn and the course textbook it was based on, A Mind for Numbers, feel free to upvote some of the positive reviews on Amazon. Several negative reviews have crept up to the front page—they were left, it seems, by people who have barely glanced at the book. (One review, for example, refers to Barb, the author, as a “he.”) Upvoting reviews you agree with, given your more thorough knowledge base, will help balance the perspectives with more informed insights.

Satirist Tom Lehrer has put his songs into the public domain

We’ve long been fans of Tom Lehrer, who taught at MIT while moonlighting to write bizarre, yet delightful songs such as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” and “The Masochism Tango.” His “New Math” skewered educational approaches that just made children’s learning more difficult.  As Lehrer notes:

“But in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you’re doing, rather than to get the right answer.” 

and

“…don’t panic! Base eight is just like base ten really – if you’re missing two fingers.”

Great news for all of us, Lehrer has put virtually his entire set of works into the public domain. Enjoy! [Hat tip: Pat Peterson.]

5 Reasons You Won’t Complete Your Online Course

This wonderful podcast by “Mother of Abundance” Xina Gooding Broderick gives an upbeat message about how to be successful in your online learning.  Agree or not with her approaches, Xina’s inspirational suggestions will help you towards success. Xina has a great deal of project management experience and is also a qualified funeral home director—she knows how to mitigate risks and coach us into a life with minimal regrets.

Discussing Concepts of the Book Breath

if you’re curious about any of the concepts mentioned in last week’s “Book of the Year” Breath, by James Nestor, and want to explore them with other LHTLer’s, come hang out in the forum! (Just update your session or go directly to the main discussion forum if you have trouble accessing the link.)

When it comes to breathing issues, you are not alone. Some members of our community are already working with Dr. Ted Belfor, the inventor of the Homeoblock device mentioned in the book, to breathe better. (And apologies, the author is James, not as mentioned last week, Mark, Nestor!)

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

• Get in early on the upcoming Uncommon Sense Teaching!
• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

ASEE Presents: Barb’s Synchronous Master Class On Effective Teaching

Barb and colleagues (and a special mystery guest!) will be doing the first live webinar presenting practical insights and ideas from their groundbreaking new book Uncommon Sense Teaching, (more info below 🙂 ) This workshop, on the afternoons of January 6, 7, and 8th, 2021, gives an unprecedented look at new insights from neuroscience that give you practical tools that can help your students learn more effectively.  Whether you are teaching at a university, in K-12, in business, in athletics, or you-name-it, you will find this workshop provides  a common framework, terminology, and practical exercises to develop your instruction on a soundly neuroscientific basis. Plus, you can finally interact with Barb live! As is her usual teaching practice, (even on Zoom), she’ll be coming early and staying late to answer questions. Space is limited, so reserve your seat now. 

Teacher’s Book of a Lifetime

Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn, by Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky, and Terrence Sejnowski.(Penguin Random House) Our master work for anyone involved in education is finally orderable! As a LHTLer, we know you like diving into learning. You’ll find this book is the first to give in-depth, yet practically useful insights for teachers, professors, trainers, coaches, parents and caregivers and lay readers to help guide their inclusive teaching and learning to diverse audiences—or simply to better understand the learning process. Overflowing with magnificent imagery, (some of which will leave you laughing) Uncommon Sense Teaching walks you through not only the how’s, but also the why’s of great teaching and great learning. For example, have you ever wondered why the explanations students (or adults) give you about their struggles with learning—or explanations about anything—sometimes don’t seem related to their real underlying motivations?  Wonder no more. As explained in this excerpt from Chapter 6:

“The procedural goal-directed system is where the declarative and procedural systems can work together. The declarative system (which you are aware of) ‘primes’ the procedural learning pump, but is not able to explain how the procedural system operates. (It’s a little like a child pushing ‘send’ on a text message without understanding how the message arrives at its destination.) All the mistakes and successes you make in learning how to drive shape your driving reflexes. You are perfectly conscious of your mistakes, but not about how they lead to smooth, automatic driving. This is why conscious control is slow and inefficient. Slowly, the procedural system takes over, and after a lot of repetition it becomes fluid and automatic.

“Incidentally, it’s not as if the interactions between the declarative and procedural systems are a one-way street. The conscious goals of the declarative system can be driven non-consciously by the basal ganglia procedural system. Procedural learning works by using a value function that it has built over many years of experience in dealing with complex, uncertain conditions in the world. The value function helps the procedural system to maximize future rewards. Rewards are typically innate (like food and water) or involve distant payoffs (like going to school).  If you ask someone why they made a decision, they can devise a story that has little to do with the procedural system’s value function. This is because the value function for procedural goal-based learning is as inaccessible to consciousness as the procedural habit-based value function for bike riding. Putting it bluntly, the declarative system is clueless when it comes to the procedural system.

“As a more specific example, when you meet someone for the first time, you have a ‘gut feeling’ about them.  Where did that come from? After all, you have never met them before. If you try to articulate your feelings, you will make up some story about their mannerisms or facial appearance, but the real reasons go back to how you have been brought up, as well as the many people you have met in your life and your outcomes interacting with them, even though you may have forgotten them. This is also why politics and religion can be such fraught topics. Inclinations in this area are driven in part by nonconscious motivations arising from the procedural system. This means that conscious, declarative discussion generally cannot get at the real motivations.”

Rave reviews about Uncommon Sense Teaching from top educators are already pouring in:

 “The authors bring to this highly practical, user-friendly book a deep understanding of teachers and classrooms, the implications of neuroscientific findings for successful teaching and learning, and the ability to write about complex ideas in an approachable way.”

     —Carol Ann Tomlinson, EdD, author of How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms

“Uncommon Sense Teaching is the first book I’ve found that perfectly blends neuroscience, cognitive psychology, learning strategies/theories, and practical tips for teachers into one delicious meal. Not too heavy on the neuro, not too light on the cognitive, large portions of learning and teaching implications served with a sauce of witty and accessible writing. If there were a Michelin Guide for education books, this one would receive a 3-star rating.”

     —Paul A. Kirschner, Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology, Open University of the Netherlands

“There are two reasons why everyone involved in education and training should read Uncommon Sense Teaching. First, the book integrates neuroscience, human cognition, and education into a coherent whole that is unique. Second, the writing is exceptionally clear, managing to convey complex ideas with infectious enthusiasm. The result is a masterpiece.”

     —John Sweller, Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology, University of New South Wales

A Favor for Barb and Terry

If you’d like to learn more about teaching learning (and also do Barb and Terry a big favor by pre-ordering the book), order your copy (and copies for friends!) of Uncommon Sense Teaching now.

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

• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Year!

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor. We’ve long had the feeling that breathing and breathing techniques are supremely important. Yet it’s been tough to find a solid scientifically-based book that gives a trustworthy overview of the subject—until James Nestor came along.  Nestor’s extraordinary willingness to not only make himself try out the various techniques and therapies he’s describing, but also to do in-depth scientific and historical research, and on top of that, to write with the grace and beauty of a Pulitzer Prize winner, are virtually unparalleled in popular literature. Who knew that a book on breath could be hard to put down—and so important?

You’ll learn why it’s important to keep your mouth closed whenever possible (it turns out you must use—or you’ll lose—the ability to breath through your nose). You’ll also discover why the human face has, in recent centuries, created breeding grounds for the sinus infections that frequently plague us—and how it is possible to widen our mouths and fix the crooked teeth and sinus problems caused by soft foods and well-meaning orthodontists. (Nestor makes the prescient point that old skulls meant to display the inadequacy of “non-civilized” peoples instead illustrate that civilization wreaks havoc on sinuses and teeth.) 

Discussions of the history of a subject are often disconnected from modern day findings, and thus more than a little boring. But in Nestor’s able hands, we’re able to see how the ancients’ abilities to, for example, stay warm even during the iciest of conditions informs our modern understanding of the impact of breath on the autonomic nervous system; and how, in the 1830s, artist George Catlin gained an uncanny understanding of Native American breathing techniques—knowledge that was sadly lost save for Catlin’s efforts to document it. We even get a surprisingly relevant visit to the catacombs of Paris.

The end of the book contains a helpful recapitulation of the most important techniques in the book (and more), along with links to relevant websites. This is the best book we’ve read all year—and one of our top ten ever.  Don’t miss it. (Also, this book is perfect for listening on Audible).

Barb Keynoting for the World Engineering Education Forum and the Global Engineering Deans Council (WEEF/GEDC) Virtual Conference

WEEF/GEDC, a conference for professors, academics, engineering educators, industry leaders, researchers, students and governmental organizations, is a uniquely designed virtual conference to be held from 16 – 19 November 2020. Barb’s keynote is titled “Active Learning: Those Words Do Not Mean What You Think They Mean.” She’ll be appearing at 9:30 AM Eastern time November 16. Conference registration is here.

Non-invasive Stimulation of the Vagus Nerve in Adults Enhances Language Learning

This fascinating article describes research involving stimulation of the vagus nerve to enhance some types of learning. Could it be that breathing techniques, which can stimulate or depress certain nervous systems, might someday be used to enhance learning or detect engagement?

Our Mind-Boggling Sense of Smell

Nautilus—one of our favorite science magazines that somehow keeps resurrecting from the dead—has published a wonderful article by Ann-Sophie Barwich that describes how research has inadvertently neglected the olfactory sense. This is especially un-good because the sense of smell is perhaps the one external sense most closely connected to the internal workings of the brain. [Hat tip: LHTL Lead Mentor Steven Cooke.]

Deep Neural Networks Help to Explain Living Brains

This explanatory article by Anil Ananthaswamy in Quanta Magazine provides the most elegant, readable description we’ve ever read about deep neural networks. This one is well worth your time, and also describes some of the deep neural network work on olfaction, which, as noted above, is still in its rudimentary stages.  

Olive Oil Tasting

Long time LHTLers know that we’re keen fans of well-made extra-virgin olive oil. (Our favorite book on olive oil, which we can’t help but mention again, is Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.)  We recently took  an online class-tasting on olive oil from our favorite olive oil company, and enjoyed the heck out of it.  If you’d like to try a new learning experience involving both smell and taste, we highly recommend expert taster Alexis Kerner’s Olive Oil Lovers tasting classes.

Launch of the World Wide Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar (WWTNS). 

WWTNS is a weekly digital seminar on Zoom targeting the theoretical neuroscience community. Speakers have the occasion to talk about theoretical aspects of their work which cannot be discussed in a setting where the majority of the audience consists of experimentalists. The seminars are 45 min long followed by a discussion and are held on Wednesdays at 5 pm in Western Europe, i.e., 11 am EST and 8 am PST.  The talks are recorded with authorization of the speaker and will be available to everybody on our YouTube channel. 

The first seminar will be on November, 4, 2020 at 8 am PST. The speaker will be Larry Abbott (Columbia University).  The title of his talk is:  Vector Addition in the Navigational Circuits of the Fly.

The abstract of the talk is available on the WWTNS website. To participate in the seminar you need to fill out a registration form, after which you will receive an email telling you how to connect.

Dutch Translation of Learning How to Learn

Many translators have helped with the Dutch and other language caption translations of Learning How to Learn. But Christiane Andries has taken on the task of finishing and finalizing a comprehensive set of translations for LHLT, which are now complete. As she notes: “I  hope it will help a number of students from the Dutch language community to take the course with success. From my experience in teaching information technology, I know that although most students have a basic knowledge of English, it is often not sufficient to study more complex subjects.” With Christiane’s help atop scores of other translators, Learning How to Learn is now even more accessible! 

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

• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!

• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents.

• Join Barb on LinkedIn