Author: barboakley

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

In A Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson. In years past, Barb has occasionally looked with concern at her husband as he would suddenly double over with a paroxysm of—well, she wasn’t sure what, but it didn’t seem healthy.  Gradually she came to learn that these paroxysms came about whenever her husband Phil was reading a Bill Bryson book. The laughter came so hard and heavy that he sometimes couldn’t breathe! Bryson is a master of doubling or tripling up on his humor. A story is funny at first. But then Bryson circles around later to hit it again from an unexpected angle. And then again.  The result is comedic depth that will swallow you whole.

Who could have ever guessed that a book about both the history and travel related to a country could be so funny? If there were a Nobel Prize for comedic travel-writing, Bryson would take the honor.  If you want to find a way to look in an upbeat way at the weird and wacky things that can happen during travel—or in life itself—you can do no better than to read Bill Bryson. This has just become our favorite travel and outlook-on-life book. Barb can assure you (despite the fact that she’s in Australia now), that you don’t actually need to be traveling to Australia to enjoy this great comedic, travel, and life classic.

Can People Learn Subjects Like How to Read As Adults?

This important paper—“Illiterate to literate: behavioural and cerebral changes induced by reading acquisition,” by Stanislas Dehaene and his colleagues, describes the changes in the brain that occur as a person learns to read.  Interestingly, even if a person learns to read as an adult, most of the same basic changes in the brain are observed, although there is some fascinating reorganization taking place in those who learn to read while they’re younger that doesn’t occur to the same degree in those who learn to read when they’re older.

How A Dance Book Relates to Online Learning

We can’t resist Pat Bowden’s (of the great blog Online Learning Success) review of the book Frou Frou to Fruition. Key grafs: “You don’t need to be a dancer to find this book useful. Written in a flowing, readable style, Frou Frou to Fruition incorporates a surprising amount of transferrable information. Although aimed at people involved in the dance industry, there are tips relevant to anyone trying to make a career as a performer, a teacher or a business owner. Kym Degenhart has done all three…

“Based on Kym’s own experiences as a dancer at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, and performing for other shows in various countries, the early chapters can help you define your own life goals, then set out to achieve them. Useful ways to deal with setbacks (unsuccessful auditions in this context) and how to cope with life in a foreign land are presented alongside Kym’s checklist for audition preparation. Many of these techniques can also help in other contexts. Think job interview instead of audition and you are on the right track.”

Abundance of information narrows our collective attention span

As this article notes: “The negative effects of social media and a hectic news cycle on our attention span has been an on-going discussion in recent years—but there’s been a lack of empirical data supporting claims of a ‘social acceleration’. A new study in Nature Communications finds that our collective attention span is indeed narrowing, and that this effect occurs – not only on social media – but also across diverse domains including books, web searches, movie popularity, and more.” The graph at the beginning of the article says it all.

Learning by Teaching

This article re-emphasizes the value of learning through teaching.  But of course, we already knew that from the research we cited several weeks ago that revealed the value of teaching appears to involve its use of retrieval practice. 🙂 [Hat tip: Tom Pinit.]

Playful Learning

This article from the Brookings Institution evaluates “playful learning” approaches around the world.  There’s a multitude of ideas here, but see the key graf: “Though the methods of evaluation used may vary, it is crucial that the intervention assessed is related to the stated objectives, rather than simply providing information on activities undertaken. Few playful learning innovations in the catalog have made their evaluation results and data publicly available—just 202 (11 percent) have publicly available data on their external evaluations… In addition, only 633 (33 percent) [of] innovations have shared data on cost or cost-effectiveness. Making evaluation and cost-effectiveness data widely available is a crucial step in the formation of a knowledge base on innovations in education and will provide immense support to interventions seeking to scale up their operations. [Hat tip Enrique Planells.]

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Education of Eva Moskowitz: A Memoir, by Eva Moskowitz.  What a wonderful and eye-opening book about the educational system! Eva Moskowitz is a take-no-prisoners, never-blink pioneer in the K-12 sector. A lifelong Democrat, Moskowitz understands politics through her participation at a variety of levels. She came to the conclusion that education was the place where her natural talents could have the biggest impact, because it was most in need of reform. If you want to truly understand the pernicious effects that American education-related unions have had on students’ access to quality education, read this book. Moskowitz names names of the cabal of successfully sinister leaders who have succeeded in harming children and wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars through subterfuge and intimidation, all under the guise of helping children.

Unions can do important and valuable work, but if you think unions and their leaders are always good, you might read  I Heard You Paint Houses, about the Teamsters and their notoriously “disappeared” leader Jimmy Hoffa. Incidentally, in Barb’s experience, teachers unions in other countries can be far more common-sense supportive of students themselves, instead of just teachers.

Moskowitz’s book also shows how one should take newspaper reporting on education by ideologically, rather than factually, motivated journalists with a boatload of salt. With people like Moskowitz involved, there’s hope for the disadvantaged students most in need of a sound education. [Hat tip, Roman Hardgrave.]

Three habits of good learners

As this explanation and video snippet about learning by Barb, Terry, and Greg reveal, good learners have a few particularly useful habits. This comes via the Times Educational Supplement—one of Britain’s best educational publications.

Are You In Alice Springs, Australia?

If you are in Alice Springs, and you’d like to join Barb for dinner at 6:00 pm today (May 10th), please drop her an email at oakley@oakland.edu.

With Flip of a Giant Ceremonial Switch, CMU Starts Effort to Energize ‘Learning Engineering’

As Jeff Young describes in this EdSurge article, Carnegie Mellon University is making $100 million dollar software freely available to help professors to improve their teaching. “The idea is that each semester, professors will create hypotheses for what might lead to better learning in their courses, adapt their course materials to try to achieve that result, monitor student behavior to see if it worked, and then analyze the results and make adjustments based on what happened.”

The Case for Doing Nothing

Yes, as this New York Times article by Olga Mecking notes, it’s healthy to sit around doing nothing sometimes, letting the diffuse mode reign.  (As Barb writes this, she’s pausing for minutes at a time to glance around the Sydney airport, soak in the Australian accents, and enjoy her coffee.) [Hat tip, Joe Muskatel.]

Flowtime—an alternative to the Pomodoro

Barb never has a problem with the alarm of the Pomodoro Technique disrupting her work. This is because she turns her computer sound off, so the timer goes off, and if Barb is in the flow, she can just keep going. But there are other methods people use to overcome the problem of the timer sound breaking the flow. Here, for example, is a discussion of Zoë Read-Bivens’ Flowtime Technique—an alternative to the Pomodoro Technique for people who dislike Pomodoro’s alarms, as well as other related methods. [Hat tip: Rafa Mayer]

An Inspirational Message from a LHTLer

“Learning How to Learn is the most meaningful course I have ever taken. It gave me a new, powerful, mental tool.

“I decided to take the course for three main reasons. First, I wanted to know how to study more efficiently. I was feeling utterly exhausted after having taken a series of accounting classes. I had been studying all day long every day to get A’s. Second, I wanted to better retain what I learn. Sometimes I would forget details presented early in a course by the time I took the final exam. Lastly, I wanted to keep a good balance between study and life. I had sacrificed or minimized my interaction with my family and friends. Learning should be fun.

“I learned three things through this course that can help me study efficiently, effectively and with less frustration. Number one is that I learned how to utilize my brain. Our brains are amazing. They are working constantly even we are sleeping. Next, I learned how important to visualize the concept by using metaphors or analogies, and explain it to myself and others. That helps strengthen and internalize what I learned. Finally, I learned that we can change our lives by changing our thoughts. Our brains will continue to grow when we try to learn something new.

“During my next accounting course, I will try to listen to the stories the numbers are trying to tell me like a forensics accountant who can look beyond the numbers and uncover the facts. Also, I will do better at finding classmates who can work together.

“One last thing; I will keep learning. No matter how great the new mind tool is, it will rust if I don’t use it.”

—Chizu Kobayashi

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield. This short book reframes your creative work, whatever that might be, as war. The battle goes to the most cunning! Pressman has the street cred to write a book of this sort—it took him 17 years of writing to get his first paycheck, but his debut novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, became the film directed by Robert Redford and starring Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron. Pressfield graduated from Duke, and has been a U.S. Marine, an advertising copywriter, schoolteacher, tractor-trailer driver, bartender, oilfield roustabout, attendant in a mental hospital and screenwriter. He’s our kind of guy, in other words. This is also a good book for audio. (Two free audiobooks may be possible through this link.)

Rein in the Four Horsemen of Irreproducibility in Scientific Research

This outstanding essay by Dorothy Bishop in Nature describes the most common problems in scientific research: “…many researchers persist in working in a way almost guaranteed not to deliver meaningful results. They ride with what I refer to as the four horsemen of the reproducibility apocalypse: publication bias, low statistical power, P-value hacking and HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known). My generation and the one before us have done little to rein these in.”

Barb on New Zealand Television

Catch a quick vignette of Barb on “The AM Show” in Auckland, New Zealand.  Duncan needed encouragement, and Barb provides! To her surprise, the conversation about learning veered unexpectedly into pathologies of altruism.

Tips for the Test

As this explanation and video snippet about learning by Barb, Terry, and Greg reveal, “Techniques such as the ‘hard start’ can be transformative for students.” This comes via the Times Educational Supplement—one of Britain’s best educational publications.

Good News for Older Folks from Research

This interesting article from The Scientist reveals “Using very strict protocols to preserve and process the brain tissue samples, Llorens-Martín and her colleagues identified thousands of immature neurons in the dentate gyrus—a part of the hippocampus related to memory-making—in neurologically healthy humans, even when they are in their eighties. ‘It is another strong piece of evidence that indeed there is adult neurogenesis in older people,’ Zhao says.

A Shout-Out to Your Favorite Coursera Instructors—and Mindshift Makes Course of the Week!

If you’d like, give a shout-out to your favorite Coursera instructors.  This is also a great site to visit to get ideas for the next MOOC you’d like to take.

AND our Mindshift MOOC makes the Coursera Community Course of the Week! If you haven’t taken Mindshift yet, you’re in for a treat!

Learn More about the Coursera Community

Pat Bowden of Online Learning Success is always full of insight into the world of MOOCs. Her post on the Coursera Community site is useful for anyone who loves Coursera MOOCs.

Trying to Learn Russian?

We’re fans of Olly Richards’ approaches to language learning. Olly has just published a wonderful compendium of advice for learning Russian. As Olly notes: “Russia is a major political and economic player in the world. It has a rich history dating back to Rus’, or Ruthenia, in the 11th century. Especially in recent years, the country has featured in the news often for a number of reasons.

“And yet, there seems to be a lack of interest in the West to truly understand Russia, its people, and its culture. People seem to confuse the politics of the country with its spirit. Learning Russian can help you get past this and uncover the “real” Russia for yourself.

“But of course, Russian is not only spoken in Russia. It is the official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. It is widely spoken in the Baltics, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.”

Check out Olly’s great article! Having recently been in Azerbaijan, Barb vouches for the fact that a little Russian can go a long way in former Soviet bloc countries. (Coming up this fall, Barb heads to Kazakhstan!)

Grappling with New Ways to Tackle Completion Rates

Several weeks ago, we mentioned the challenge of completion of both books and MOOCs.  Reader Francis Miller has blogged about this problem, at least in relation to books. He suggests providing “multiple levels of content so, if learners are only to spend, say, an hour on a MOOC or book, they are able to get a summary of the whole picture rather than all the detail of a small part of it.” Francis notes: “Christopher Alexander, the well-known architectural thinker, attempted to do this in his 1979 book The Timeless Way of Building where he has italicized text passages at the beginning, end and throughout each chapter in order to help readers get an overview of the ideas in the book.

Francis has written more about Christopher Alexander’s approach here.  Francis notes: “I don’t think Alexander’s solution is necessarily the most effective as it’s relatively hard work turning all the 549 pages in order to read his italicized passages! If you’re interested in alternative approaches to multi-level content, I’ve written about them here.”

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

We greatly enjoyed the book Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine by Barry Strauss. We’ve long been interested in the Roman empire, and it was a lot of fun romping through Strauss’s explanation of the Game-of-Thrones-like atmosphere that permeated the shenanigans of the various regimes.  By focusing on ten of Rome’s most important rulers, Strauss cuts through the dizzying array of lesser figures who were perpetually offing one another, to instead give us a feel for the men and behind-the-scenes women who shaped history. Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine—you may have heard the names, but Ten Caesars will help flesh them out and connect the dots between, so you can better understand an ancient world that, in surprising ways, held similarities to our own.

Learning by teaching others is extremely effective—a new study tested a key reason why

This important article in Research Digest provides insight into a question that’s bedeviled teachers over the years—why is teaching others such an effective strategy for learning?  Here are the key grafs:

“The critical finding is that the teaching-without-notes group outperformed the group that had spent the same time completing arithmetic problems and the group that had taught from a script, but so too did the group who simply spent the same time retrieving what they’d learned. In fact, the final comprehension performance of the teaching-without-notes group and the retrieval-practice group was comparable.

“The researchers said their results suggest that ‘the benefits of the learning-by-teaching strategy are attributable to retrieval practice; that is, the robust learning-by-teaching strategy works but only when the teaching involves retrieving the taught materials.’

“The new findings don’t undermine the notion of teaching as an effect learning method, but they have practical implications for how the learning-by-teaching approach is applied in education and training. ‘In order to insure that students and tutors learn and retain the educational material that they have prepared and presented in class, they ought to internalize the to-be-presented material prior to communicating it to an audience, rather than rely on study notes during the presentation process,’ the researchers said.”

Learning the NATO Phonetic Alphabet System—and getting practice with memory images

Barb learned the NATO Phonetic Alphabet 35 years ago in Army boot camp, and she’s been surprised at how often it’s come in handy since then. The alphabet makes it much faster and easier to spell words out for people over the phone. Here’s 4-time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis with a delightful video to help you quickly master this simple system. What’s particularly nice about this video is it gives you a good sense of how Nelson is able to quickly devise his memory tools. Nelson’s approaches will help speed your own memory tool making.

More news about how exercise enhances our ability to learn

Blood platelets have long been thought to be too busy clotting blood and diddling with the immune system to be involved in much of anything else.  But it turns out these rascals have other tricks up their tiny little protein-laden sleeves—tricks that can improve our ability to learn and remember. In this article in The Scientist, neurogenesis expert Vince Topepe notes: ““We all know about the positive effect of exercise on the brain and other organ systems, but what the actual mechanism is to promote new neuron production is still a bit of a mystery…This [research] is quite interesting in that they’ve identified a player—these platelets and platelet-derived factors that are circulating in the blood after exercise—that might be a mediator of this effect.”

Avoiding mental overload

As Barb, Terry, and Greg reveal in this video snippet, and the accompanying article—if we are to learn effectively, we need to guard against situations (like tests!) where we’re trying to put together too much unfamiliar information at once.

FDA OKs first medical device to treat ADHD in children

This intriguing new approach to treating ADHD merits attention despite its potential drawbacks.  “Designated for children ages 7 to 12 who are not currently on medication for the disorder, the device delivers a low-level electrical pulse to the parts of the brain responsible for ADHD symptoms.”

Brain zaps boost memory in people over 60

Another study has revealed that “Zapping the brains of people over 60 with a mild electrical current improved a form of memory enough that they performed like people in their 20s.” The current allowed the prefrontal cortex and the left temporal cortex to fall more easily back into a matching pattern. As researcher Robert Reinhart observed: “The results provided new evidence that a breakdown in that communication causes the loss of working memory with age.”

We just want a version of the device that we can plop onto our head when we’re sipping coffee in the morning to help jump-start us even faster.

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week

In the past few months, we dipped back and forth between two completely different books about local history—one book centering on the Caucasus, and the other set in the Dakotas.

• Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, by Thomas de Waal. What a revelation to find a book that can even-handedly parse one of the most gut-wrenching wars of the late 20th century. De Waal doesn’t take the easy way out in his conclusions about the cause of this disastrous, still-unresolved conflict, which could set the spark for future world war. This book about an important, but often neglected, area of the world is well-worth reading.
• Dakota: The Story of the Northern Plains, by Norman K. Risjord  We’re guessing that, unless you live in North or South Dakota, that you haven’t necessarily had a yen to discover the history of that area.  But you’re missing a treat with this book’s perspective on a little-known, sparsely populated area of the US. Risjord’s “big picture” perspective starts with the geology of the Dakotas, which leads to the earliest traces and growing presence of Native Americans in the area. Onwards the narrative goes to the French and American expeditions, revealing the area’s connection with Canada. As with elsewhere in the US, governmental intervention was devastating for the Native American tribes of the Dakotas—Risjord lays out the blatant scheming and corruption, which carried through to the Swedish and other immigrants.  An insightful look at the history of one of the most beautiful, but less-often-visited, areas in the US.

An Effortless Way to Improve Your Memory

This outstanding article in BBC Future summarizes recent research findings that reveal doing nothing at all for a brief period after initially learning something can help memory processes to better assimilate the material. (See also “Brief wakeful resting boosts new memories over the long term,” and “Enhanced Brain Correlations during Rest Are Related to Memory for Recent Experiences.”)

Could this be related to why cooperative learning techniques, where instructors ask students to work in groups to grapple with material that’s just been taught, can be helpful?  Those with higher working memory capacity can usually follow right along with the lecture, and then lead the group’s conversation during the group discussion. Those with lower capacity working memory can follow along with the group’s discussion, but not focus as intently on the conversation, which might allow their hippocampi to go to work processing the information and offloading their hippocampal buffers. Incidentally, there is some evidence that the more time you spend focusing, the more you may suppress the default mode network, and thus may suppress consolidation—that is, making sense of and creating memories related to the material.

Intriguing stuff, all of this—it will be fascinating to see what future research will reveal!

Procrastination Makes The New York Times

Here’s an interesting article about procrastination by the Charlotte Lieberman in the New York Times. But all of the experts Lieberman interviews avoid mention of the Pomodoro Technique, a favorite of LHTLers. Perhaps that’s what happens when a powerful mental tool is so simple, and is developed by a design consultant with a masters degree like Francesco Cirillo, instead of by a prominent psychologist, business professor, or New York Times best-selling author. (Academics, much like lawyers, can sometimes have incentives to “complexify” matters.) Cirillo’s simple technique makes use of some of the best of what we’re finding from neuroscience—such as, as noted in the above paragraph, researchers have found that taking brief periods of rest helps the brain to consolidate the material. And of course, knowing you’re going to get a reward at the end of your period of focus, as with the Pomodoro technique, is a powerful incentive.

Slow learning can be better learning

As this explanation and video snippet about learning by Barb, Terry, and Greg reveal, “Those with poorer working memories can actually be at an advantage.” This is via the Times Educational Supplement—one of Britain’s best educational publications.

An optimal way to structure your workday

We like this article by Dr. Travis Bradberry that talks about how to structure your workday. There’s a bit of misleading implication that an 8-hour approach is wrong-headed, but the reality is, even extended, 8 hour days can be very productive if they are broken up between periods of intense focus and more “diffuse mode” type breaks. [Hat tip Kyle Marcroft]

Zimbabwe and Hyperinflation: Who Wants to Be a Trillionaire?

If you want to see some great editing of educational video—not to mention some very intriguing subject-matter, you’ll enjoy MRU’s short video on the causes of hyperinflation. Check out the course itself. Who knew macroeconomics could be so fun?

Moments in Great Teaching

If you want to see great teaching in action, watch this three-minute video of Anant Agarwal teaching an electronic circuits class.  We’ve never seen a cooler use for a chainsaw. Want to learn circuits themselves? You couldn’t do better than to check out EdX’s Circuits and Electronics 1: Basic Circuit Analysis.

The Essential Ingredient for a ‘Deep Education’

This wonderful article by Shannon Watkins at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal describes the deep friendship between Harvard University philosopher Cornel West and Princeton philosopher Robert P. George. The two hold vastly different political beliefs while maintaining their strong friendship—a fantastic example for today’s society.

Schools Need to Teach Kids How Not to Be Offended, Educator Pleads

This short article about describes the work of educator Irshad Manji. Key grafs: “Discussions about what is and isn’t ‘politically correct’ have dominated social media in recent years, but Manji believes ‘giving offense is the price of diversity, not an impediment to diversity.’”

“This is why she suggests schools should teach the next generation of adults — who will undoubtedly be debating politics and other polarizing issues — how not to feel insulted when faced with differing viewpoints.”

How to Remember Coursework

This insightful essay by Pat Bowden of Online Learning Success provides a handy checklist of ways to ensure the MOOCs and courses you take stick in your long term memory.

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, by Cal Newport. We have to start out with an admission of bias—we have always loved everything Cal Newport has ever written. (Cal’s most recent book before Digital Minimalism, Deep Work, is one of the best books on improving productivity we’ve ever read.) In Digital Minimalism, you will find that Newport has become today’s Thoreau, whose cogent observations give us much insight into how to live happier lives.  Plus, Cal’s a wonderful writer—witness this gem: “Earlier, I cited extensive research that supports the claim that the human brain has evolved to process the flood of information generated by face-to-face interactions.  To replace this rich flow with a single bit [the “Like” button] is the ultimate insult to our social processing machinery. To say it’s like driving a Ferrari under the speed limit is an understatement; the better simile is towing a Ferrari behind a mule.”  Highly recommended. (An excellent book for audio: Two free audiobooks may be possible through this link.)

Why taking a few moments of “quiet waking rest” is so valuable

This excellent recent review article in Trends in Cognitive Neurosciences, “Memory consolidation during waking rest,” gives further insight into why taking breaks is so important. One key graf (among many): “Recent studies demonstrate that experimentally introducing brief periods of quiet waking rest following learning benefits memory, in comparison to equivalent periods of time spent engaged in sensorimotor or cognitive tasks.” And here’s an excellent related essay by researcher Mattias Björnmalm in Science “In academia, hard work is expected—but taking a break is effort well spent, too.”

A Nice Article—with Video!—On the Value of the Attentional Octopus in Learning

This neat article and video describe our metaphorical methods of teaching about the value of the attentional octopus in learning.  (And you can also enjoy our full Coursera course!)

How to Do a Pomodoro Session

Here’s another wonderfully innovative video by 4-time US memory champion Nelson Dellis. This is nothing mind-boggling, which is part of its charm. You’ll simply see a video of Nelson studying (memory training) for a single 25-minute Pomodoro session. The idea is for you to play the video and study whatever you need to study while sitting beside Nelson. We must say, studying with a role model and online friend like Nelson is a great way to motivate yourself.  Incidentally, Nelson uses the same earphones to those that Barb uses. But when Barb’s really focusing, she uses even more heavy duty earphones. (Yes, really—here she is working happily away while looking like a nerd at an airport.)

A podcast with New Zealand star broadcaster Kathryn Ryan

Barb was fortunate enough to have a conversation with the brilliant interviewer Kathryn Ryan on New Zealand’s radio show From Nine to Noon in relation to her upcoming talk for the New Zealand Initiative-University of Auckland on May 1. Barb did the interview while she was at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto. Can you hear the restaurant clanking in the background?

Fascinating Results Regarding Socioeconomic Factors in Schools

These fascinating results from the New Zealand Initiative show the results of analyzing school performance by separating out family circumstance.  This is important to do because parents often go through a great deal of trouble to send their children to a “better” school, when actually, the school they are near may do just as well for their child.  

As NewsNow reports:

“The new study…looked at 400,000 students…through the past decade and “statistically adjusts for all of the different family circumstances”, including their parents’ education, income, employment and benefits history, and reports from Child, Youth and Family…

“We’re always beating up on decile one schools with a big stick because they don’t do quite as well [in analyses] but they are performing – a lot of them – admirably, given the circumstances they face.

“We need to have information like this going down to every parent so we stop having parents have their kids walk past the local school to the higher-decile school because they see these [analyses].”

See also these articles from RNZ (which highlights the travesty of parents being unable to discover data about their local schools), Newshub (a nice overview with statistics), a podcast from RNZ, and a brief overview from Education Central.

The Creeping Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education

This insightful, much-talked-about article by Kevin Carey in Huffpost provides an insightful view of how universities are increasing using for-profit institutions to increase their bottom lines via online programs, without a thought for student costs and debt. As Carey describes, Georgia Tech stands virtually alone in in providing at-cost (less than $7K USD for a masters degree!), high quality online educations. At Georgia Tech, a visionary dean, Zvi Galil teamed with Sebastian Thrun to change students’ future.  Why are so few other university administrators—who often tout their ostensible caring for students—willing to do the same?

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain, by Dr. Steven R Gundry M.D. We stumbled across this book several weeks ago, when we were reading some of the other books on neuronutrition. That this is a “most read” book on Amazon, with over 2,000 mostly 5-star reviews, gave us the idea that there might be something interesting going on.  And was there ever! As it turns out, there are highly toxic, plant-based proteins called lectins that are found (as the book description notes) “not only in grains like wheat but also in the ‘gluten-free’ foods most of us commonly regard as healthy, including many fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and conventional dairy products. These proteins, which are found in the seeds, grains, skins, rinds, and leaves of plants, are designed by nature to protect them from predators (including humans). Once ingested, they incite a kind of chemical warfare in our bodies, causing inflammatory reactions that can lead to weight gain and serious health conditions.” The Plant Paradox is well worth reading, not least because it also explains why genetically modified foods are not necessarily as innocuous as they might seem.  (The Europeans may be quite right to look at American food products with a jaundiced eye.) We were also surprised to learn why Spanish, French,  and Italian milk and cheese don’t seem to provoke the same allergic reaction as their American equivalents—something Barb has frequently observed in her visits to Europe.  Truly a provocative thesis and book.

Introduction to Steven Cooke, the New Lead Mentor for the English Language LHTL

We have a very special community here in Learning How to Learn.  The record-breaking popularity of the course requires a large volunteer support commitment from many different people as Mentors.  As volunteers we know that it is a love for the topic and a joy for learning and helping others to learn better that keeps them all involved.  Similarly, it means that there is a constant movement of Mentors for various personal and professional reasons. Our Mentors guide students to a better understanding of the course, and they in turn receive guidance and support from both the Teaching Staff and the Lead Mentors.

Current changes in some situations have prompted a “Changing of the Guard” of the Lead Mentor for our English language version of the course.  I’d like to introduce you to a long-time LHTL Mentor and avid continuous learner, Steven Cooke. Steven first took LHTL in 2014 – he joined us as a mentor in 2015.  Steven’s background helps lend insight to his responses on the forums: he is the Founder and Principal of Process Systems Consulting, a small, hard-working consulting firm now based in the Philippines. Steven has an extraordinary 40 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, including risk assessment, quality management, process design, analytical specifications, process analysis and control, and gas purification.  He is also an online chemistry instructor for Thomas Edison State College (Trenton, NJ).

He has an extensive background in many different volunteer organizations, both professional and charitable.  His key interest is in enabling others to do better – whether clients, students, or in his local community. I hope that you will all join me in welcoming him to this new assignment, and support him with your involvement in the Forums and Course Discussions as he will be communicating with you through those venues.  Keep an eye out for Steven’s friendly, informative posts on the forums!

Updates on Barb’s Upcoming Talks in Australia and New Zealand

• University of Auckland, 6:00 pm May 1, (co-sponsored by the New Zealand Initiative). Register here.
• Macquarie University, Sydney, May 6th, information to come.
• University of Technology Sydney, 1:30-3:00, May 7th.  Further information here.  
• University of Western Australia in Perth, May 12th, a series of private talks for university instructors, administrators, and staff. 
• Queensland Secondary School Principal’s Association Conference on May 24 in Brisbane.

(And she’ll also be in Alice Springs and Cairns, but mostly just dilly-dallying and having fun!)

A study of whether the use of the MOOC Learning How to Learn affects students’ learning

Here is the abstract of a phenomenally interesting (from our perspective!) study by Beate Luo at Feng Chia University in Taichung, Taiwan. Beate’s paper, “The influence of teaching learning techniques on students’ long-term learning behavior,” in the journal Computer Assisted Language Learning, shows the significant influence of using the MOOC Learning How to Learn, coupled with face-to-face interventions, in improving student behavior with regards learning.   Analyses of students’ questionnaires before the intervention and at the end of the second semester, observations of students’ study behavior during the second semester, and students’ academic performances during the two semesters were collected. At the end of the study period, students of the experimental group reported cramming less, using more learning techniques, redoing exercises with answers covered, and spacing repetitions more often instead of massing. Students’ online study behavior verified their answers to the questionnaire and showed a more efficient use of the learning platforms. Students also benefited from this intervention by scoring higher in the final [language] proficiency test of the second semester.”

We strongly encourage more study involving the effectiveness of Learning How to Learn to enhance the study of various subjects.

Навчитися вчитися: Барбара Оклі про хорошу прокрастинацію та улюблену навчальну методику

Here is an in-depth interview with Barb in Detoks Zhyttya in Ukrainian: Навчитися вчитися.

Barbara Oakley: “Los niños no sólo deben hacer aquello que les resulte más fácil”

And here’s another interview with Barb, this one in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

Updates on OpenClassrooms

Barb was lucky enough to visit and speak at OpenClassrooms in Paris several months ago, and she’s been observing them with keen interest ever since. Several days ago, OpenClassrooms announced a new strategic partnership with Microsoft. They are launching an online master’s program on AI, to train 1,000+ AI engineers worldwide.  Recently, OpenClassrooms has grown their team to encompass 170 staff and 1,000+ mentors/coaches, with students in 140+ countries, placing 50 to 100 students in the workforce every week.

OpenClassroom’s online apprenticeship programs now involve hundreds of employers, including Uber, Deliveroo, Capgemini, BNP and others. OpenClassrooms is also involved in governmentally sponsored reskilling programs to train and place jobseekers. For example, they have launched a partnership with Andela in Africa, and a large program called LevelUp with Google, Uber and other platforms to train gig workers on digital and business skills.

Last but not least, OpenClassrooms is working on degree accreditation. As a fully-accredited academic institution with degree-awarding powers in France, they are replicating this in the US and UK. Much excitement is afoot when it comes to OpenClassrooms!

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.  Skloot spent ten years unearthing the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor—and consequently poorly educated—black woman who had pieces of her cervical cancer tumor taken without her consent.  Those cells lived on, and on, and on, spawning a multi-billion dollar industry. The cells’ insidious ability to contaminate wreaked havoc on thousands of seemingly impeccable studies, even as they also helped spur fantastic new scientific insights. The real story involves Henrietta Lacks herself—how she lived, how she died, and what effect the seemingly immortal life of her cells has had on her family. The value of a good education—and what happens when such an education is not available, is an underlying theme of Skloot’s magnificent book. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a #1 New York Times best-seller, has an amazing near 15,000 5-star reviews on Amazon. It has become one of our all-time favorite books of science.

How the Poor Are Left to Struggle at Elite Universities

You have probably heard of the recent Justice Department charges involving 50 people who used elaborate schemes to purchase spots in some of the country’s top universities. This insightful article in The Atlantic goes behind the scenes to give a more general sense of the problems that the disadvantaged experience at these high-brow institutions: “Elite Colleges Constantly Tell Low-Income Students That They Do Not Belong: Unwritten rules underlie all of elite-university life—and students who don’t come from a wealthy background have a hard time navigating them.”

A Great Video Review of Our Book Learning How to Learn

Here’s a wonderful and insightful video review by memory maven Anthony Metivier of our book Learning How to Learn. We agree with Anthony—the book is helpful for anyone, not just youngsters, who wants to learn more efficiently. (And Anthony’s right in that the “memory palace” for language study was sparked by Anthony’s own work—subscribe to his great memory YouTube channel, here.)

Barb in Valencia Spain, New Zealand, Australia, Toronto, and San Diego (ASU-GSV)

• Barb will be back  in Valencia, Spain speaking for ESIC at the IMAT conference on Monday, April 1st at the extraordinarily beautiful Hotel Balneario Las Arenas in Valencia. She’d love to meet you there!
• Toronto, April 7 at the American Educational Research Association Conference. Ken-Zen Chen will be presenting on his and Barb’s work in “Redeveloping a MOOC to Be More Culturally Relevant: A Design-Based Approach.” Ken-Zen will be covering how the Learning How to Learn MOOC was creatively expanded into a new Chinese syncretic MOOC, “The Tao of Learning.” If you’re interested in developing a version of Learning How to Learn (or other courses) in your own native language, this presentation will give you lots of ideas.  Barb will be watching happily from the audience, so if you are at AERA, feel free to attend and sit beside her!
• Barb will be in New Zealand in latter April, visiting Akaroa, where she and her hero husband Phil were married 35 years ago, when they got off the ice of Antarctica.  She’ll also be keynoting in May at the Queensland Secondary School Principal’s Association Conference in Brisbane, and giving talks at UTS and Macquarie in Sydney, and the University of Western Australia in Perth. Keep an eye out for details!

Don’t forget, Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda (who Barb very much admires), and Barb will be having a fireside chat together at ASU-GSV in San Diego from 10:45AM-11:25 AM on April 10th.

A Cool New Use for Artificial Intelligence—Proving Hipsters are Different in the Same Way

We couldn’t help but get a kick out of this article on research results from artificial intelligence, which starts out: “You can spot a nonconformist a mile away. Because they all look alike. Just ask mathematician Jonathan Touboul, an associate professor at Brandeis University…”

In fact, one hipster accused Brandeis of using a picture of him without his permission to describe the research work. This just proved Touboul’s point that hipsters can look so much alike that even they can’t tell themselves apart.

Reading vs. Listening: Does It Matter?

This insightful television interview with Barb’s colleague, researcher Beth Rogowsky, relates whether reading or listening is better if you want to retain the material.

How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math

Barb’s article on rewiring her brain to become successful at math and analytical topics has become one of the most saved, read, shared articles on Pocket.

Math Formulas—Should You Memorize Them?

Here’s a wonderful, timeless article by Murray Bourne on understanding math formulas. Should you memorize them? Read the article and you’ll find 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

• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week

In keeping with the Quillette article below, we did some background reading this week into dysfunctional people and school environments. School environments (and people!) in many parts of the US are admirable, but even supposedly well-to-do environments can have problems if administrators turn a blind eye to bullying. The seeds for bullying are fertilized when any group is privileged above others.

• A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy. by Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two Columbine High School mass murderers.  We weren’t sure what to expect when we picked this book up, but we sure weren’t expecting this sensitively-written, insightful book the ways that even the best of parenting can unintentionally go deeply astray, if only in missing subtle warning signs. An eye-opener was Sue’s admission that if she could go back and do it over, she’d not hesitate to have intruded and read her son’s diaries.  Sue understandably doesn’t want to place blame on anyone or anything else, but clearly, a poisonous atmosphere that tolerated and even encouraged bullying was an important factor in the horrific events that took place. All author profits from the book are donated to research and to charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues.
• No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine High School, by Brooks Brown and Rob Merritt. Brooks Brown was one of Dylan Klebold’s closest friends since elementary school, and he was alternately a friend and enemy of Eric Harris, the other Columbine High School killer. Like Klebold and Harris, Brown was an alienated teen who saw the dark side of the bullying and factionalism at Columbine. Brown’s efforts to alert police prior to the massacre resulted in the local police to do everything they could to smear Brown’s reputation, the better to hide their own malfeasance. A shocking look at how administrators at Columbine, through their one-sided “justice,” encouraged Columbine’s poisonous atmosphere. A quick read and an eye-opening book about how laissez-faire policies underpin sadly simmering rage.

Public Education’s Dirty Secret

This “must-read” essay in Quillette by Mary Hudson makes explicit the disastrous effects of poor administrative and educational policy. The article begins: “Bad teaching is a common explanation given for the disastrously inadequate public education received by America’s most vulnerable populations. This is a myth. Aside from a few lemons who were notable for their rarity, the majority of teachers I worked with for nine years in New York City’s public school system were dedicated, talented professionals. Before joining the system I was mystified by the schools’ abysmal results. I too assumed there must be something wrong with the teaching. This could not have been farther from the truth.”

In this case, it is clear that those making laws have little idea of the power of negative emotional contagion, as is the case when problematic students are allowed to not only disrupt teaching, but to continuously force their own negative attitudes on students around them. Read the whole thing.

A Great “Tiny Tip” to Help You Achieve Your Goals

As you’ve probably noticed, we’re major fans of the videos of 4-Time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis. Here’s another great two-minute video by Nelson—this one will help ensure you’re on track with your goals.  (Oh yes, and Nelson’s infant son is one of the most adorable video props evuh.)

Barb’s Conversation with The Medical Mnemonist Chase DiMarco, (An InsideTheBoards Podcast)

Medical students have some of the most prodigious tasks in all of the learning world. Their day-to-day learning is like trying to drink water from a firehose. Although Chase DiMarco aims his podcast towards those in medical school, the reality is that most learners can benefit from the kinds of insights Chase’s podcast provides.  Enjoy this episode here.

How Many Public Universities Can ‘Go Big’ Online?

This Inside Higher Ed article describes the many public university systems and state flagships that are planning ambitious online endeavors. Paul LeBlanc, president of prominent online institution Southern New Hampshire, notes: “Take a look at who has been able to successfully scale online,” he says, citing his own institution (where the online operation was purposefully fenced off from the rest of a then-struggling university)…”There is no example where the integrated model has worked for getting any kind of scale. If you have to integrate, you will consume and kill the new thing.”

Think Tanks—How Do You Figure Out Who Is Credible?

This excellent, dispassionate article by Andrea Baertl Helguero in Medium gives a fine overview of how to figure out the credibility of a given think tank. [Hat tip: Enrique Planells Artigot]

How many colleges and universities have closed since 2016?

This informative article runs through the list of the many closures, acquisitions, and consolidations of higher education institutions since 2016, separated out by categories such as for profits, small liberal arts colleges, and major public colleges. The small listing of expansions at the end of the article gives hints about where higher education may be heading, although they missed many of the new MOOC-based programs noted here.

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Last week’s mention of Queen Victoria’s status as a carrier for the gene for hemophilia brought to mind what we believe to be one of the greatest biographies ever: Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, by Robert Massie.  Massie first became interested in the Russian imperial family because Massie’s own son was born with hemophilia. This gives Massie’s book an extraordinarily sensitive understanding of the tsarevitch’s hidden illness,  which ultimately led to the royal family’s murder. The story of Rasputin’s influence on the royals—along with the bizarre circumstances of Rasputin’s death—are some of the creepiest stories ever told. This is a book that’s nearly impossible to put down. One of Massie’s other books, Peter the Great: His Life and World, is our very favorite biography—it also won the Pulitzer Prize. If you’re looking for good, long audio books to take you through many driving hours, these are great choices. (Two free audiobooks may be possible through this link.)

Group Work Is Less Creative—the Bigger the Group, the Less Creative It Is

Over the last fifty years or so, we’ve noticed an increasing trend towards glorification of group work in education. Group work is thought to be particularly valuable in increasing creativity. Now, along comes a remarkable study in Nature, “Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology,” revealing that group work appears to diminish creativity—the bigger the group, the less creative the work.

As this New York Times article on the work notes: “Psychologists have found that people working in larger groups tend to generate fewer ideas than when they work in smaller groups, or when working alone, and become less receptive to ideas from outside. Why that would be isn’t entirely clear, but it runs counter to intuition, said Suparna Rajaram, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University.”
“‘We find that the product of three individuals working separately is greater than if those three people collaborate as a group,’ Dr. Rajaram said. ‘When brainstorming, people produce fewer ideas when working in groups than when working alone.’”

What’s the alternative to group work? Direct instruction—but broken up with active (“diffuse mode”) breaks, which can sometimes include work with groups.  Here’s a bit of insight into how to do this in a classroom.

MOOCs—Much Like Books—Struggle with Rock Bottom Completion Rates

This Financial Times article gives a nice overview of the strategies being employed to help nudge completion rates upwards in MOOCs.  We believe part of the challenge with current MOOCs is how they’re designed and created—videos can sometimes be so boring that it’s all you can do to swivel your head, zombie-like, back towards the screen. But notice our mini-headline here. Wouldn’t you love to know the completion rates of electronically-purchased books?  Someone, somewhere, has that data, and our guess is that it would perhaps approximate MOOC-completion rates. So, we ask, tongue-in-cheek, should maybe we get rid of books? [Article hat tip: Ramiah Ramasubramanian MD, FRCA)

Online Students Multitask More (Or Do They?)

This article by whip-smart Doug Lederman in Inside Higher Ed describes study findings that show how online students seem to be more inclined to multitask than they are in face-to-face classes “presumably because instructors and peers are watching.” But note the extensive discussion of problems with the study. For one thing, the study asks students to remember their activities in online versus face-to-face classes—“remembering” can be a dicey proposition, as other researchers studying food intake have found. And as online instructor Laura Gibbs noted: “Online and face-to-face are delivery modes; they are not course designs… To say that online courses are alike because they are online is like saying that rocky road ice cream and tater tots are the same because you find them in the freezer section.” Finally, one can question the quality of “in house” university online courses, compared to MOOCs, built with economies of scale from a presumably more select pool of instructors.

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: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Great ideas for parents, too!
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter