Author: barboakley

Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE is a Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; Michigan’s Distinguished Professor of the Year; and Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor.” Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. Dr. Oakley’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal. She is a New York Times best-selling author who has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. She has won numerous teaching awards, including the American Society of Engineering Education’s Chester F. Carlson Award for technical innovation in engineering education and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers William E. Sayle II Award for Achievement in Education. Together with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, she co-teaches Coursera – UC San Diego’s “Learning How to Learn,” one of the world’s most popular massive open online courses with over three million registered students, along with a number of other leading MOOCs. Dr. Oakley has adventured widely through her lifetime. She rose from the ranks of Private to Captain in the U.S. Army, during which time she was recognized as a Distinguished Military Scholar. She also worked as a communications expert at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and has served as a Russian translator on board Soviet trawlers on the Bering Sea. Dr. Oakley is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher

Posted on October 18, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The world’s most popular book about teaching, it seems, is Harry and Rosemary Wong’s The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher. This self-published book has sold over four million copies in the decades it has been in print, perhaps making it one of the most successful self-published books ever. What’s nice about this book is its disarmingly folky advice about common sense topics such as why you shouldn’t be your students’ friend, and why and how to set your classroom up for successful management practice.  We found the practice of placing entire bibliographic references into the middle of sentences, instead of just referring to them in an endnote, to be pretty clumsy—it was clear this is a self-published book.  But even so, there was a lot of great advice. If you’re a K-12 teacher, this book’s a must-read.

The Case for Quality Homework

We are often asked about homework and its value for K-12 students.  This top-notch article in Education Next by Janine Bempechat, Clinical Professor of Applied Human Development at Boston University, makes a case for the vital importance of well-thought-out homework.  Key graf: “…‘homework is a red herring’ in the national conversation on education. ‘Some otherwise privileged children may have too much, but the real issue lies in places where there is too little. . . . We shouldn’t forget that.’”

Probability: Basic Concepts & Discrete Random Variables: a Review of the Course

Here’s another great review of a MOOC, (this one on probability), courtesy Online Learning Success. We’ve enrolled!

The Cult of Pegagogy

We’ve been hearing wondering things about the podcast, blog, and video site www.cultofpedagogy.com.  As one of Barb and Terry’s colleagues notes “I am addicted to Jennifer’s podcasts and blogs and use them frequently.”  We can’t help but like the title pages’ description:

TEACHER NERDS, UNITE.
If you’ve ever been told you’re way too into your job…
If you can’t stop talking about teaching (even during happy hour)…
If you buy teaching books with your own money and wake up in the middle of the night with lesson ideas…
Welcome home, friend. This place was built for you.

Glider soaring via reinforcement learning in the field

Terry and his colleagues just published a paper on glider soaring via reinforcement learning in the preeminent research journal Nature. Key graf: “How soaring birds find and navigate thermals …  is unknown… Here we use reinforcement learning to train a glider in the field to navigate atmospheric thermals autonomously. We equipped a glider of two-metre wingspan with a flight controller that precisely controlled the bank angle and pitch, modulating these at intervals with the aim of gaining as much lift as possible… Our results highlight the role of vertical wind accelerations and roll-wise torques as effective mechanosensory cues for soaring birds and provide a navigational strategy that is directly applicable to the development of autonomous soaring vehicles.

A New MOOC paper on instructional design and the course Learning How to Learn

Barb was co-author with her more prominent colleagues in a brand new paper on MOOCs in the journal Computers & Education: Eulho Jung, Dongho Kim, Meehyun Yoon, Sanghoon Park and Barbara Oakley. “The Influence of Instructional Design on Learner Control, Sense of Achievement, and Perceived Effectiveness in a Supersize MOOC Course.” Computers & Education 128,  (2019): 377-388. Key graf: “These findings provided empirical evidence that instructional components are critical predictors of student learning in MOOCs, which have been conceptualized as important factors in prior 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

 

 

The low cost of online learning–the high cost of being Gatsby

Posted on October 12, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week

This week, we explored two very different books:

  • The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Normally, as you might have discerned, we’re not novel readers. But seeing as how The Great Gatsby has long been considered to be THE great American novel, we decided to give it a read. The Great Gatsby is a short book, just as Gatsby’s life was itself truncated. Nick, the narrator, is an honest guide to how love led his friend Jay Gatsby to the boundless, tragic pursuit of money. This book is a beautifully written reflection on life, idealism, and ambition, all framed in the excesses of the Roaring Twenties. It’s strange to realize that Fitzgerald died in 1940 with the belief that his writing was a failure—even as Fitzgerald’s  limning of an ultimately forgotten Gatsby created his own literary immortality.
  • The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out, by Clayton Christensen and Henry J. Eyring. We’re attracted to books that explore the potential of online learning in reducing costs and improving education.  Christensen and Eyring’s book does this, but only towards the end—the bulk of the book is an interesting comparison of the historical development of Harvard and BYU-Idaho (initially Ricks College). Cost-cutting is simply not in Harvard’s DNA. Yet, as Christensen and Eyring show, deliberate and judicious choices to not emulate Harvard can result in tremendous cost-savings for students. Key graf: “…most universities’ fundamental problems are of their own making. They are engaged in genetically driven, destructive rivalry with their own kind—other institutions trying to be the world’s best according [to] a single, narrow definition of excellence.”

Georgia Tech’s Online MOOC-based Master Program

If you want to learn more about innovation with online learning, you couldn’t do better than to watch this outstanding talk by Zvi Galil, Dean of the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, about the great work Georgia Tech is doing in creating inexpensive but extremely high quality online learning programs. There is an enormous need for graduates in computer science, and Georgia Tech’s prescient program is helping to fill strong societal needs at low cost. Key takeaway from Zvi’s talk? There was “no statistical difference in pre- and post-tests between online and residential students.”

Zvi’s talk was given at the recent “Learning with MOOCs” conference in Madrid. You can also catch Barb’s talk in the lineup on the right of the page. Note Zvi’s fun interjections, which made Barb’s talk all the more enjoyable for her!

Teacher Pay Teachers

We recently learned about “Teachers Pay Teachers,” an open online marketplace where teachers sell their original lesson plans and other course materials to other teachers—they can also share for free. Over 8 million users are on the site, which has brought significant side income to some teachers. If this sounds of interest, check it out!

Barb on Mark Struczewski’s Podcast

In this episode, Mark and Barb discuss strategies related to how to learn anything (you’re never too old to learn new things), the power of taking tiny steps and…video games are good for you? Mark is a swell guy, so Barb had a lot of fun speaking with him.

Separate your writing from editing

Here is a great blog post from Anupam Krishnamurthy to help speed your writing. Key graf: “For a given task, the brain can be either in the focused mode or the diffused mode. Mixing up our writing and editing causes us to switch between these two modes, breaking the flow of our thought. When we separate the two, our diffuse mode can take center-stage when we write, while the focused mode can take over when we edit.” Read the whole thing.

Why an education in visual arts is the key to arming students for the future

This article is an edited extract by Ted Snell, Professor, Chief Cultural Officer, University of Western Australia, from his keynote address to the Australian Council of University Art & Design Schools annual conference.  Key graf: “We must then ensure that the creative arts are a core component of the curriculum so that all students will become more resourceful and better equipped to successfully manage change.” We couldn’t agree more!

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

 

 

Comic books, Kahoot! and more

Posted on October 4, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week

This week, we read two books by or about self-made men:

  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin.  Although we read Walter Isaacson’s outstanding biography, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, we couldn’t resist digging deeper to see what Franklin himself wrote about his life.  Once we grew accustomed to Franklin’s style, we found the book to be a deeply insightful read. We were taken with Franklin’s quote of Pope:

“Men should be taught as if you taught them not,

And things unknown propos’d as things forgot.”

Many of you have already realized that is the approach we took with the creation of Learning How to Learn. Franklin’s is an inspiring book about how to improve both yourself and the lives of others. Plus, who knew that Franklin almost made a living as a swimming instructor?

  • The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Weldon Johnson, a polymath author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, civil rights activist, and key figure in the history of the NAACP. Johnson’s book is actually a fictional account of a man of biracial heritage of the late 1800s and early 1900s who describes his experiences as the son of an African-American woman and a wealthy white aristocrat.  The astonishing musical gifts of the “Ex-Colored Man” (Johnson never supplies a name) are subverted by his horrifying experience in witnessing a lynching. This is a moving roman à clef that will haunt you.

Kahoot!

While we were in Norway, we became aware of one of Norway’s most popular exports: Kahoot! It’s a game-based learning and trivia platform used in schools and other educational institutions as well as businesses. Kahoot’s learning games, “kahoots,” (natch) are multiple-choice quizzes that can be accessed via web browser. Kahoots can be used for review, for formative assessment, or as a break from traditional classroom activities.

As Wikipedia notes: “Kahoot was designed for social learning, with learners gathered around a common screen such as an interactive whiteboard, projector or a computer monitor. The site can also be used through screen-sharing tools such as Skype or Google Hangouts. The game design is such that the players are required to frequently look up from their devices. The gameplay is simple; all players use a device to answer questions created by a teacher, business leader, or other person. These questions can be changed to award points. Points then show up on the leaderboard after each question.” It’s clear why Kahoot! is so insanely popular with educators and students alike, with well over 50 million users.

Class Central’s Latest Update

Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central, is one of our favorite people in the MOOC-making world.  Catch up on his latest escapades here. (You’ll see Barb and her hubby Phil with Dhawal and some of the great Class Central–and Learning How to Learn–team!)

How to Make a Comic Book: A Review of the Course

Here is a wonderful review by Pat Bowden on Coursera’s MOOC on making comic books.  Kudos to Pat for a great review, and to Patrick Yurick and Coursera for creating the course–just the kind of seemingly off-beat but deeply useful course that MOOCs are perfect for.

The Diversity Delusion

As we’ve mentioned previously, we’re proponents of diversity, but at the same time, we are well aware that diversity today seems to be devolving to a quasi-religion that is harmful for education, with diversity chiefs becoming the new political commissars of our time. (We’re very familiar with the “right think” of political commissars from our prior work with the Soviets.)  This article by George Leef explores the phenomenon by describing New York Times best-selling author Heather McDonald’s book The Diversity Delusion. In a related vein, see Cass Sunstein’s wonderful Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide, which describes how thoughtful, rational people can find themselves going to harmful excess when they surround themselves only with like-minded people.

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

Quirky

Posted on September 28, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

We have a habit of reading books about rebellious, contrarian sorts of people. Quirky: The Remarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles, and Genius of Breakthrough Innovators Who Changed the World, by Melissa Schilling, is among the better of these books. Schilling’s discussion of the independent, sometimes lonely perspectives of remarkable innovators is alone worth the price of the book—she makes a clear case that too much group work and “creative collaboration” can unintentionally kill creativity.  Well worth the price if you’re interested in creativity.

A “Dunce” Robot that Helps Children Learn

In Japan, a new type of robot has been developed that gives kids the opportunity to help their little robotic companions to learn. “By teaching a less intelligent robot, children reinforce their own learning and so become stronger students themselves.” A cool twist on robots!

A Reminder about the Pomodoro Technique

This blog post by author and teacher Ann Michaelsen of Sandvika High School near Oslo, Norway, gives a reminder of the great value of the Pomodoro Technique.

Cautions and Caveats about Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching

We’re keen proponents of active learning in the classroom (see our oft-cited paper related to the topic). But findings from the following paper, which build on research from neuroscience and cognitive psychology, are well worth keeping in mind when veering too far from instructor-directed learning: “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching.” This important paper has over 5,600 citations. Key graf: “Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert–novice differences, and cognitive load. Although unguided or minimally guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half-century that consistently indicate that minimally guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process. The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide ‘internal’ guidance.”

Best Productivity and Time Management Books

Here’s a useful reading list by Arthur Worsley of the 70 Best Productivity and Time Management Books in Existence. Arthur has also written comprehensive summaries for some of the most important books on the list, including David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There are even summaries to some LHTL favorites like Deep Work and The Power of Habit.

A Math Teacher’s Day at Ed Camp

This article, by math teacher Barry Garelick, points towards the problem of trends and fads in modern professional development for teachers.  Key graf: “Having been in the position of a parent raising a daughter subjected to student-centered classrooms, I think what that parent meant was not so much, ‘Why should I be involved in my child’s education?’ but rather: ‘I’m doing a lot of teaching at home that should be going on in the school.’ Many parents have complained that students are not being taught grammar, math facts, and other necessities of education, but which teachers of student-centered classrooms consider ‘drill and kill’ and ‘drudge work.’  That may account for the popularity of learning centers like Sylvan, Huntington and Kumon, which all focus on these things.”

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

 

 

 

Don’t forget about Remember It!

Posted on September 19, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

We were very lucky to receive a pre-publication copy of 4-time US memory champion Nelson Dellis’s new book Remember It! The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget. Nelson’s book will be coming out next week—it’s the best book on how to develop your memory we’ve ever read. What’s terrific about Nelson’s book is that doesn’t just give the usual information about how to remember lists or sequences of numbers. Dellis provides all sorts of side bits of important everyday tips—like how to remember something important that occurs to you when you wake up in the middle of the night, how to remember where you’re parked, and how not to forget objects, like a purse (forgetting her purse is the bane of Barb’s existence). We can’t recommend this book more strongly!
Barb in Madrid

Barb will be keynoting two virtually back-to-back conferences in Madrid:

  • Learning with MOOCs Conference, Barb’s talk on creating great online materials will be in the second part of the Keynote 3 session on September 28, (12:30 – 2:00 pm).
  • EnlightEd Conference–Barb’s talk on insights into learning will be on October 3rd (12:15-12:35 pm)

If you happen to be in Madrid for either talk, Barb would love to see you!

Improving procedural fluency in math

Most leading educators with an appreciation for findings from neuroscience are very aware that procedural fluency in mathematics is an important foundation for conceptual understanding.  Retired chemical engineer Michael Eiseman volunteer tutors disadvantaged students in math and science and saw the difficulties his students had in algebra because they did not get enough practice. For them, Michael created “Algebra By Hand” to give them the gift of what he calls advanced procedural fluency in algebra. You can see a 2-minute video about it here. The tool does very little to promote conceptual understanding for the average student. But because it releases the student from the arithmetic and bookkeeping manual algebra requires, it allows the motivated student to quickly develop several solution pathways to enable new conceptual connections.  Check it out!

SMS nudges can add up

This interesting article by the indefatigable Annabelle Timsit, of Quartz, explores the topic of how text messages are being used to nudge and tweak human behavior in positive ways.  This approach might also be useful to help nudge you towards your learning goals.

Podcast with Barb on Vital Corps Wellness

As lifestyle strategist and host Kara Martin Snyder observes: “In today’s episode we talk a lot about learning and MOOCs…. With all of Dr. Oakley’s credentials and professional experience, we also discuss some adjacent topics like how to hang-up your workaholic spurs, how to avoid task-list intimidation (yes, we touch on task lists!), and how we might leverage Imposter Syndrome for our advantage…. If a Swiss Army Knife came in human form, it would be called a Barbara Oakley, Ph.D. Like a Swiss Army Knife, there are a multitude of tools and ideas woven into this conversation which can be applied to what’s going on in your own life. Dr. Oakley contributes a wealth of knowledge and implementable inspiration.

Need a music coach?
We received a recommendation from LHTLer Carlos Chowell about learning coach Gregg Goodhart. Carlos writes “I am enrolled in your Learning How to Learn” course in Coursera, and it has been the first step of my learning path. I wanted to share with you that I found a Learning Coach for music who teaches how to practice what music instructors teach. His name is Gregg Goodhart, and he bases his teaching method on the research [of Learning How to Learn] and on the science of Peak, Flow, Fast Focus, and Mindset. He has helped me with my practice habits, taught me how to learn music effectively, and take advantage of every minute of my practice. He has been of great influence to me, and I am sure he will be for your audience in Coursera. I wanted to share his contact information.” Gregg Goodhart, e-mail learningcoach@ggoodhart.com, and his website is http://ggoodhart.com/.

Would you like to convert your handwritten notes to audio?  

Saqib Muhammad is currently working on Voicepods, a tool that converts text to human-like speech. Saqib writes “I remember back when I was in school, audio notes were just robotic and unbearable to listen to.” This could be a useful tool for students to convert written notes to audio, so you can listen to them at work or while walking or jogging, to be able to learn through several different modalities.  Here also is a special tool for educators.

Humor Signals Generosity

This short but insightful blogpost by Anupam captures our reasoning for making Learning How to Learn more fun.

Barb on Principal Center Radio

Take a listen to Barb’s insights into education and learning in this podcast with Justin Baeder from Principal Center Radio.

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

 

 

Great Book Review of Learning How to Learn in TES!

Posted on September 14, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week, we read and enjoyed James Crabtree’s The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age. We’re always fascinated by India, but sometimes the unfamiliar names (to our US-based sensibilities) can make it hard to keep track of what’s going on. Crabtree solves the name-challenge by following outsized personalities with riveting stories, all in the context of what’s unfolding politically and financially in today’s India. This is an Amazon Best Book of July 2018—as the review notes, “Crabtree uses interviews and riveting reporting to give us a fascinating look into the sudden, sometimes shocking, and seemingly insurmountable rise of the Indian super-elite, as they surf the wave of globalism.”

Book review: Learning How to Learn
The Times Educational Supplement (TES), which is the top publication for K12 teachers in the UK, just published a wonderful review of Barb and Terry’s Learning How to Learn. As author Daisy Christodoulou notes: “[T]he very phrase “learning how to learn” has become an indicator that some educational snake oil is just around the corner. [But] Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski is a glorious exception to this rule, reclaiming the phrase for people who care about the research and evidence. The book is written for children and gives a very accessible account of how our brains actually learn, accompanied by practical activities that you can put into action straight away.
As well as rescuing the idea of “learning how to learn”, this book is a landmark in another way. As far as I know, it is the first attempt to explain some of the latest research in cognitive psychology to children and not just teachers… If you teach a study skills unit, this would be something you could use as a class reader. Each chapter has activities at the end of it, so you could almost use it as a textbook, reading a chapter together and then doing the activities at the end. And there are chapters within it that would be worthwhile using in any lesson.”

If you’ve read Barb & Terry’s Learning How to Learn, we’d appreciate it if you might leave a review!

How We Learn—an Interview with Barb in Quartz

Annabelle Timsit, a reporter from Quartz, interviewed Barb for this insightful commentary on learning.

A Tribute to an Extraordinary Mathematician Who Died Too Young

This wonderful article by Gareth Cook in the New York Times Magazine is one of the best biographical articles we’ve read on Miryam Mirzakhani, the artistic mathematical genius who drew her way to greatness before her untimely death. Most inspiring of all for us is that, as a youngster, math was Miryam’s weakest subject—she very nearly gave up on it. [Hat tip: Joel Herskowitz]

Teaching-Learning-Leading K-12

Barb was lucky enough to do a podcast on learning and education with Steven Miletto—you can enjoy their conversation here! (Barb is now a Steven Miletto fan!)

A Harvard Business School professor observes that half of US colleges will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years

This thought-provoking article describes Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen’s studies that have led him to conclude that “online education will become a more cost-effective way for students to receive an education, effectively undermining the business models of traditional institutions and running them out of business.” Key graf: “There are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States, but Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen says that half are bound for bankruptcy in the next few decades.”

A  Great Math Tool for Social Scientists—Especially If You Don’t Know a Lot of Math

Professor Thomas Burch writes:

“My background is in demography and social statistics. Many years ago I discovered a program called Mathcad, and sort of fell in love with it. Mathematical expressions display pretty much as they would on a chalkboard or textbook. It handles data, graphs, functions, vectors and matrices; solves equations. It has a good word-processor, and allows for full-screen editing; elements in a worksheet can be moved around to create a coherent document… Mathcad has evolved into Mathcad Prime, which is available in a light version free to students…

An important feature… is that it does symbolic as well as numerical math. In general I found it much easier to use than Mathematica, a spreadsheet, or R, which is the software of choice among my demographic colleagues. It feels more like using pencil and paper; no coding in the usual sense.
…Many social scientists would find it very useful, especially those of us with limited knowledge of math.

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

 

 

Visible Learning

Posted on September 7, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week’s recommendation is John Hattie’s Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. This book is a master compendium of what works and what doesn’t in order to help students achieve–Hattie is rightly considered one of the best researchers in education, no matter what quibbles you might have with his approach.  By comparing effect sizes of various interventions such as reduction of class size, holding students back if they aren’t performing well, whole language versus phonics, and so forth, a meaningful idea of what works and what doesn’t can be found. A pioneering work in education.

A Memorization Tip

LHTLer Mark writes with a valuable tip for remembering:

“I have vascular dementia at the Mild Cognitive Impairment stage. Yesterday I made a discovery on memorization… What do we do when we naturally try and remember a task or grocery list? We take one hand and start tapping the other fingers of the other hand with our index finger whilst looking up. Or start by sticking our thumb up, then individual fingers like we are counting something. I was standing at the door of our car and my wife kept on telling me a shopping list and adding things. So I simply did the memory castle thing but using my fingers like the above method, instantly and more importantly permanently memorizing it. Ketchup squirting out my thumb, almond milk out of another my next finger was a popsicle about to be eaten. etc. A whole shopping list that is still fresh in my mind today.

Today I met a woman as I was walking my dog. Her face, her name and her son’s face and name and what they do for a living are now painted on my big toenail superimposed on each other. So I thought, Ok, what happens when I use all my fingers and toes? I put on imaginary different colored gloves. Red, blue, green–each type of glove for a different category. And toe socks. I’ve never worn toe socks but dang it seems to be working.

Keeping in mind that I can’t count down backward from 100 by 7’s despite having dual masters degrees in business and that they don’t allow me to cook by myself because I go off task. [The Learning How to Learn] course and book have helped me significantly get wrapped around rehab. The link to our bodies and chunking especially our digits might be a natural reflex bridge when we throw in imagery, action, focused and diffused learning all at once with what is part of our body. Please try it. All the best and thank you!

Ten Questions about Emerging Technology (and Barb’s Life)

A new series by IEEE Technical Activities asks technical experts 10 questions about their life and emerging technology. In this unusual interview, learn why Barb likes bridges, about the worst professor Barb ever had (and how he inadvertently helped inspire Barb’s interest in the video/television format that ultimately resulted in Learning How to Learn), and more.

Can You Do Well If You Take Calculus for the First Time After You Arrive at College?

The Science Education Department of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics sought answers related to college success with calculus in a study of more than 6,000 freshmen at 133 institutions. They found that “Contrary to conventional wisdom, taking high school calculus isn’t necessary for success in college calculus. What’s more important is mastering the prerequisites—algebra, geometry, and trigonometry—that lead to calculus.” Sure, it can help to get an earlier overview of the subject in high school, but if you arrive late on the scene (like Barb did), and want to study calculus even when you are older than a typical college student, just make sure you get a grounding in the basics and you should be ready for calculus success! [Hat tip, Berta Gonzalez and Smartick—an online math training program for kids that uses the latest in online intelligence.]

Writer’s Voice, Interview with Barb

Here is an interview with Barb and Francesca Rheannon, producer and host of Writer’s Voice, a weekly national radio show and podcast about the writing process. As poet, author and translator Peter Filkins has said: “Francesca Rheannon is that rare interviewer who knows how to shape an interview almost without your knowing it. Appearing on Writer’s Voice means engaging with a generous and instinctive intelligence able to elicit the heart and soul of any book.”

Basic Skills Versus Conceptual Understanding in Math

Here’s an interesting article by Dr. Wu from Berkeley: “Basic skills versus conceptual understanding: A bogus dichotomy in mathematics education.”

Great Quantitative Skills Can Save Great Aesthetic Landmarks

Having great quantitative skills can be a blessing for the aesthetically inclined.  Here’s the New York Times obituary of the great engineer Robert Silman, who saved the Falling Water House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

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

 

 

Barb in Oslo! Teaching Students How to Learn

Posted on August 31, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week’s book recommendation is Saundra McGuire’s Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate Into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation. We thought we knew a lot about how to help students succeed, but Saundra’s inspiring book reframed the topic even more positively for us, and gave us a lot of great new strategies.  (Barb was lucky enough to speak with Saundra about her book a few days ago—Saundra herself is a force to be reckoned with in helping reshape attitudes towards student learning.)

Barb Giving a One Day Workshop on Learning in Oslo, Norway

On Monday, September 10th, Barb will give a Learning How to Learn workshop for parents and teachers right in the city center of Oslo from 8:00 am to 2:45 pm. The organizer has set aside a small number of free seats for students of Learning How to Learn, so if you are interested in joining Barb in this workshop in Oslo, send an email here.

A Podcast on Metalearn

Discover the challenges of becoming a thought leader,  and the processes behind teaching children to learn effectively in this wide-ranging conversation between Barb and Nasos Papadopoulos.

A Podcast Conference Entirely Focused Around Educational Podcasts

Whether you are a podcast fan or a podcast creator (or both!), there is a  new podcast conference for you called “Sound Education” that is entirely focused around educational podcasts.  The conference is organized by Zach Davis from the podcast Ministry of Ideas. There are a lot of exciting panels and talks on the schedule, including Dan Carlin from the hit podcast Hardcore History as the keynote. Hat tip to LHTLer Erik Jones, who notes: “It’s an event I think many lifelong learners who listen to podcasts would be really into.”  The conference will be held at Harvard Nov 2 and 3—go here for more: https://www.soundeducation.fm.

Digital Text is Changing How Kids Read—Just Not in the Way That You Think

Here is a wonderful article by Holly Korbey on the Mindshift website about how kids’ reading habits are changing. Key graf: “For many parents and teachers worried that spending so much time with video games and Snapchats will shred kids’ attention spans—the average 8-12-year-old spends about six hours a day in front of a screen, and teenagers spend more than nine — Willingham thinks they may be concerned about the wrong thing. He isn’t convinced that spending so many hours playing Super Smash Bros will shorten kids’ attention spans, making them unable to sustain the attention to read a book. He’s more concerned that Super Smash Bros has trained kids’ brains to crave experiences that are more like fast-paced video games.” [Hat tip Pat Bowden of Online Learning Success.]

Interested in Teaching Students about Entrepreneurship?

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) has great free books for teachers and an abundance of new media, courses, and workshops available to educators at FEE.org/educate.

Summary of How to Develop a Perfect Memory

Polymath Arthur Worsley has just finished a 5,000-word book summary of Dominic O’Brien’s How To Develop a Perfect Memory. It breaks down the 5 tools O’Brien used to become the 8-time World Memory Champion: The Journey Method, Linking, Association, The Dominic System and Reviewing. And to make it even easier for people to get started, Arthur has created 6 dynamic templates that set up the 3 basic memory systems (Journey, Number Shape and Dominic) and then automatically create 3 bonus systems (Playing Cards, Chess and Binary Number) that are downloadable for free as part of the summary! Add to that 21 step-by-step guides on memorizing everything from names, faces and numbers to speeches and your calendar and it’s a pretty thorough intro to the world of mnemonics.

Readable Math Textbooks   

 Dan Umbarger writes: “I spent 30 years teaching arithmetic, mathematics, and computer science to grades 5-12.  I found that many of the students in upper level (high school) math would not read their books because of the unappealing way they were written.   There was a disconnect between the maturity of the students and the formal style in which the books were written.

 Dan has written three books:

 

 

 

 

A spot check reveals that Dan teaches Bayes theorem in the same highly visual way that Barb does—which she takes as a very good sign. Check these books out if you have an interest!

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

 

 

Improving kids’ math

Posted on August 24, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

We’ve long thought that Shackleton’s amazing voyage, as described in the riveting book Endurance, was one of the greatest stories of courage and, yes, endurance, ever told.  But we’ve now read an even more amazing story—We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance, by David Howarth.  This is the epic tale of how Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian commando, overcame virtually every hardship that could be thrown at a human being as he fought, skied, limped, dragged, was carried, was entombed, and yet still carried on.  This book will inspire you to carry on with aplomb—it is unforgettable!

Should U.S. Students Do More Math Practice and Drilling?

This excellent article by Professor Paul Morgan explains the key ideas behind the answer to this important question.  Key graf:

“Routine practice and drilling following explicit teacher-directed instruction should help students become quick and accurate in solving basic operations, thereby becoming procedurally fluent. Becoming procedurally fluent in turn should help students by freeing up their cognitive capacities to solve more complex tasks. For example, students who practice to quickly and accurately recognize the meaning of the equal sign do better at solving word problems. Practice may be particularly important for elementary school students who are struggling in math. This is because these students often have underlying difficulties in attention, working memory, and language that interfere with their learning during less structured student-centered activities.”

Numeracy Ninjas

We’re often asked if we have recommendations for worksheets that might help kids practice and build their math skills.  Numeracy Ninjas is a great answer! These wonderful free worksheets provide a low stakes, high fun-factor way for kids to get a daily 5-minute dose of extra, nicely interleaved practice with important math concepts.  These excellent worksheets have been developed by Will Emeny and his team–their research on the effects of developing procedural fluency in helping spur kids’ interest and success in math is phenomenal.  Check it out!

Cognitive Science and the Common Core Math Standards

Ever wondered about whether Common Core structures the teaching of math in accordance with what we know from cognitive science?  This paper by Eric Nelson lays matters out clearly. Key graf:

“From the viewpoint of cognitive research.. the repeated omissions and delays in initial memorization in the 2010 [Common Core Mathematics Standards] result in learning strategies that simply do not work in the brains of non-experts (students).”

Dinner Table Math and Trapezium Math Club

Trapezium founder Angela McGiver did her PhD dissertation studies on older students with weak math foundations. She notes “My frustration with my children’s elementary math program led me to start an after-school math club out of my house that turned into a business… Everything you wrote in the [New York Times op-ed] is what I have been telling parents for years. I will be sharing this article to parents for years to come. My conclusion is that the only way to develop children with strong math foundations is to empower parents to do it at home.

“After starting a math club that emphasizes developing a deep and flexible understanding and fluency with numbers in elementary school through lots of practice – our work has paid off. The only children graduating from 8th grade in our neighborhood school [in the Greater Philadelphia Area] who tested into the highest level math classes in their magnet high school are Trapezium Math Club kids (2 of whom are girls and two of whom are African American).

“Dinner Table Math has many of the games and activities that we use in Trapezium. Parents may purchase these technology-free games to do at home (just as we expect parents to read with their children daily, they can also be doing math). Shortly we should have videos on our site with children demonstrating how to play the games. I have also found that there truly is an educational component for  parents and am working on a Resource Guide to help them (for instance, we encourage parents to be silent and allow kids to struggle….to normalize struggling).”

Memory Expert Anthony Metivier on Why He Reads Hard Copies of Books, Rather than Electronic

Here’s Anthony’s interesting explanation of why he reads old-fashioned hard-copy books, which help him to remember and categorize the material better.  Along the way, you’ll get some excellent tips to help you remember what you read.

An Amazing Job Opportunity at Apple

Izzet Yildiz, a research scientist working at the intersection of machine learning, neuroscience and mathematics, reaches out to the Learning How to Learn community to let us know about a unique opportunity at Apple for anybody interested in making a major impact in learning domain. Izzet writes “I am working with a group of brilliant neuroscientists/engineers and we have a job opening for a ‘learning and education scientist.’ We are looking for PhDs who have significant amount of expertise in the field and who are passionate about technology. I would appreciate if you could direct possible candidates you may know to the job post here. Thank you!”

Chunking

Check this out for a little additional insight into the value of chunking. [Hat tip Jeffrey Riman.]

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

NY Times Op-Ed & More!

Posted on August 17, 2018 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

We’re very interested in how games attract people’s attention. So as we are beginning to explore the world of gaming, we couldn’t resist reading David Kushner’s awesome Masters of Doom: How Two Guys  Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, about John Romero and John Carmack, and how the pair of geniuses helped revolutionize the gaming industry.  A riveting read.

Barb’s Op-Ed in The New York Times

Barb’s recent op-ed in The New York Times on how to help little girls (and little boys) succeed in math has caused quite a stir, becoming one of the most emailed articles of the week.  

Study: Music, Manipulatives Are Fun, But Basics Are Best for Struggling Math Students

This excellent article by Sarah Sparks in Education Week points towards  research that reveals how practice at foundational levels can make a big difference in a child’s success in math.  The worse off that kids might be in their math studies, the more they can benefit from straightforward teacher explanations and practice problems. In the related article ‘Drill, baby, drill? Study finds worksheets, practice improve math skills more than fun stuff” by Maureen Downey expands on these important ideas.  This latter article includes a great brief interview with one of the research co-authors, Paul Morgan. Paul’s group has also done intriguing research related to reducing science achievement gaps.

A Special Salute to the School Teachers and Administrators of Delta, Colorado

Barb gave the opening keynote to the visionary teachers and administrators of Delta, Colorado, for their district-wide professional development day on August 14th.  This is an exceptional school district—keep your eye on them!

A Podcast with Polymath Charles Chu

We really like Charles Chu of The PolyMath Project, and it shows in this offbeat podcast with Barb—the pair go off together to discuss unusual ideas.

Barb Went to Jail

Yes, Barb recently spoke at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she was deeply impressed at how much the inmates knew about the key ideas of Learning How to Learn—they were awesome!  The jail has been successfully using Learning How to Learn to help inmates acquire new skills to help them succeed. Clark County Detention Center, working with Coursera, is setting an example for the country, and the world, in how to build new skills and mindsets.  

Incidentally,  the interesting Ear Hustle podcast “brings you the stories of life inside prison, shared and produced by those living it.”

Memory Champion Nelson Dellis is Cubing It Without Seeing It!

4-time US Memory Champion is back with an unbelievable video on how to memorize and solve a 2×2 Rubik’s Cube—blindfolded!

A Podcast in Relation to Homeschooling and Learning How to Learn

Here’s podcaster and homeschooling maven Julie Bogart with a  series of questions for Barb in relation to homeschooling and learning. Julie does great work with relation to writing in the homeschooling world, so if that’s of interest to you, check out the podcast along with Julie’s wonderful Brave Writer blog.

Barb’s Webinar for IEEE

Here is the recording link (you’ll just need to scroll down and click the webinar title) if you want to share it with anyone.  

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