Author: barboakley

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

As you can tell, we’ve been heavy into education books recently (don’t worry—we’ll be back soon to other topics!). Our most recent book, Seven Myths About Education, by Daisy Christodoulou, is one of the best on education that we’ve ever read. Daisy’s broad experience in teaching, coupled with her critical thinking skills, provide counter-intuitive insight into how we can be fooled into thinking some ways of teaching are better, when they’re actually worse. Her observations involve seven widely held beliefs that are harming students:

• Facts prevent understanding  
• Teacher-led instruction is passive   
• The 21st century fundamentally changes everything   
• You can always just look it up   
• We should teach transferable skills   
• Projects and activities are the best way to learn   
• Teaching knowledge is indoctrination.

Although this book was written for UK audiences, its findings are perfectly translatable to what is going on in the US. This powerful book is a “must read” for any parent, or K-12 teacher, professor, or administrator.

Custom interval Pomodoro-like timer
Programmer Alex Shirokov was inspired by LHTL to create a custom interval ring timer.  You can create and save any number of timers with any number of intervals—allowing you to customize your use of the Pomodoro technique. It looks like a circle and has visually clear representation of intervals and counting. You can add, remove and adjust intervals intuitively by finger. It’s not free, but comes at reasonable price.

How One Company Created an Apprenticeship Program to Help Diversify Tech

Here is a wonderful article in the Harvard Business Review by Ryan Carson, CEO of and Founder of Treehouse, an online school that’s trained 850,000 software engineers and helps companies like Airbnb, Nike, HubSpot, Mailchimp hire top tech talent and create diverse teams. When it comes to building diversity at his company, Ryan’s approaches are well worth emulating.

Gene linked to dyslexia associated with lower concussion risk

We often tend to think that genes associated with learning challenges, such as the genes associated with dyslexia, are in some sense “bad.”  But that’s not necessarily the case. Here for example, is an article about recent research showing that the more diffuse neural wiring of those with dyslexia may actually reduce the damage produced by concussions. In other areas, it’s known that the APOE4 gene variant can predispose one to Alzheimer’s in old age.  But, as noted in the New Scientist, “young people with the variant tend to be smarter, more educated and have better memories than their peers.” You win some, you lose some!

Career Help from the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education for Emirati and Arab Youth

The Al Ghurair Foundation for Education has launched the Al Ghurair Young Thinkers Program – a college and career readiness platform to support Emirati and Arab youth. The entire platform is offered in English and Arabic. We can vouch for the fact that the Al Ghurair Foundation is doing some excellent work in preparing future leaders – check it out if you’re Emirati or Arab in the 15-25 year old age range!

A Helpful Guide to Reading Better

We’re fans of the Farnam Street blog. Here’s a wonderful article on how to improve your reading, whether it’s selecting quality material, or retaining it.  We love the article’s starting quote by Charlie Munger: “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero.”

Spanish Version of Make It Stick

Last week we mentioned Make It Stick—one of our favorite books on learning.  We heard from Óscar Barberá, the Spanish translator, who let us know that a Spanish version is available: Apréndetelo: La ciencia del aprendizaje exitoso.  

Barb in English—El País

If you’ll remember, several weeks ago we featured an interview of Barb in Madrid with El País. Here is the original English version of the conversation. (The translated Spanish longer and shorter versions are also available.) As we mentioned, the audience, and Barb, had a blast!

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!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

We recently had the opportunity to have breakfast with Peter Brown, the first author of the redoubtable Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, which we believe to be one of the very best books on learning currently in existence. So we took the opportunity to reread the book before our meeting.  Yes, Make It Stick holds up and is even better than we remembered—it’s a wonderful romp through the various techniques that are valuable in making your learning really stick.  What has impressed us is not only the scientific rigor of the work (thanks, Henry Roediger III and Mark McDaniel!) but also Peter’s in-depth explanations and wide-ranging examples—this is not a fluff job of a book. Peter’s a heckuva guy—stay tuned for a joining of forces in LHTL’s future projects.

Edsurge is doing an article on the kids book Learning How to Learn—they need teachers’ help!

The educational magazine Edsurge is doing an article on our Learning How to Learn book for youngsters.  They would love to hear from any teachers who are using the book in their classrooms.  If you are using the Learning How to Learn book for kids, please contact tina@edsurge.com with some insights about how you’re using it (and feel free to copy Barb at oakley@oakland.edu.)

Using eye-tracking data to see how studying logic improves the ability to reason

Psychology researcher Silvia Bunge and her colleague Belén Guerra-Carrillo at UC Berkeley, have recently published an eye-poppingly original article in the npj Science of Learning:  “Eye gaze patterns reveal how reasoning skills improve with experience.”  Here’s a nice summary by Silvia in response to npj’s questions. “We found previously that studying for the LSAT – an exam that heavily taxes reasoning skills – strengthens the brain network that supports reasoning and reduces brain activity in a part of the brain that is active when participants carry out a cognitively demanding task. However, this work didn’t tell us in which way reasoning improved…[Using eye-tracking data, w]e found that the biggest change associated with Logic Games practice was increased efficiency in encoding the relevant relations (e.g., a balance scale showing that a green ball is heavier than a yellow one). We could not have drawn this conclusion from the behavioral data alone.”

This finding is important because it shows that specific types of learning are distinct in their ability to improve critical thinking skills—and we now have a sense of why.

190 universities just launched 600 free online courses. Here’s the full list.

Dhawal Shah of Class Central is on it in providing great information about free MOOCs.  Don’t miss his extensive list of courses—there’s bound to be something that’s perfect for your goals and interests.

Better ways to know whether students have mastered what they are learning

Here is a terrific presentation by Candace Thille of Stanford University: “The Science of Learning, Data, and Transformation in Higher Education.” This talk unpacks why you don’t want your students to just “understand” a concept. [Hat tip: Matthew Parson] It’s useful to watch Candace’s presentation in conjunction Professor Juan Quemada’s presentation “The AMMIL Methodology.” (The English version of the video is further down on the page.) AMMIL stands for “Active Meaningful Micro Inductive Learning”—it’s a methodology for creating good educational modules based on micro-objectives that are very similar to the unpacked “understanding” that Candace alludes to. In other words, Juan provides an easy-to-understand method for implementing Candace’s important ideas within a MOOC. He then goes on to give a more concrete feel for how the recordings were physically implemented, without expensive post-production, in the studio of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Barb was fortunate enough to meet Juan in Madrid—his programming MOOCs are amongst the most popular on MiríadaX, Latin America’s Largest MOOC Platform.

Longer videos are becoming more popular

Interestingly, we recently discussed video length with a producer from Crash Course (a series we really admire), and discovered that many video producers on YouTube are moving towards longer videos—20 or 30 minutes in length, because that’s what people are watching and enjoying. These findings go along with that of Larry Lagerstrom and his colleague’s research findings related to “The Myth of the Six-Minute Rule: Student Engagement with Online Videos.”

Online comic on how to boost memory

Here’s a very cute interactive comic, perfect for kids, that explains how to improve memory with spaced practice. As one researcher has commented “It’s a bit fast and loose with the details (she seems to care more about teaching the procedures than explaining mechanisms of learning and memory), but still kind of fun and useful.”

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 Year

The Deep Learning Revolution, by Terrence Sejnowski.  Barb had the chance to read this superlative book pre-press, and she has a beautiful hard copy beside her as she writes this. If you are interested in how we got to driverless cars, automated translations, eerily human-like conversations with automatons, and uncannily adept opponents in chess and Go, you can’t miss this fantastic book by our very own Terry Sejnowski. Terry’s many decades of experience at the pinnacle of discovery in neural processing and artificial intelligence give him an irreplaceably broad perspective. Learn how the obstruction of a few key players delayed the advent of artificial intelligence by decades  and the future direction of deep learning networks in everything from gaming. The deep learning revolution has brought us driverless cars, the greatly improved Google Translate, fluent conversations with Siri and Alexa, and enormous profits from automated trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Deep learning networks can play poker better than professional poker players and defeat a world champion at Go. In this book, Terry Sejnowski explains how deep learning went from being an arcane academic field to a disruptive technology in the information economy. Barb’s not being biased (well, only a tiny, inescapable bit!) when she calls this book the book of the year—read and enjoy!

Are Engineers Educated? Or are they merely trained?

This article in the IEEE Spectrum by Robert W. Lucky explores what being well-educated might really mean.  As Lucky notes: “Let me just give you my take. A graduate of a good university noted for, say, philosophy or English literature, would be considered to be ‘well educated.’ A graduate of a similar university noted for engineering would be considered bright and intelligent. I’ll settle for that.”

Correlation is not causation, but heck yeah for video games!

A recent study, “funded by the British Academy and published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour, found that 13-14 year old girls classed as ‘heavy gamers’—those playing over nine hours a week—were three times more likely to pursue a PSTEM degree compared to girls who were non-gamers.”

Barb in Spanish—El País

You can read and watch Barb’s interview in Madrid with El País here. Here also are longer and shorter YouTube versions of the video. As you can tell, the audience and Barb were having a blast!

The “Throw the Pen” Memory Method

Here is another practically useful—and super funny—short video by memory champion Nelson Dellis about how to remember ideas you might get in the middle of the night, or when you’re preoccupied with something else that you can’t really take a break from.  This is one of many useful ideas from Nelson’s great book Remember It!

A nice email about A Mind for Numbers

Here’s a nice email we received about how a learner has been able to restructure their thinking to become successful:

“Last semester I failed a differential equations class, and it was my biggest wake-up call. I have always been deluding myself into thinking I know something when I actually didn’t. That class was proof of my delusion. Your book, A Mind for Numbers, was unlike anything else I’ve read. Instead of reaffirmations, it was book filled with tips to restructure the way I process information. I would like to thank you on constantly pointing out the errors in the way a person learns so that they can use other tools to actually grasp information. [A]ctually working out the solution or thinking of just something to get started has helped me a lot better than staring at the solutions. Thank you for sharing your tips which helped me grow my learning abilities. It’s sad to say that it took me 8 years for me to get this frustrated for me to actually make the change in order to learn better. I’ve always had the knowledge in me, you just pieced together the information in a more logical point of view so the reader has no choice, but to be confronted with facts and helpful tips. Thank you once again.”

Debunking the Myers-Briggs type indicator

Here’s a good article from Reason Magazine about the fallacies of the Myers-Briggs indicator.  Surprisingly, some of the most-cited literature about the validity of learning styles is actually predicated on the Myers-Briggs, meaning that literature is actually built on a house of cards.

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 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

• 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

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

• 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

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

• 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 and teachers, 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 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

• 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

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

• 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

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

• 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

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

• 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