Author: barboakley

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the week

This week, we compared two books that discuss raising US-born children in non-US educational systems.  

• Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve, by Lenore Chu. It’s very easy to fall into a pattern of thinking that making your child happy is—and should be—the theme of all education.  Chu’s remarkable book explores an educational system that is in many ways the exact opposite of that espoused by Westerners. As it turns out, when “happiness” is not necessarily a factor, sometimes kids, and parents, seem to end up happier.  It’s fascinating to read about the obviously negative (from a Western perspective) effects of the Chinese education system on Chu’s son, but how Chu’s open-minded understanding allows her to persevere and see the benefits of this very different system. We also deeply appreciated Chu’s visits to the Chinese countryside, to obtain a fuller account of what is going on “on the ground” in the Chinese educational system. This is one of the best and most thoughtful books we’ve read on education in a long time—highly recommended.
• Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children, by Sara Zaske. Zaske’s book keeps a positive focus on the many positives (from a US perspective) of the German schooling system. This means there’s less willingness to peer under the rug at the mixed positives and negatives than Lenore Chu’s Little Soldiers. At the same time, Zaske’s book is a terrific one to read in tandem with Little Soldiers, because it shows how a system that is different in many significant ways from the Chinese system can have its own benefits.  

We found Zaske’s discussion of the problems with “attachment style parenting” to be particularly interesting.  As Zaske points out, efforts to be a close parent who maintains a strong bond with a toddler may have the inadvertent effect of creating a type of dependency—not to mention making for many sleepless nights.  Fascinating insights into the differences between US and German parenting cultures, including the German focus on fostering independence, increasing appreciation for the open air, and taking necessary risks.

Barb in an open-to-everyone free lecture at the University of California, San Diego

Barb will be giving a lecture on Learning How to Learn at 9:00 am on August 4th at the Goldberg Auditorium, Moore’s Cancer Center, UC San Diego Health Science Campus, 3855 Health Sciences Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92037. Her lecture will include many new animations and insights related to her and Terry’s upcoming book, Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens. Even if you’re an adult, you’ll gain new insights, going beyond even what you’ve learned in the MOOC. If you’re near San Diego, come—Barb would love to meet you. (If your children are mature enough to be well-behaved in a crowd, bring them, too!)

Study finds that teens glued to phones may risk a ‘modest’ rise in ADHD symptoms

This interesting article describes research findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggesting that “excessive phone use could be linked to to a ‘modest’ but significant rise in symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).” The results were based on “nearly 2,600 Los Angeles teens who answered survey questions over a two-year period—making it one of the largest and longest studies on the topic to date.”

Barb’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on women in STEM

Barb’s well-received op-ed in the Wall Street Journal has stirred people’s opinions from all ends of the spectrum.  If you don’t have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, here is a version of the article with some of the key grafs, and that also gives you the ability to comment.The Complete Guide to Building Your focus

This article by one of our favorite writers on learning, Scott Young, lays out virtually everything you need to know about maintaining your focus.  The article is a not-to-be-missed classic if your work requires any kind of focus.

Helping Kids with Math

We’ve heard good things about a program called Beast Academy, for aspiring “Math Beasts” in grades 2-5.  There’s a series of books, and also a new interactive learning experience under development that has an adaptive review system that provides extra practice as needed.  If you’re looking for additional practice materials for your child, or if you’re homeschooling, you may wish to check this system out.

Keeping Online Courses Fresh: Valuable, but Costly

This well-researched article by Mark Lieberman in Inside Higher Ed (featuring insights from our friend Mary Niemiec, associate vice president for distance education at the University of Nebraska), describes the sometimes unanticipated costs of keeping online coursework up-to-date, as well as the how investment and quality of the learning experience intertwine.

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!
• NEW! 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 the 13th to our Learning How to Learners!  (Since we’re contrarians, we think it’s a lucky day.)

Book of the Week

This week’s read was The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery, by Barbara K. Lipska (the neuroscientist of the title) and writer Elaine McArdle. This is a wondrously eye-opening account of what it feels like to go mad, or to be like one of those mean, nasty, self-centered, semi-crazy types who you sometimes run into if you work in customer service. This upbeat, pretty durn happy-ending book is one of the most beautifully-written that we’ve read all year. Good insight into the brain even as we readers receive great insight into the frailty and wonder of human consciousness.

Helping You—and the Children in Your Life—Learn STEM Subjects More Effectively

Barb is speaking at a free event in San Jose, California, sponsored by the Silicon Valley IEEE Computer Society August 7, 2018, 6:30-8:30 PM. If you’d like to meet Barb and help your children learn more effectively, especially in the STEM disciplines, come for a fun and fabulous evening!  Barb will be around before and after her presentation, and will very much enjoy meeting you. (If your children are mature enough to be well-behaved in a crowd, bring them, too!) Learn more and register here—the talk is free, but seating is limited to 200 and pre-registrants are let in first.

Barb in Atlanta Today!

And don’t forget, Barb is speaking today (at 4:00 pm) at the SEA Homeschoolers Conference at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta.

Our Failing Schools. Enough Is Enough

We are enormous fans of educator Geoffrey Canada. Here is his inspiring TED Talk call to action. As Canada notes “America cannot wait another fifty years to get this right. We have run out of time. I don’t know about a fiscal cliff, but there’s an educational cliff that we are walking over right this very second.” Those are as true a words now as when they were first spoken in 2013. Also check out Canada’s autobiography, Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence, including the story of the founding of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

How to leverage prior knowledge to enhance learning

Here’s a nice explanation in layman’s terms of researcher Marlieke Tina Renee van Kesteren and her colleague’s research findings about how memories can be harnessed to enhance learning. Key graf: “Both students and teachers often think that once something is learned it is set in stone in the brain and they don’t have to pay attention to it anymore. However, it actually makes sense to retrieve previously learned information often (a process known as retrieval practice).”

Common Core—A Correction

Several readers wrote to correct a story we linked to last week regarding a Florida school dropping Common Core was actually never a Common Core school. As one reader notes “Speaking as a high school teacher, I believe Common Core standards (they are standards, not a “method of teaching,” as described by the article) have advantages and drawbacks… True, factors contributing to students’ test-taking success are often difficult to pin down; however, much strong research [see here, for example]. indicates that higher test scores are directly correlated to higher socioeconomic status. Naples, the location of Mason Classical Academy, is among the 10 wealthiest cities in Florida.”

That’s what we get for naively thinking that education is a “Faux-News-Free” zone.

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!

• NEW! 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 The Magic of Impromptu Speaking: Create a Speech that Will Be Remembered for Years in Under 30 Seconds, by Andrii Sedniev.  Andrii is someone to be reckoned with—as the book description  notes: “At the age of 19, Andrii obtained his CCIE (Certified Cisco Internetwork Expert) certification, the most respected certification in the IT world, and became the youngest person in Europe to hold it. At the age of 23, he joined an MBA program at one of the top 10 MBA schools in the USA as the youngest student in the program, and at the age of 25 he joined Cisco Systems’ Head Office as a Product Manager responsible for managing a router which brought in $1 billion in revenue every year.”  Impressed by Andrii’s resume, we picked up Andrii’s book, and we’re glad we did. Along with useful insights, Andrii provides wonderful stories about speaking, including his own growth from shy youth to outgoing public speaker. A useful primer to help you gain more comfort in speaking publicly, and an easy, nice read.

A Popular App to Help You Learn to Play the Guitar, Piano, Bass, and Ukelele

We’ve heard some great things about the multiplatform app “Yousician,” which helps you learn to play a musical more quickly by giving you instant feedback. If you’re looking to release your inner musician, this may be the approach for you.

What’s the Difference Between STEM and STEAM?

This worthwhile article from npj Science of Learning does a good job of explaining how an appreciation of arts and the humanities can allow for more creative work in STEM. We love the pictures showing Leonardo Da Vinci’s work—if you’re at all interested in STEAM, you can’t miss Walter Isaacson’s magnificent biography Leonardo da Vinci.

Common Core—An Interesting Experiment

There is an ongoing controversy going on with the US Common Core—here’s an interesting article about a Florida school that dropped Common Core, and consequently went to #1.  “Thanks to the classical approach of phonics, an impressive 90 percent of the third-grade students at Mason Classical Academy were proficient in English Language Arts, compared to just 58 percent in the county overall, most of whom rely on Common Core.”  It would be valuable to replicate this effort with different classes and teachers and to put it forward through research channels.

Our own opinion is that many of today’s teachers are brilliant, and the more we can give them the leeway to teach using their own creative skills, the better off students, on average, will be.

MOOC of the Week

We’re 2/3rds through the University of California, San Diego’s Introduction to Algae.  We think algae are pretty cool critters, and this MOOC is helping us understand why algae are so important in the earthly scheme of things.  The two key instructors, “Ike” Levine and Stephen Mayfield, are both excellent—personable, likeable, and in Ike’s case in particular, with good explanatory skills, as with exemplary guest lecturer Bianca Brahamsha.

We must admit that the video editing and presentation style could have been greatly improved—we’re always annoyed, for example, when complex textbook- and academic-journal style pictures are thrown up on a screen all at once—with the imagery often so small that it’s impossible to make out what’s going on. (Check out Andrew Ng’s beautifully taught Machine Learning course for great examples of how to gradually build complex material on the screen.) It’s also annoying when one instructor repeats what another guest instructor has already taught—meaning no one reviewed the MOOC in gestalt to ensure all the instructors worked well together. The feedback on the quizzes, unfortunately,  is mostly non-existent.

But if you wink past the sporadic drips and drabs of fairly advanced biochemistry, (well, it’s nothing to worry about if you’re a biochemist), this is a fascinating MOOC that covers what algae are, how they’ve evolved, and how they’ve transformed our planet. It’s a  little like watching an interesting documentary in the form of 1950s style horror film—the subject matter is fascinating, but you can’t help but wonder what cheesy thing you can laugh at that will happen next in the production. See if you can spot the guest lecturer who seems so bored with his own lecture that he looks about to fall asleep, double bonus points if you point out the bobbing guest lecturer.

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!

• NEW! 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

There’s something about a map that brings extraordinary meaning to what, where, and even who you are in life.  (The long and the short of it is, we’re among the map-obsessed minority known as “mapheads.”) So we couldn’t resist reading On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, by New York Times bestselling author Simon Garfield. Simon takes readers through an insightful history of how maps and map-making unfolded over the millenia. If your sense of place isn’t complete without a map, and you’re a bit of a history buff, you will enjoy this book. (An earlier book we also enjoyed several years ago was Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, by Ken Jennings.)

School Is Expensive. Is It Worth It?

This intriguing Weekend Interview with Bryan Caplan by James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal has a terrific description of Caplan’s signaling theory of education. “Suppose you have a bachelor’s in philosophy from Mr. Caplan’s doctoral alma mater, and you’re applying for a job somewhere other than a college philosophy department. What does the sheepskin signal? His answer is threefold: intelligence, work ethic and conformity. “Finishing a philosophy degree from Princeton—most people are not smart enough to do that,” he says. At the same time, ‘you could be very smart and still fail philosophy at Princeton, because you don’t put in the time and effort to go and pass your classes.’”

How to Do a Successful Online Learning Binge

Normally, we’re not advocates of binge learning—after all, cramming doesn’t build as good a neural structure.  But there’s some times when life intervenes and your only real option is to binge on the materials at hand. Here’s another excellent article from Pat Bowden with her recommendations for completing a MOOC when speed is your only option.

The most famous psychology study of all time was a sham
We’re always interested in psychology, and the Stanford Prison Experiment has long had our interest just because of its popularity, despite the obvious and deep-rooted flaws of the experiment.  This first-rate article by Ben Bloom, “The Lifespan of a Lie,” relates how experts have all the way along been suspicious of Zimbardo and his findings—and how Zimbardo has completely misrepresented key aspects of the experiment.  

As Bloom notes: “The appeal of the Stanford prison experiment seems to go deeper than its scientific validity, perhaps because it tells us a story about ourselves that we desperately want to believe: that we, as individuals, cannot really be held accountable for the sometimes reprehensible things we do. As troubling as it might seem to accept Zimbardo’s fallen vision of human nature, it is also profoundly liberating. It means we’re off the hook. Our actions are determined by circumstance. Our fallibility is situational. Just as the Gospel promised to absolve us of our sins if we would only believe, the SPE offered a form of redemption tailor-made for a scientific era, and we embraced it.”

If you’re a psychology enthusiast, Bloom’s article  is a must read.

29 of  the Best Flipped Classroom Apps for Highschool Teachers

There are currently over 80,000 educational apps available to teachers. So it can sometimes be tough to figure out the best.  This listing of best apps is particularly useful because it has a lot of apps that can help students create videos—something that can really boost learning on all sorts of topics, because students love to do it.

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!
• NEW! 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
• New articles related to learning, updated daily: The Learning Methods Daily

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week’s read was How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, by Michael Pollan. We’ve had this book suggested to us by a number of Learning How to Learners, so we wanted to see why all the interest.  First off, Pollan is a great science writer—he’s able to pull the reader into the world of psychedelics and what science is discovering about them, whether or not psychedelics are “your thing.” Pollan makes a great case for why the recent movement to begin studying psychedelics again is beneficial—even as he also gives an even-handed description of the “wow factor” and the dangers of these unusual drugs. A thought-provoking and interesting read.

How Blockbuster MOOCs Could Shape the Future of Teaching

Here’s a fascinating article from Jeff Young at EdSurge on monster MOOCs and their impact on academia.  Barb argues in the article that the many so-called “second-tier” universities are top-tier when it comes to great teachers.

The article has some pointers to great MOOCs, noting (we’ve supplied links to lead you to the courses): “One of the newest blockbuster MOOCs is The Science of Well-Being, offered by a Yale University professor. The University of California at Berkeley has drawn record numbers of students with a similar course on The Science of Happiness. And the University of Queensland made the top 10 on edX with a course on The Science of Everyday Thinking. All of them offer advice for how to find fulfillment or think more clearly (and all promise to apply science to an everyday concern).”

Book Giveaway

Most successful people consider learning to be one of the most crucial skills to have as an entrepreneur. After interviewing more than 200 business founders and investors, CEO Library has put together a list of books about learning how to learn, based on the founder and investor recommendations. It’s a collection of the best books that teach you how to learn more efficiently. The giveaway ends on June 28 at 1:00 pm EDT (Eastern Time) and the prizes are: One mega-prize – all the books in the Learning How to Learn collection (see all the books here). That’s 10 great books for the big winner! And one book of your choice for 6 other winners. Go here to enter the giveaway. (We can’t help but note that very own A Mind for Numbers is high on the list!)

An Adaptive Math Program

We’ve been hearing good things about an adaptive math program called Knowre that “identifies and fills student learning gaps to help them reach their full potential.”  It builds strongly on gamified learning, and seems ideal for both schools and homeschooling. You might check Knowre out, and if you have any comments or already know anything about the program, please post on this discussion forum.

Exercise in the World of MOOCs

The redoubtable Pat Bowden of Online Learning Success has a nice posting on some of the different MOOCs related to exercise, as well as related thoughts on how to get exercise. And she has a nice mention of Terry’s discussion of the extraordinary value of exercise in Learning How to Learn!

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!

• NEW! 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!

Books of the Week

• We’ve just discovered that Barb’s book Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential is on sale for $1.99 on Kindle.  If you’ve been meaning to read it, this is a great price (and very temporary), so get it now!
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by John Carreyrou. This was such a riveting book that we finished it all in one evening. There’s something so alluring about Silicon Valley would-be geniuses who claim world-changing technology.  The upshot of our salacious Silicon salivation is this cautionary tale featuring world-class frauds and utterly ruthless, no-bounds-of-human-decency litigators. John Carreyrou and the Wall Street Journal deserve kudos for this edge-of-the-seat investigative reporting. See also Nick Gillespie’s interview with John Carreyrou.  Also a great book for audio.
• Macular Degeneration: A guide to help someone you love, by Paul Wallis. It’s easy to get all excited about a great new biography, or entertaining, insightful books on subjects like octopuses or trees. But who would have ever thought that a book on macular degeneration could be both entertaining and enlightening? Entertaining, that is, even if you know no one with macular degeneration, and even if (perhaps especially if) you’ve never known anything before about macular degeneration?  Yes, Macular Degeneration: A guide to help someone you love is a delightful, informative, and upbeat book about a condition that most know little about.  Chapters 1 through 9 in particular give a nice overview of the topic. Paul Wallis is a good writer, whose use of analogies and examples makes the whole book sing—this book is the culmination of his career’s work. Dr. Wallis’s book is well worth reading if you’re generally interested in unusual subjects, if you’d like to learn a little about a subject that might save your own eyesight someday, and if you enjoy taking a literary walk with a good writer who has valuable insights on life. (And yes, it has an audio version.)

2018 World Cup—Amaze Your Friends by Telling Them All the World Cup Winners!

4-Time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis is back with another great memory tip video—this one gives great tips for remembering all the world cup winners, evuh!  If you’re a soccer fan, you will love this video. And even if you’re not a soccer fan, you’ll find much to learn in this great video, which gives a sense of how you can make memorizing fun!

Barb the Opening Keynote for Homeschoolers July 13 in Atlanta: Special Discount for LHTLers

If you’re at all interested in homeschooling—or in meeting Barb—please come to the SEA Homeschoolers Conference at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta for Barb’s keynote on the afternoon of July 13. SEA is now offering one-day convention tickets for families who can’t attend the whole weekend. There are special rates for the hotel rooms for those traveling from out of town.

The convention is family-friendly, secular-oriented, and inclusive. It will feature a wide variety of workshops and talks for parents, as well as a full weekend of activities for kids and teens. There will be a vendor hall showcasing the best in secular homeschool materials, opportunities to network, and more. Open to homeschoolers,  anyone interested in homeschooling, or anyone who would just like to come out on Friday for the keynote on learning! Tickets are on sale now—the coupon code for 20% off is “BarbAtSEA.”

We should note that the recommended course book, A Mind for Numbers, is very popular with homeschoolers, and Barb and Terry’s upcoming book Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens, is ideal for homeschoolers as well as regular students—and their parents.

A Survey on Lifelong Learning in the Workplace

Barb’s friends at the Digital Learning Consortium are collecting (completely anonymous) information about lifelong learning in the workplace.  If you’d like to help them out in making an impact on the future of digital learning in the workplace, please take the survey.  We took the survey ourselves, just because we find it fascinating to learn what questions are of interest in lifelong learning.

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

• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

New articles related to learning, updated daily: The Learning Methods Daily

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

We were very lucky to receive a pre-publication copy of 4-time US memory champion Nelson Dellis’s 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 in September—it’s the best book on how to develop your memory we’ve ever read, so we highly recommend pre-ordering your copy.  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 plan to reread the book as soon as we receive our final hard copy. We can’t recommend this book more strongly!

Looking to Hire a Good Education Program Leader?

Barb’s good friend Erin Valdez has strong experience as a non-profit program manager and she is looking for a job—in Texas or telecommuting with some travel is great. Erin believes in the power of students and teachers create innovative pathways to success.  She is eager to help non-profits and others by leveraging her experience as a philanthropic portfolio strategist, policy advisor, school leader, and vision-aligned partnership builder.  You can find out more about her via email, erin.davis.valdez@outlook.com.  She is also eager to connect with her fellow “fans of Barb” via LinkedIn.

Can You Help with Video Captions?

Many professors are facing a challenge nowadays in that all online videos used for classes nowadays need to have high-quality video captions to be compliant with US university accessibility standards (99% or above accuracy in relaying the speaker’s exact words with correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar). YouTube’s automatic captioning feature is nice, but it isn’t good enough—see Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal’s Caption Fail Videos, for example.

Barb is currently facing a bit of a challenge in that she has roughly 50 hours of videos in two mathematically-oriented classes that need high-quality captions.  She finds it generally takes her about 5 hours to fix 1 hour of YouTube video captions. Loaded here on YouTube, for example, is her Introductory Statistics and Probability class (she’s fixed the captions on the first video, so that one’s locked—only 31 videos to go!) And here is her “How Things Work” class, based on Lou Bloomfield’s great textbook by that name.  

If you’re interested in Barb’s courses and would like to contribute to the captions, feel free to go to any video in the courses, click on the gear symbol/add subtitles/add subtitles/English/edit. When done, submit the contribution, and let others keep working, (unless you’ve finished the whole video, in which case you can submit it for review).

If you might have advice for Barb and the many other professors in the same situation, who have many sometimes complex and mathematically-oriented videos that need 99% or better accuracy in the captions, please post in the discussion forum here.  

Blackout Poetry

If you’d like to see some intriguing examples of an increasingly popular phenomenon called “blackout poetry,” you might try checking Professor Joseph Garnjobst’s daily posts on his Twitter account: @jgarnjobst. Joe’s “blackouts” grow from Dan Neil’s auto column in the Wall Street Journal.

Barb on the “On Grit” Podcast

Join Rigel Patterson and Barb for a fascinating podcast about learning, grit, and the challenges people face when changing careers. Barb shares stories about people who buckled down and pursued what for them seemed like long shots, if their pasts were any indication of what they could be good at.

Seymour Papert—A Towering Figure in Education

Many people remain unaware of the importance of Seymour Papert in a wide variety of areas in education. A South African who vehemently opposed apartheid (he organized classes for local black servants), Papert was a rigorous and creative thinker who ultimately earned two doctorates in mathematics. He went from constructivism to constructionism in his approach to education, and helped kick-start the Maker Movement.  Read Papert’s obituary in Nature to get a better sense of Papert’s impact, and watch this “turtle” video.  [Hat tip: Lorena Barba.]

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!

• NEW! 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!

Books of the Week

• We often find that when we visit a country (and even when we’re simply interested in that country), it’s a great idea to read books related to that country’s history. Barb’s recent trip to China led her to read Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, by Jung Chang. This revisionist biography lends a sympathetic eye to Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), who is considered by many to be the most important woman in Chinese history. If you want to catch a sense of the conditions that led to modern China, this intriguing book will keep you captivated—great biographies like this one are the easiest ways to learn about history. Incidentally, Empress Dowager Cixi is a nice book for audio. Jung Chang is also the author of the spectacular international best-seller Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, with over ten million copies sold worldwide. Yes, Jung Chang can write!
• While in China we were also recommended another related biography—Wu: The Chinese Empress who schemed, seduced and murdered her way to become a living God, (a living God is, after all, a nice gig if you can get it). Where Cixi comes across as brilliant but sometimes necessarily hard-edged, Wu comes across more along the lines of the successfully sinister described in Barb’s classic, tongue-in-cheek titled but critically-acclaimed book Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend. (As Harvard’s Steven Pinker noted apropos Evil Genes: “A fascinating scientific and personal exploration of the roots of evil, filled with human insight and telling detail.”)
• China’s Crony Capitalism, by Minxin Pei.  If you want a more up-to-date perspective on modern-day social structures in China, this book will give you a broad perspective. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, there couldn’t possibly be another facet of corrupt cronyism, off Pei goes to explore a new area, from business, to environmental protection, to the judicial system, to education, to the police themselves—and far more. If you’re doing business with China, this book, along with Poorly Made in China, is a must-read.

Math Education in the US

Here is an excellent summary by experienced math teacher Barry Garelick of the deep-seated challenges with standard US mathematics education—he includes a perceptive discussion of issues with Common Core. Barry’s book Math Education in the US: Still Crazy After All These Years, is available for free on KindleUnlimited. [Run again due to previous missing link.]

Standing Up Against Campus Intolerance

Unfortunately, university campuses, which should be the most stalwart bastion of learning and opening the mind to new and different perspectives, are becoming propagandists for narrow-minded ideologues.  The University of New Hampshire is the latest to fall prey to these propagandists.  The cost to attend this publicly-funded (with a $336 million dollar endowment) institution? $15,000 for in-state and $30,000 for out-of-state tuition.  You may wish to reconsider prior to sending your child to this institution, or contributing support as an alumnus. Polite and kind people tend to step back from dysfunctional behavior, but it’s time to (politely) fight back against self-serving extremists—feel free to let the University of New Hampshire know your thoughts: the incoming president is James W. Dean Jr, and the interim provost is Wayne Jones.

The best institution we know of that is fighting against the wave of campus intolerance, which is often sadly supported by weak-willed university administrators, is FIRE: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.  We’ve donated—consider making your own donation today!

MOOCs of the Week

Ever wonder what blockchain is all about? The University at Buffalo is demystifying this revolutionary technology through a specialization of four Coursera courses:

• Blockchain Basics
• Smart Contracts
• Decentralized Applications (Dapps)
• Blockchain Platforms

The courses are ideal for programmers and designers involved in developing and implementing blockchain applications, as well as anyone who is interested in understanding blockchain’s potential. Learn more and register for the Blockchain Specialization.

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!

• NEW! 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

New articles related to learning, updated daily: The Learning Methods Daily

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Want to Help a Child or Teenager to Learn?

There are so many books to help teachers understand how younger students learn. But you may be surprised to learn that there are virtually no books for those students themselves, or for their parents.  

If you want to help a youngster from ages ten to seventeen to learn how to learn, based on practical insights from neuroscience, we can’t help but suggest our own upcoming book Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens.  The funny but deeply informative pictures alone are worth the price of the book. (And yes, there are zombies…) In some ways, this seemingly simple book goes deeper into how we learn than even our MOOC Learning How to Learn. You’ll find that this is also a great book to read together as a family. And you’ll see that even if your children are in the toddler stage, you’ll get some powerful insights on learning that will help you guide them in their learning as they mature.

Barb Is Conducting a Rare 3-Day Workshop for Parents and Teachers about Learning

With the launch of the book Learning How to Learn, Barb is conducting a rare 3-day workshop to help parents and teachers discover how to help their children learn better.  This workshop features active sessions where you’ll interact directly with Barb alongside the other workshop participants. You’ll gain a deeper insight into how the brain learns, how you can help your child to be more motivated, and how to learn more easily and with less frustration.  The workshop will be in beautiful and historic Ljubljana, Slovenia, 24 – 26 September 2018. Register now!

Learn Your Learning Strengths and Weaknesses

We’ve discovered an excellent Academic Skills Inventory,  created by Adina Glickman, Director of Learning Strategy Programs at Stanford University. To take the survey, go to this website and enter your email. See where your learning strengths and weaknesses lie—the results might be very helpful in improving your learning.

Learning How to Learn Has an Online Newspaper!

Our Learning How to Learn archivist, Cristian Artoni, has used Paper.li to set up a new and practical website that finds new articles related to learning (based on a few keywords), and then publishes a new issue every day. Check this out at our new The Learning Methods Daily!

Podcast: Teaching Teachers-to-Be about Learning

Learning is hard work. The most commonly used study techniques often provoke the illusion of knowing. In this episode of the podcast “Tea for Teaching,” David Parisian, a member of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at SUNY-Oswego discuss how he helps students overcome their misperceptions by introducing them to the science of learning. Learn more about the great book on learning, Make It Stick, as well as about how our MOOC Learning How to Learn is used to help train teachers to be better teachers.

Becoming an Effective Instructor on Camera: Tips from the Art Director’s Studio
John Heijligers, the Art Director for EIT Digital at Eindhoven University of Technology, has vast experience in directing new instructors behind a camera (he comes from a background as a director in film). John has written an informative article—coupled with a pretty funny video on seasick instructors—about how to be more natural on camera.

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!

• NEW! 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 selection is Friend of a Friend: Understanding the Hidden Networks That Can Transform Your Life and Your Career, by business school professor David Burkus. He offers great insight into how and why you can broaden your network, and how important it is to open your mind to those who are different from you, in background, training, outlook, or ideology. We particularly like the stories of both well-known people such as Tim Ferriss, and lesser-known but intriguing characters who’ve made their career breakthroughs by tapping into networks in unusual ways. We couldn’t agree more with the book’s central premise: “making choices about who your friends are and being aware of who is a friend of a friend—can directly influence the person you become, for better or for worse.”

A nice book also for audio listening.

How to Fall Asleep in 2 Minutes or Less—An Outstanding Article!

There was a problem in the US during World War II. Pilots were dying because they were so stressed that they couldn’t relax. Even in the bits and pieces of time pilots did have to sleep, they were often too stressed to do so.  This useful article by Brett and Kate McKay on the blog The Art of Manliness describes Naval Ensign Bud Winter’s useful techniques for teaching relaxation and ways to rapidly fall asleep.  Barb has found these techniques to be invaluable in improving her ability to fall asleep! (And don’t forget last year’s Book-of-the-Year, Why We Sleep.)

When Do You Lose the Ability to Speak Like a Native Speaker?

This interesting article by Dana G. Smith in Scientific American describes a recent research study (which included pre-eminent psychologist Steven Pinker), of when the ability to speak like a native speaker disappears.  The surprising and controversial result? Age 18!

The 23 Best Memory Improvement Books

Have you ever wanted to learn more about how to improve your memory?  Check out this listing by Upjourney. (A Mind for Numbers is #3!)

How to Learn a Musical Instrument by Internet

One question seems to frequently arise when it comes to online learning—what are the best resources for learning to play a musical instrument?  If that’s your question, the ever-curious Pat Bowden at Online Learning Success has answers for you—read on!

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!

NEW! 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!