Author: barboakley

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!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

About forty years ago, Barb picked up the now-classic book Juggling for the Complete Klutz, by John Cassidy and B. C. Rimbeaux, which comes complete with three bean bags for juggling. Following the book’s instructions, she gradually learned to juggle. (We’re not talking circus level here—just juggling three items was Barb’s triumph!)  Juggling is a bit odd in that you must focus on the item you’re catching while also being more broadly aware of several other items at the same time. We’ve heard the suggestion that juggling can be a great way to relax into the diffuse mode. So recently, Barb picked up another copy of Juggling for the Complete Klutz and its accompanying bean bags and began to renew her juggling skills.  We’re not sure of the underlying neuro-mechanisms, but juggling does seem to be a great way of shifting mental gears.  If you want to learn a fun way to disconnect from whatever you’re doing, try learning to juggle!

Award for the top MOOC in Taiwan! (And, Barb in Taiwan and Shanghai!)

Professor Kenzen Chen of National Chiao-Tung University and Professor Mu-Ming Poo of the Institute of Neuroscience at the Chinese Academy of Science, have developed a new, 7-week Chinese course, the Tao of Learning, based in part on the English Learning How to Learn MOOC. Dr. Chen and Dr. Poo’s work has led to their Tao of Learning MOOC becoming Taiwan’s top MOOC of 2017, as well as kick-starting new MOOC offerings at China’s three major MOOC platforms (XueTangX, NetEase, and CNMOOC)!  Barb is heading to Taiwan to see Kenzen receive his well-deserved award–and to speak about the behind the scenes creation of the MOOC Learning How to Learn. If you’d like to meet her (she’d love to meet you!), check out her speaking events in Taiwan on May 14th and 15th. Kenzen, Mu-Ming and Barb will also be together conducting professional development workshop for China’s MOOC instructors at Shanghai Jiao Tong University on May 17th and 18th.

Here is more information about the different versions of The Tao of Learning:

• ewant  (ended Apr. 30, honor assignment going till may 31; summer for-credit only in preparation)
• XueTangX (will end May 31th, no honor assignment because the peer-review function is not available)
• CNMOOC (ended Apr. 30, no honor assignment because the peer-review function is not available)
• NetEase (will end June 30, self-paced)

Elevate Learning: Taking Education Higher, SUNY Cortland, New York May 22 – 25, 2018

Barb will be keynoting at this amazing SUNY conference, which highlights innovative pedagogical practices and emerging technologies. There’s also a session on how to Learning How to Learn has been successfully used to help improve students learning abilities, which affects institutional retention.
Come to see pedagogical innovations, student-centered experiences, flexible educational settings, application of trending technologies, and creative approaches to assessing evidence of learning. And maybe after her keynote, have coffee with Barb!

MOOC of the Week

First, we have to admit—we’re huge fans of  Dr. Felicia Vulcu, who happens to be an incredibly funny person as well as an outstanding scientist.  Felicia has teamed up with equally talented Dr. Caitlin Mullarkey to create the course DNA Decoded, which will fill you in on all sorts of intriguing insights about DNA—that tantalizing hereditary material at the heart of modern crime investigations, home-testing kits about our health and ancestry, and much more. Watch this trailer and then sign up!

Another Great Memory Tips Video from 4-Time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis!

Finally a bit of mental math! Here’s another great video from our friend Nelson Dellis with an easy mental math trick anyone can do–how to do cube-roots for any 2-digit perfect-cubed number. The best part? You only need to memorize 10 things beforehand. Learn it in this short video and then you can wow your friends!

Edx to Move Away from “Offering Virtually Everything for Free”, Begins Testing a Support Fee

Class Central keeps a close eye on changes in the MOOC world that can affect learners.  Check out this insightful article about Edx’s moves away from “free.”

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

Sometimes we enjoy stepping back into the past, (it can be surprising how many of today’s challenges are just repeats from the past!) This week, we dove into biographer extraordinaire Walter Isaacson’s first historical biography: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.  What’s not to like about a prototypical science nerd who had a smooth way about his life and (often lusty) loves?  Franklin was something of a North American Leonardo da Vinci (another of Isaacson’s great biographies).  If your background about US history is a little sketchy, Franklin’s life will also catch you up on all the major events that swirled around the country’s founding. Fantastic book!

The Scientific Importance of Free Speech

If you believe science is a foundation for modern society, you’ll be attuned to this important article, written by neurobiologist Adam Perkinson, on the vital importance of free speech in making advances in science. A perfect example of how seemingly “rational” scientists can attempt to crush dissenting perspectives in science can be found in Nobel Prize winner Stanley Prusiner’s Madness and Memory: The Discovery of Prions—A New Biological Principle of Disease. (Prusiner deserves the Nobel as much for his ability to overcome those who would halt his research as for his scientific breakthroughs.) Perkinson himself is the author of the interesting-looking The Welfare Trait: How State Benefits Affect Personality.  Environment and culture matters a great deal, as we discovered in our own explorations of pathologies of altruism. Truly helping others is often not as easy as it seems, and we must be careful to avoid doing more harm than good through seemingly obvious “beneficial” actions.

Fortunately, we feel there is a genuinely beneficial way to others—by teaching younger people to be more independent and effective learners and critical thinkers. That’s the project we’re working on now!

Learning How to Learn: 70 Books Guaranteed To Accelerate Your Learning And Unlock Your Potential

And speaking of learning, our friend Arthur Worsley has created a great reading list of 70 top books on learning. (Our A Mind for Numbers is #13!)

Jazz improv and your brain: The key to creativity?

This article by Sandee LaMotte at CNN describes how inhibiting the part of the brain that allows self-criticism, (that pesky dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), can allow the default network (the “diffuse mode”) to become more active. Neuroscientist Dr. Charles Limb, himself an accomplished jazz musician, notes: “I view this as a neurological description of letting go… If you’re too self-conscious, it’s very hard to be free creatively.” Interestingly, Lamb also notes: “What the trained experts who are so creative are always revealing is that it was practice—a lot of effort and practice—that gave them the creative edge, rather than the genius, talent or aptitude they were born with.”

MOOC of the Week

Coursera’s brand new Career Decisions: From Insight to Impact is taught by Sharon Castonguay, Director of the Gordon Career Center at Wesleyan University. As Sharon notes: “If you are interested in this course, chances are you are facing some sort of transition in your life. Perhaps you are thinking about switching jobs, or changing careers. Maybe you’re starting college, and are trying to get a handle on what you want to study. Or you just graduated, and are trying to figure out what to do next. If you’re interested in making good career decisions, this course is for you!”

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 have two related books to recommend this week:

• The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, by Madeline Levine, PhD. Our tendency is to focus on obviously disadvantaged kids coming from poor families. That can be a mistake, says author and practicing psychologist Madeline Levine, who works in affluent Marin County, California. Consumerism and focus on achievement can produce depressed, anxious, angry and bored teenagers who suffer from high rates of drug use, eating disorders,  and suicide. Sometimes, in fact, the seeming poor can have a far wealthier internal lives. Levine offers great suggestions for the advantaged to help them avoid common parenting pitfalls involving intrusiveness and autonomy.
• The Courage to Grow: How Acton Academy Turns Learning Upside Down, by Laura Sandefer.  The Acton Academies are private schools that were created to solve precisely the types of problems discussed in Levine’s Price of Privilege.  Laura Sandefer tells a personal story of her own children, and how and why she and her husband Jeff chose to develop a new system of schooling that focuses on the hero’s journey—and vaults students well above their standard grade level. (Incidentally, Jeff Sandefer, with his MBA from Harvard, was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top Entrepreneurship professors in the United States and by The Economist magazine as one of the top Business School professors in the world.) Acton Academies are spreading quickly worldwide, and it’s little wonder, because the schools embrace personal accountability even as they provide powerful learning opportunities for children. An honest, forthright, deeply thought-provoking book about what an education could and should be. (Audio version read by Laura Sandefer herself.)

How to Get a Low Cost Accredited Bachelor’s Degree Online

This magnificent article for Class Central by Manoel Cortes Mendez tells the story of how he got a bachelor’s degree in computer science online and at low cost through the the Open University (OU), a distinguished UK institution. Manoel notes: “Despite its unconventional mode of delivery, the OU is on paper a university like the others. More precisely, it’s a recognized body in the UK, which is British legalese for fully accredited. And it’s one of the few UK universities to also be regionally accredited in the US. So if after your OU degree, you want to pursue further studies in a brick university, you can. And this includes prestigious universities. For instance, one of my OU classmates went on to study a master’s degree in computer science at Oxford University.”

If you’re interested in low cost, high quality online degree programs, don’t miss this superb article!

So, You’re about to Submit a MOOC Quiz, and Your Internet Dies. What Do You Do?

Read this helpful article by Online Learning Success about how to cope with an unreliable internet, and be prepared!

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

As Learning How to Learners know, we’re keen fans of everything related to Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the “father of modern neuroscience.”  Here’s a swell article and video by Nasos Papadopoulos of Metalearn that will help you apply some of Ramón y Cajal’s key principles for success to your own life.

How can one control their nerves during public speaking or even an exam?

Barb’s answer to this question on Quora was so popular that it was also translated into French and republished on Slate FR.  

Are You Interested in Practical Creativity?

Building and creating beautiful objects like ceramics, glass, tapestry, kinetic sculpture, woodworked items, and bound books takes a special form of creativity—a more practical creativity.  Check out “The Practical Creative” podcast to learn more about these unique forms of expression.

Creating a “To-Do” List at Night May Help You Fall Asleep More Quickly

This nice Psychology Today blog post by Lydia Denworth describes recent research showing that: “In the study of 57 young adults, researchers from Baylor University and Emory University found that writing to-do lists, rather than writing about completed tasks, helped people fall asleep an average of nine minutes faster—in about 16 minutes versus 25.” [Hat tip: brandonrox10.]

The Problem with Learning Styles

Those of you who have been following the saga of lack of validation for learning styles theory won’t be surprised to read the following article about the latest findings: “‘Another nail in the coffin for learning styles’ – students did not benefit from studying according to their supposed learning style.”

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!

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Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week, we read Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft—if you have any interest in writing at all, this is a great book, especially when paired with William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, which is geared towards non-fiction.  What we particularly like about King’s book is that he doesn’t just talk about the nuts and bolts of writing (although what he does provide along those lines is great).  The memoir portions of the book are utterly engrossing—you’ll learn what it’s like to grow up and become an international best-seller, and the bizarre things that best-seller-dom can do to your psyche. King has sailed through it all—including his near lethal run-in with an out-of-control car. By our count, this is an “all-time top five” book on writing!  

MOOCs to Help You Become a Better Writer

Here is a terrific article by Pat Bowden in Online Learning Success about the many MOOCs that can help you learn to become a better writer.  Pat has taken many of the MOOCs she mentions, so she knows what she’s talking about!

Farnam Street Blog

We really enjoy the Farnam Street Blog—it’s dedicated to reducing your blind spots in life and business, so you have a better chance of coming out ahead.  The latest podcast on Farnam is with our very own Barb Oakley, covering some material you know related to learning, such as focused and diffuse modes, but also veering into other territory, as with the best techniques to help your child excel in math.

Math Education in the US

Here is an excellent summary by experienced math teacher Barry Garelick of the 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.)

Famous Failures

One of our favorite interviews was with Ozan Varol, on his website “Famous Failures.”  Ozan has turned the interview into a podcast, which you can listen to here. 

We should give you a cryptic preview that Ozan has a big book coming out with one of the world’s leading publishers—his work is catching international attention!

The Santa Fe Institute’s Spring 2018 Complexity Challenge: Solve a Classic Dynamic Optimization Problem for a Prize  

Looking for a new way to learn? Want to apply your quantitative and reasoning skills in a new way? The Complexity Challenge hosted on Complexity Explorer is a unique online learning program where students are given an open-ended question to solve using methods from complex systems science. Whether you’re familiar with complex systems science or simply great at problem solving, apply now and try your hand!

Unlike other online competitions, the Santa Fe Institute’s Challenges aren’t designed to solicit the right answer, but many right answers. It’s then up to the Challenge participants themselves to decide the best solution through the Institute’s unique peer review system. Therefore, participants with a background in any field – from sociology to computer engineering – should be able to look at the upcoming Challenge, see something they recognize, and come up with a brilliant solution.

And did we mention there will be prizes? Yes, there will be prizes! Apply now, the Challenge starts April 23rd! The Institute is only accepting 200 applicants on a first come, first serve basis.

Learning how to learn + mastering things effectively—an interview with Barb

Here’s a review and discussion on effective learning with Abel Csabai—episode 94 on his SSD podcasts.  If you’d like a quick review of the ideas of Learning How to Learn, and a little more, you’ll enjoy this podcast.

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!