Author: barboakley

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

We want to bring up one of our favorite books: How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life, by Louis Bloomfield.  Barb has used this book for years to teach basic ideas of engineering to ordinary non-engineering types.  After all, “technological literacy” doesn’t just mean that you know a smattering about how your computer works—it should also mean you know the basics of how your car works, how your refrigerator keeps things cool, and how your house is kept warm in the winter. How Things Work will allow you to much more easily understand how these great technological advances work. Bloomfield uses wonderful, simple metaphors and great imagery that allow you to easily “chunk” the key ideas, even as you find yourself wading easily into the underlying physics.  There’s also a less textbooky version of the book How Everything Works: Making Physics Out of the Ordinary. Incidentally, if you are an engineering professor, you’ll find some great ideas here to more rapidly onboard your students using Lou’s great metaphors.

Although Dr. Bloomfield would have no memory of it now, about a decade ago, Barb was able to visit and tour his fantastic physics demonstrations at the University of Virginia.  He’s a wonderful man!

EarJellies

The reason we’re bringing up Lou Bloomfield’s terrific book is also that Lou happens to have invented a wonderful shape-memory silicone (MemorySil™), that has been developed into earplugs called EarJellies. EarJellies are bulb-shaped, but when you roll them out long and thin, they remember that new shape long enough for you to insert them in your ears. They gently return to their bulb shape, sealing your ear canal perfectly and with almost no pressure. They provide protection from loud sound, freedom from noise (including snoring), and guard against water (for swimmers).

Lou and his partner Rudy McEntire have launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter to help them ramp up production and start to have an impact on the world. Surprisingly many people have struggles with sound and their ears—many of Lou’s beta testers have found EarJellies life-altering in a good way: they can finally leave home without wearing earmuffs, they can swim again, they can perform on-stage again, they can sleep through the night. Lou and Rudy will be working with hospitals to help critically ill children and parents endure the noise.

We’ve given our part for crowd-funding Lou and Rudy’s invention. Knowing Lou’s work as we do, we can highly recommend his earplugs even though we are still avidly awaiting the ones we’ve ordered from his campaign.

Intrusive sound is often a major issue for learners, so while you are waiting, we can recommend Peltor High Performance Ear Muffs, which we find really help our focus as soon as we put them on.  On planes, we wear noise cancelling headphones to look less dweebish. (Although sometimes we throw all concern about how we look out the window and slap on these 31dB honkers.)

Want a Terrific, Inexpensive Masters Degree in Computer Science?

As Lindsay McKenzie notes in this excellent article in Inside Higher Ed: “Analysis of Georgia Tech’s MOOC-inspired online master’s degree in computer science suggests that elite institutions can successfully deliver high-quality, low-cost degrees to students at scale…. Students admitted to the online program typically had slightly lower academic credentials than those admitted to the in-person program, but they performed slightly better in their identical and blind-marked final assessments—a finding the study hailed as ‘the first rigorous evidence that we know of showing that an online degree program can increase educational attainment.’” Although the article questions whether other institutions will follow suit, the reality is that following suit is inevitable, and smarter administrators will pick up quickly on this.

Eddie Woo—Math Rockstar Teacher

Have a great math teacher when you are young can make an extraordinary difference in how your life unfolds. You have just such a teacher at your fingertips with Eddie Woo, star of the free math YouTube “WooTube” channel, Australia’s Local Hero for 2018, and top ten finalist for the Global Teacher Prize. We’re rooting for you, Eddie! [Hat tip, Michelle Imison.]

Registration is open for 2018 Summer STEM camps!
Oakland University’s School of Engineering and Computer Science offers weekly programs for upper elementary, middle and high school students who want to explore Science, Technology, Engineering and/or Mathematics (STEM). (We should point out that Oakland University, where Barb is a professor of engineering, is in Michigan.)  Students are taken through a series of hands-on, student-centered experiences where they learn a little bit about each of the engineering fields. These programs are run by Chris Kobus, Barb’s longtime friend, who is an incredible engineering professor—the way he inspires kids is extraordinary. Register here!

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!

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

This week, we read Ann Hulbert’s Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies.  A strength of this book was its broad coverage of prodigies of all sorts—from computer programming savants like Bill Gates to dance and acting prodigy Shirley Temple.  (A concomitant weakness is that sometimes we wanted to learn more!) We particularly appreciated Hulbert’s highlighting of the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Some parents with extraordinary IQs, for example, have pushed their children in bizarre ways—with often disastrous results. Other parents have wholeheartedly devoted their lives to the children they wished to make into prodigies, only to find little solace in the long run with the resulting resentment. Somehow through all this, the book provides healthy encouragement for us ordinary, non-savant types.

There was a disconcerting tendency through the book to switch between prodigies even mid-paragraph, but otherwise, highly recommended!

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, and a “sit around and chat” session on the morning of July 14.

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.” There are also special rates for the hotel rooms for those traveling from out of town.

We should note that Barb’s A Mind for Numbers is incredibly popular with homeschoolers, and 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, is ideal for homeschoolers as well as regular students—and their parents.

¡The Mindshift MOOC now in Spanish!

En esta ocasión, estamos emocionados de anunciar que se encuentra disponible la versión en Español de “Mindshift – Transforma tu mente para superar obstáculos en el aprendizaje y descubrir tu potencial oculto”. Este curso complementa las estrategias de aprendizaje efectivo descritas en Aprendiendo a Aprender, con un enfoque especial en las carreras profesionales, y en cómo sacar el máximo provecho a nuestro aprendizaje en el contexto actual de cambio constante. Está basado en el libro reciente de Barb del mismo título.

Te invitamos a formar parte de esta iniciativa, y a llevar tu aprendizaje a un nuevo nivel. (¡Gracias a Orlando Trejo, Spanish Lead!)

Yes, Pi Day Is Already Past, But….

Memory Champion Nelson Dellis has made a hilarious video on how to memorize 15 digits of pi in 30 seconds. (The video is worth watching if only for the laughs!)

Can Memorization Improve Cognitive Abilities?

This fascinating Scientific American article by neuroscientist James Hartzell explores the “Sanskrit Effect,” where MRI scans have shown that memorizing ancient mantras increases the size of brain regions associated with cognitive function.Memorization—long disparaged in Western educational systems—may have a valuable side to it. [Hat tip, Alejandro Ribó (@aribo on Twitter).]

Having Trouble Understanding Math Concepts?

Check out the wonderfully likable Kalid Azad and his simple, clear math explanations on Better Explained.

An Interview Guide on Leadership

Sarah Levitt has written a book to help leaders better understand how other leaders wend their way through the difficult, sometimes lonely path of great leadership: A Book for Magnificent Leadership: Transform Uncertainty, Transcend Circumstance, Claim the Future.  Through interviewing successful leaders, Sarah has laid out guidelines that others can find useful. “The audience for this book includes CEOs, business leaders, those professionals contemplating a career change and those beginning a career as consultants.”

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

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

A Survey to Help Improve Learning How to Learn
Barb asks for your help in completing this survey by researchers Eulho Jung and Dongho Kim to help us better understand the learning that’s taking place in Learning How to Learn.  We hope to use the results of the survey to further improvement of LHTLers’ future learning experiences.

Book of the Week

This past week, we read How the Brain Learns, by David A. Sousa, now in its fifth edition, which was recommended to us as a top neuroscience-based book on learning.  If you’re looking for a good general overview of what we know from neuroscience about how to educate children better, this book has been put together with care.  A good aspect of the book is its comprehensive nature—there’s a nice overview of the brain and how it develops; how the brain processes information; memory; brain organization; and a particularly valuable section on the importance of music and art.  It’s not easy to make sense of all the disparate strands of neuroscience-related research and get it down in a logical, understandable form, and Sousa has done a yeoman’s job of it.

The book’s fault lies in its occasional acceptance of outdated, sometimes junk science.  This latest edition doesn’t mention or do justice to well-deserved criticism of topics such as learning styles, stereotype threat, multiple intelligences, or concept mapping. We’re hopeful that the book’s next edition will resolve these issues, and also add discussion of what we’ve found to be the most important issue in learning: procrastination.

Remember, Barb Speaking Tomorrow in San Francisco at the World’s Fair Nano!

Barb will be giving a talk about the future of education at World’s Fair Nano on Saturday, March 10th, 2018.  This talk will unwrap the specifics of her and Terry’s exciting new project, designed for global impact in many languages.  Barb plans to stay after her talk to shake hands and meet you! The folks at World’s Fair Nano have kindly arranged a special discount for LHTLers—just use the promotional code “BARBATNANO” for 15% off tickets. Register here.

Results from a Scientific Study on How to Learn a Language More Quickly

Data crunchers at Duolingo have discovered fascinating insights about the people who make much more progress in their language learning.  The keys, as described in this Inc. article by Minda Zetlin (co-author of the Geek Gap), are to:

1. Study the language right before bedtime.
2. Study every night, weekends included.

[Hat tip, polyglot language teacher Benny Lewis.]

Sleep Tips to Help Your Memory

Here’s a terrific video from memory champion Nelson Dellis with sleep tips to help your memory.  Sleep is, in fact, a critical, all-too-often neglected aspect of memory. This is why our recent “Book of the Year” for 2017 was researcher Matthew Walker’s terrific Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.

Learning Online with Khan Academy

We’re huge fans of Khan Academy—it’s a wonderful way to fill in gaps in your learning (particularly in math) without having to sign up for an entire course. At the same time, the videos are so informative that they can walk you through entire subjects with ease (and some practice on your part, of course!).  Here’s a nice article from Online Learning Success with more insight into Khan Academy.

MOOCs are not dead, but evolving
On the 10th anniversary of the first massive open online course, here’s a thoughtful article by Diane Peters of University Affairs on MOOCs’ evolution. [Hat tip, Lea Beth Lewis]

Doha Description Has Been Updated

Last week we described how the American School of Doha has been working in innovative fashion to bring Learning How to Learn to students.  This week, we’ve updated the description with even more insights—read here.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

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 make it a practice to ask people about their all-time favorite book. Along these lines, we’ve had a number of recommendations for The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls. So we finally broke down—it turns out to be a fast, riveting read. (The Glass Castle, incidentally, has been on the New York Times best-seller list for 411 weeks, and has over 7,000 Amazon reviews with a 4.6 rating.)   Walls experienced, along with her brother and sisters, a deeply dysfunctional upbringing. Yet her upbeat, spunky child’s voice carries us through the hard times to Walls’ ultimate triumph as an adult. Walls writes in a way that we can draw our own conclusions about her parents’ shortcomings and odd blessings, even as we learn of the seamy, hardscrabble world experienced by many around the world.  (The audiobook is read by Walls herself—you may be able to get two free audiobooks through this link.)

Incidentally, years ago, we enjoyed Jeannette Walls’ Gossip: The Inside Story On The World Of Gossip Became the News and How the News Became Just Another Show, an eye-opening history of celebrity news reporting.

A Survey to Help Improve Learning How to Learn
Barb asks for your help in completing this fully anonymous survey by researchers Eulho Jung and Dongho Kim to help us better understand the learning that’s taking place in Learning How to Learn.  We hope to use the results of the survey to further improvement of LHTLers’ future learning experiences.

New Writers Needed to Describe “A Day in the Life” of Teaching Internationally

The Times Educational Supplement (TES)—one of the world’s premier publications for K-12 teachers—is looking for new writers for a series called “A Day in the Life,” in which teachers in different countries write about the experience of working in their particular context. TES is particularly interested in native-to-the-area teachers working in local schools, rather than expats working in international schools. Note that your life as a teacher in the country you were raised in may seem ordinary and mundane to you, but to international readers, it could be fascinating. Each contributor to the series is paid £100 for their article. If you’re interested in this opportunity, please reach out to Helen Amass, at Helen.Amass@tesglobal.com.

A Mind for Numbers, One Students’ Reflection

While Barb was in Doha, she was privileged to meet some of the fantastic students of Texas A&M Qatar. A Mind for Numbers, (our Learning How to Learn MOOC recommended text), was used as the One Book One Community shared reading experience—Barb’s visit centered around the ideas in the book and MOOC. Aalaa Abdallah wrote a blog post about her insights from reading the book.

(If you’d like such a reading and in-person experience at your university or institution, reach out here.)

Integrating the Ideas of Learning How to Learn into a High School

The high school teachers at the American School of Doha (ASD) have done a fantastic job of integrating the ideas of Learning How to Learn into their curriculum. This is proving highly beneficial to students, as Barb discovered when she was overwhelmed by excited-about-learning ASD students during her visit. Read more here if you are interested in the specifics of how to integrate Learning How to Learn into your high school.  [Thanks for these ideas and approaches to innovative teachers Pamela Keigley and her colleagues.]

TED’s First Original Podcast, with Adam Grant

One of our favorite people, Adam Grant, is launching TED’s first original podcast, on WorkLife.  Adam became the Wharton School’s youngest tenured professor in history at age 28–and behind the scenes, we can attest to the fact that he truly is not only brilliant, but a heckuva nice guy.  As Adam notes “You need a support network. But you also need a challenge network: a group of people you trust to push you to improve. If you don’t look back on yourself and think, “Wow, how stupid I was a year ago,” then you must not have learned much in the last year… Every time you get feedback, ask yourself how well you took it. Even if you got a D- for your performance, you can still get an A+ for how you respond to it.” Check out #WorkLife with @AdamMGrant, the new podcast with @TEDTalks. (One of our favorite books, incidentally, and not just because he discusses Barb’s work on pathological altruism, is Adam’s Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success.)

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

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Our email may be a bit early for you today because we’re on a different time zone,  just about to head out on a 14-hour flight from Doha, Qatar, (a hotbed of educational innovation), to Chicago. Next up, Barb’s off to Valencia, Spain, to speak next week at the International Symposium of Applied Innovation.

Book of the Week

This week’s recommendation is the wonderful, quick read What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People, by Joe Navarro and Marvin Karlins. We love the pictures in the book, which give an excellent sense of the small “tells” that signal characteristics such as sincerity or untrustworthiness.  This culturally aware book could help keep you out of trouble during your travels, and also give you a leg up in your ordinary interactions both at work and at home.  And veryone—especially teachers—could benefit from knowing how they may inadvertently be sending negative signals they don’t really want to be sending.  Highly recommended!

Barb Speaking in San Francisco at the World’s Fair Nano!

Barb will be giving a talk about the future of education at World’s Fair Nano on Saturday, March 10th, 2018.  Unlike many upbeat but vague talks, this one will unwrap the specifics of her exciting new project, designed for global impact in many languages.  Barb plans to stay after her talk to shake hands and meet you! The folks at World’s Fair Nano have kindly arranged a special discount for LHTLers—just use the promotional code “BARBATNANO” for 15% off tickets. Register here.

Class Central’s Austin Meet and Greet

The folks over at Class Central are having their first ever meetup during SXSW EDU in Austin on March 7th. If you are from Austin or attending SXSW EDU, head over to connect with other MOOC learners and the Class Central team.

How to Memorize the Entire 2018 Calendar Year

Memory Champion Nelson Dellis is back with another great video—this one is about how to memorize the entire 2018 calendar year. This is more a skill for being efficient in life allowing you to be able to say what day of the week any date falls on for 2018 in a split second (rather than having to look it up).

“Talk Nerdy to Me”

This terrific TED Talk by Melissa Marshall shows how engineers and scientists can communicate their ideas so we can all understand.  Well worth watching.

What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness

This wonderful TED talk by psychiatrist Robert Waldinger could brighten your day–or enhance your life.

A Song to Help Learn the Placental Mammalian Orders

Check out this wonderful song that helps you learn the names of orders of placental mammals.  Now, this is creative learning!  [Hat tip Zella and Jeremiah McNichols.]

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

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week: An Assortment on Education

On to this week’s recommendations, which all relate to education. We’ve had a number of books suggested to us recently, and we decided to review them all at once, so as to be able to contrast and compare them with one another.

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto.  Gatto’s book is a quick, yet thought-provoking set of essays critical of the educational system.  His background in writing this book is unusual—Gatto was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. The eloquence and intelligence with which Gatto vivisects the modern K-12 world makes the book a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in education; it is particularly worthwhile for parents.  Highly recommended.

The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World In Flux, by Cathy Davidson. We went into this book with high hopes—Davidson characterizes herself as a contrarian instigator with provocative new ideas about how to revolutionize higher education.  What we found was a series of cherry-picked stories that supported Davidson’s unswerving worldview that MOOCs are bad and difficult or virtually impossible to learn from,  and that the only real way to learn well is through a teacher who is willing to go to extremes to provide the personal touch. Her ultimate underlying recommendation for improving universities? Throw more money at them. (She dismisses criticism of academic misspending, bloat or the like with a few quick Manichean sentences.) No wonder some academicians love her despite her self-proclaimed contrarian stance.

How readers would have benefited from seeing a profile a student like Tulio Baars, who has taken over 160 MOOCs to self-educate and used that knowledge to found an innovative new data analysis company! Tulio demonstrates the potential of today’s students to take advantage of the economy of scale that MOOCs provide to bootstrap themselves at low cost to an extraordinary education.

Davidson constantly interweaves poorly founded opinion with facts—unless you know which are which, it can be hard for typical readers to understand when she’s going off the rails.  This is one of the few books we are reviewing without recommending.

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, by Bryan Caplan. If you are in any way involved in education, or you think education is important (as we do!), this book will make you uncomfortable. But unlike The New Education, The Case Against Education is rigorously argued, and it will force you to examine the premises of your support for learning. Ultimately, we found that this book caused us to respect real learning even more.  Strongly recommended.

Education and the State, by E.G. West This important book seems to have somehow fallen off educator’s reading lists, which is a shame. If you want a solid reference about how education has developed over the past centuries in the UK and US, (admittedly with a bit of heavy reading involved–we spent several weeks reading it several years ago, but thought it worthwhile to review here), you couldn’t do better than to read West’s book. West doesn’t shy away from detailing the self-serving nature of many educational institutions.

Class Central’s Best Online Courses of 2017

Here’s a great listing from the irreplaceable Class Central of the top MOOCs of 2017.  First on the list, no surprise, is (click to find out!).

Middle College National Consortium

Barb was very fortunate to present a few days ago for the Middle College National Consortium (MCNC) in Newport, California. If you are interested in allowing high school students to get an early jump on college—an experience that’s especially helpful for students from disadvantaged backgrounds—please look into the Middle College National Consortium.  It’s a great organization!

Read More: 27 Ways To Get Reading This Year

Here’s a nice posting from the indefatigable Arthur Worsley on how to accomplish more with your reading.

Oops—We left off the link last week for The Learning Zone—An Interesting Website for Teachers and Students about Learning

LHTLer Massimo Curatella pointed us towards this intriguing website, where teachers can ask questions about learning to a great variety of experts in education, psychology, and neuroscientist.  Check it out! (We love the site’s tongue-in-cheek subtitle: I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!)

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

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

Jordan Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, has been floating at the top of the Amazon best-sellers listing for several weeks, so we had to see what all the hullabaloo was about. Peterson’s book is an intriguing mixture of deeply researched psychology, philosophy, religious studies, and history, with a connective tissue of neuroscience and real-life experiences. Given our own not-so-hot experiences with communism, we were gratified to see that Peterson, unlike many modern academicians, didn’t brush right over one of the most horrific movements, (alongside the often unspoken ravages of colonialism), of the last several hundred years. (See the magnificent King Leopold’s Ghost for more on colonialism’s shadows.)  

Peterson’s book forms a worthwhile effort to find an inspiring, rather than nihilistic, worldview of life and of learning. Read it yourself to see what all the hype is about. Peterson, with his wonderfully listenable accent from rural Canada, reads the audio version of his book. (You may be able to get two free audiobooks through this link.)

Brain Pickings!

Thanks to Arthur Worsley, we’ve been introduced to the insightful, beautifully written website “Brain Pickings.”  Check out Maria Popova’s latest posting there, “Nobel-Winning Physicist Niels Bohr on Subjective vs. Objective Reality and the Uses of Religion in a Secular World.”  As Popova so eloquently makes clear, the challenge of integrating a worldview with a way of life has drawn in some of the world’s greatest thinkers.

Where Did Language Come From?

A major unanswered question in science is how language evolved.  Watch this fast-paced video that summarizes MIT linguist Shigeru Miyagawa’s intriguing hypothesis about the origins of language. Shigeru has also long been one of the key players in open access online learning—he’s a man to watch.

The Learning Zone—An Interesting Website for Teachers and Students about Learning

LHTLer Massimo Curatella pointed us towards this intriguing website, where teachers can ask questions about learning to a great variety of experts in education, psychology, and neuroscientist.  Check it out! (We love the site’s tongue-in-cheek subtitle: I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!)

Online Learning Course of the Week

We’ve been enjoying Idahosa Ness’s course The Flow of Portuguese, which teaches the basic sound and flow of Portuguese through bits of music. Everything is lovingly put together so that you learn chunk by tiny chunk. If you’ve been trying to get a bit of a feel for Portuguese, this is the perfect course for you.  It’s a different enough approach that you can take this course even if you’re learning another language, such as Spanish, through other more conventional methods.  To get a feel for Idahosa’s funny take on life and language learning, take a look at his video rapping in 8 languages—although he doesn’t actually speak 8 languages…

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

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week’s book recommendation is Scott Berkun’s Confessions of a Public Speaker.  We’ve read a fair number of books about various aspects of public speaking, and Scott’s book ranks among the best. He goes into the nitty-gritty of travel, preparation, and what it feels like to be on stage, plus tips on calming down about verbal flubs and the like. Teachers will find much useful insight. Highly recommended!

Cognitive Training Helps Your Brain

Here’s some encouraging news from research—“Cognitive Training Helps Regain a Younger-working Brain.”  This also lends support to the idea that using your cognitive abilities to continue to challenge your brain, even as you grow older, is a healthy thing to do! [Hat tip, LHTLer brandonrox10.]

Escaping the Ivory Tower

Due to the number of requests, Oakland University filmed Barb’s talk on how to escape the ivory tower and have a bigger impact if you are a college professor.  (A pdf of the Powerpoints is here.) You’ll find an offbeat summary of Barb’s approach to her work, along with many ideas about how you can move beyond the “publish or perish” and grantsmanship of typical faculty life.

Professional development for home educators

Julie Bogart, founder of Brave Writer, leads a homeschool coaching community called The Homeschool Alliance. “Grad school for home school” – the Alliance offers monthly webinars, articles, audio lectures, and community discussion as well as a library of resources focused on natural learning, family dynamics, and subject areas. Membership includes a free 7-day trial. (Barb will be a happy guest lecturer this fall!)

Great Summary of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Arthur Worsley has done a terrific book crunch of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which has long been a great favorite of LHTLers.  Enjoy!

Craft an Autonomous Education with the Mentorbox Podcast

MentorBox has devised a great way to allow you to have the author of a book help lead you through the key points of that book—their  online video platform and thoughtful curation of quintessential non-fiction reads is very worthwhile. Check out the MentorBox podcast for behind-the-book talks with prolific authors who represent the best in entrepreneurship, business success, and wellness.

Take Part in the Global Student Voice Film Festival

Students around the world are challenged to make short videos using the theme, “In Another’s Shoes,” with the top videos to be showcased at ISTE 2018 in Chicago. The rules related to sources and citations are designed to help teach digital citizenship issues, too, so read them carefully. More at: studentvoice.org.

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

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

We happened to pick up Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone, by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. To be honest, we weren’t expecting much (we read a lot of books that never make the cut for our Cheery Friday newsletter). We were astonished to find a CEO who is the real deal as far as caring both for his customers and the employees of his company.  Satya’s empathy for others, growing in part from his children’s physical and learning challenges, have given him a sui generis approach to running a company. Satya’s book is a wonderfully inspiring read about the difference a great company, with great leadership, can make in people’s lives. Also includes interesting perspectives on quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Highly recommended!

Motivating the Unmotivated Student

Here’s a short article by Barb in Insight Magazine, the leading magazine for independent schools, on motivated unmotivated students. (Yes, Barb was often a very unmotivated student when she was a kid….)

Barb’s Interview with Jonathan Levi on “Becoming a SuperLearner”

Barb is now an admirer of Jonathan Levi after their broad-ranging, fun episode together: “Understanding Learning and How It Works.” Looks down the webpage to see descriptions of the different segments of our lengthy discussion, so you can jump to what you find most interesting.  Great insights on learning don’t just come from a university setting–insightful “lay people” like Jonathan can synthesize fresh ideas and insights that are often more helpful than the findings of any academic paper.  

Video Tips from Memory Champion Nelson Dellis on Setting Goals

Nelson has just returned from the successful Kilimanjaro trip that he organized. He summitted for the second time! Nelson’s not only a memory expert, and a champion climber, but he’s also obviously terrific at setting and achieving goals.  Here’s a video he put together for you on setting goals in 2018. Enjoy!

The Effects of Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector

Since we’re interested in all matters teaching and learning related, we couldn’t help but notice this article on the “The Effects of Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector,” by Jonathan H. Adler, the Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law at Case Western. As the article notes: “Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we demonstrate that collective bargaining leads to sizable reductions in measured cognitive and non-cognitive skills among young adults. Taken together, our results suggest laws that support collective bargaining for teachers have adverse long-term labor market consequences for students.”

Monthly MOOC Watch from Class Central

This month’s Class Central analysis gives a sense of providers’ varying approaches to monetizing to keep alive and healthy in the competitive MOOC-space.

Just Plain Fun Stuff

Ever wondered what your upstairs’ neighbors are doing that is making all that noise?  Find out here.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

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