Author: barboakley

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the week

This week, we’d like to contrast three books about break-through entrepreneurs.  Reading these books can help you think more boldly about your own life and what you would like to accomplish, whether you want to start a global business or simply have a happy family life. Here’s our lineup:

• Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, by Duncan Clark. We loved learning that Jack Ma, unlike many other brilliant entrepreneurs, is an enormous success despite his lack of math skills! Clark’s book focuses more on how Alibaba helped establish the internet sales market in China, than on Jack Ma himself. But the very different nature of internet sales in China versus the sales in the Western hemisphere makes this a worthwhile read.  Audible version narrated by Jim Meskimen.
• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, by Brad Stone. This book provides insight both on how Amazon emerged and on Bezos himself. Like all three of the breakthrough leaders of these books, Bezos has a relentless work ethic as well as a broad vision that others initially thought was crazy. The Everything Store was selected as a best book of the year by the Washington Post, Forbes, the New Republic, The Economist, Bloomberg, and Gizmodo, and as one of the top 10 investigative journalism book by Nieman Reports. The Audible version of this book, narrated by Pete Larkin, was an Audie Award Finalist.
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, by Ashlee Vance. Musk, like Bezos and Ma, is pioneering a whole new entrepreneurial vision–but at least at present, Musk is in a class by himself in broadly expanding the scope of what humanity may achieve.  This book has won copious awards and was named our Learning How to Learn “Book of the Year” for 2016. The Audible version, narrated by Fred Sanders, was an Audible Best Book of the Year.

A great interview with Nasos Papadopoulos of MetaLearn

Sometimes podcasts can be a challenge for Barb, because the interviewers routinely ask the same sorts of questions.  Nasos Papadopoulos (with his elegant British accent), breaks the mold, going far beyond the usual questions in this in-depth podcast to explore areas that Barb hasn’t spoken of before. This interview is worth listening to, especially if you want to learn more of the future of online education, Barb’s upcoming book, or her past in the US Army. 😉

5 Reasons Why You Are Not Speaking English Fluently

Here’s a worthwhile article on why you aren’t speaking English the way you might want to.  (Hat tip, technical support engineer Irina Petrova.)

10 MOOCs That Support Lifelong Learning

Senior Mentor (and Amharic Language Lead) Marta Pulley recommends this article by Marianne Stenger on 10 MOOCs That Support Lifelong Learning. Marianne missed Learning How to Learn, :P, but the other MOOCs look great!

Taking scientific studies with caution

We’re obviously keen proponents of science here at Learning How to Learn, but it’s important to remember that there can be severe challenges with science as it is currently conducted. The problems aren’t just with social science—they’re also found in “hard,” clinical science. As John Ioannidis notes:  “Empirical efforts of reproducibility checks performed by industry investigators on a number of top-cited publications from leading academic institutions have shown reproducibility rates of 11% to 25%.”

Here are two not-to-be-missed articles and studies that describe why we should use caution with seemingly solid scientific results:

• Most scientists ‘can’t replicate studies by their peers’ Tom Feilden, BBC News, 22 February 2017.

• Acknowledging and Overcoming Nonreproducibility in Basic and Preclinical Research, John P. A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc, JAMA, February 13, 2017.

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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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

What Barb Wishes All Employers (and Employees) Knew About Online Learning

Here’s a brilliant article—a featured article on Coursera’s blog—titled “What One of Coursera’s Most Popular Instructors Wishes All Employers Knew About Online Learning.” Writer Lee Price managed to synthesize Barb’s rambling thoughts into a pithy “must read” for employers as well as employees. (Click the “heart” if you like it. 🙂 )

Books of the Week

Here’s a wonderful new book—a surprise top best-seller—called Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramon y Cajal. As the cover description mentions: “At the crossroads of art and science, Beautiful Brain presents Nobel Laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s contributions to neuroscience through his groundbreaking artistic brain imagery.” We would talk more intelligently about the book, but it’s sold out nearly everywhere—order your own copy, (just as we have), now! To tide you over, here is a lovely New York Times article about the book. (Hat tip: Jerónimo Castro, Director of COLFUTURO.) We also recommend Cajal’s Butterflies of the Soul: Science and Art, by neuroscientist Javier DeFelipe.

And if you’re interested in how art improves our ability perceive and understand, we highly recommend Amy Herman’s Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life.  (We prefer the hard copy over the e-reader copy, because the images are easier to see on the hard copy.)  This book will definitely improve your powers of observation—even while some of the stories are so compelling that the book’s tough to put down. And yet another excellent, but hard-to-get book on art is Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, by Margaret Livingstone.

If you’re interested in an audio book related to art, check out Leonard Shlain’s Leonardo’s Brain: Understanding da Vinci’s Creative Genius. Shlain is one of our favorite writers and thinkers, and if you listen to this fascinating book, you’ll see why.

MOOC of the Week

And speaking of art, we’ve stumbled across an intriguing new MOOC called “Art of the MOOC: Public Art and Pedagogy,” by Pedro Lasch and Nato Thompson of Duke University.  We believe that MOOCs are a phenomenal new form of art, even as they form fantastic teaching tools. So we couldn’t resist the opportunity to sign up for this MOOC, which begins on March 13th.

Interview with Dhawal Shah of Class Central

Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central, is interviewed in this great “what’s going on behind the scenes” interview with Quincy Larson. Quincy, incidentally, is the founder of Free Code Camp, an open source community of 500,000+ people who learn to code together and build projects for nonprofits.

Inequality in Education

Here is a thought-provoking article about a pocket of inequality in American society in substantive need of improvement—that of the American university system and its treatment of adjunct professors and graduate students.

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

Follow our book recommendations on the “Cheery Friday App”

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week

As you know, we’re big fans of biographies. And we’ve got an exceptional one to tout: Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff. Great biographies give a sense of what might have been happening behind the scenes in important times in history. While giving a sense of the person, they also give a great feel for the place and time. Read Schiff’s book and savor a trip back to the tumultuous times when the Roman and Egyptian worlds collided. Stacy Schiff herself read the audio version of the book.

If you’d like to get a sense of a very different place and time, we strongly recommend The Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  These books tell about the true story of young Laura growing up during US pioneer days in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These books aren’t just kids’ books—Barb’s husband Phil, (a tough motorcyclist!), has been enthralled by these books for years. There’s a reason why these books have sold millions worldwide.  If you’d like to start with just one, we recommend The Little House on the Prairie. Incidentally, these are great books also to read aloud with your family. (And there’s an Audible version, also.)

How to Help Your Child Excel in Math—and Have a Great Career

Speaking of family, when her daughters were growing up, Barb wanted them to be “free range” kids who largely directed themselves in whatever they wanted to learn or do outside school.  There was one rule: that Barb herself got to pick one single activity that her girls had to do, whether they liked it or not. That single activity was 20 minutes or so of extra math practice on most days. Barb has found that many school systems, at least in Western countries, place so much emphasis on understanding of math that they don’t work to also build the procedural fluency—that is, in chunking—that research shows is essential in acquiring expertise in any subject.  So Barb placed her daughters in Kumon math, which emphasizes a brief period of daily practice in the solid fundamentals.  Cut to the chase—now, twenty-five years later, Barb (and her husband Phil’s!) two daughters went from initially disliking and not being good at math, to great career success as a doctor and journalist.

The reason we’re sharing this story is because we’ve found a modern day, much-improved version of the math program Barb used with her girls.  This new program is Smartick.  The founder of Smartick, engineer Daniel González de Vega, was inspired to begin his world-class company when he discovered that the methods being used to teach math were not helpful for his sister.  Now, many years later, Smartick works with leading researchers to ensure their approach is not only sound, but supplies the best possible approaches to building your child’s intuition about math.

Barb believes that one of the greatest gifts you can give your child is a an open future where all doors are open, career-wise—and the best way to do that is to ensure your child has a solid foundation in math.  We’re big believers in Smartick’s system, and we think that if you check out their free 15 day trial, you’ll become believers, also. (And no, we don’t benefit by promoting Smartick.) So if you have a child, whether he or she is already a superstar in math, or is struggling with math, give Smartick a try.

Interview on “Daily Bits”

Here’s a nice interview with Barb about learning and her upcoming book Mindshift on “Daily Bits Of,” a website devoted to giving you daily bits to help your learning.

Online Courses through Amazon

Our perceptive friends at Class Central are always on top of the latest trends in online learning.  A recent move of interest is that edX is making a few of their courses available on Amazon for certificate purchase.  As Class Central notes in their overview article, “Amazon has over 7,000 ‘educational courses’ that can be purchased on their site.”

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

Follow our book recommendations on the “Cheery Friday App”

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

We’ve already got the month’s best book lined up for you: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. This is a #1 New York Times best seller by Elizabeth Gilbert—yes, that Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, the worldwide bestseller now in its tenth anniversary edition. We loved Big Magic—if you’re feeling at a loss, wondering if you can ever accomplish anything creatively worthwhile in your life, this book is for you Oh, and did we mention that Gilbert’s way with words is magical, too? [Hat tip for this wonderful recommendation to James Stahlman, Executive Administrator at Coursera.]

Recruiting for Instructional Design Positions with MOOC Development Experience

VisionCor is recruiting for several Instructional Design positions with MOOC Development experience. This is a virtual contract opportunity with a client in the technology field. The contract will be at least 6 months long and will require the candidates to have developed MOOCs. One sample will be needed as well. If you fulfil the requirements and are looking for a job, please contact one of the two following individuals:

· Katie Barlow – kbarlow@visioncor.com 704/366-7979

· Carol Valencia – cvalencia@visioncor.com 704-819-0108

Learning How to Learn in French – Apprendre comment apprendre

Nicole Charest is the French Lead of Learning How to Learn (LHTL). Nicole likes to introduce herself as a busy retired agronomist and as a passionate and creative learner. Nicole is doctor in agricultural science and also has a M.Sc. in Creative Studies – Creativity and Change Leadership. When considering study, work, volunteer or personal project opportunities, she always considered these three core questions: ‘Will I learn, could I make a difference, is it coherent with my humanist values?’ So, leading a dedicated team aiming at creating a functional French version of LHTL sounds like the perfect fit! This team will work in collaboration with the Global Translator Community (GTC), a community of Coursera learners and translators. We believe that our goal of achieving a fully functional French version of LHTL would however be facilitated by the creation and the coordination of a dedicated team. If you would like to join the LHTL French Language team, please fill out our application form. Cette invitation à joindre notre équipe est pour vous si vous souhaitez que les apprentissages d’Apprendre comment apprendre soient accessibles à tous et toutes au sein de la francophonie. Ces apprentissages peuvent faire toute une différence dans la vie de chacun et chacune et ce sans égard à l’âge, les intérêts ou les secteurs d’activités et ce, particulièrement dans notre monde de plus en plus complexe et en perpétuel changement.

Handy Tips for Procrastinators

Check out this great forum post by David Peel with a list of handy tips for procrastinators. (Hat tip, Senior Mentor Linda Walker.) For even more information, check out Brian Tracy’s procrastination classic Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.

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

Follow our book recommendations on the “Cheery Friday App”

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Our book of the month this month is the extraordinary When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures, by Richard D. Lewis.  Lewis is a polymath who speaks 10 European and 2 Asiatic languages. He has worked with many of the world’s leading industrial and financial companies to help them understand local sensibilities and negotiating strategies. In but one example of his expertise, he has served as tutor to Empress Michiko and other members of the Japanese Imperial Family.

Lewis’s book will give you a profound understanding of how the “you” that seems so right and so solidly a part of the way the world should rightly work is deeply shaped by the culture you grew up in. Even the way you learn can be affected by your cultural upbringing.

When Cultures Collide is one of the top ten books we’ve ever read—even its slightly out-of-date nature lends insight as it reveals the thin layer that current events places over culture. Highly recommended! (Our thanks for the recommendation to Näriman Dästpak, our Learning How to Learn Persian Lead.)

If you are interested in or working with other cultures, other highly rated books on intercultural interactions include:

• The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business, by Erin Meyer
• Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: The Bestselling Guide to Doing Business in More Than 60 Countries, by Terri Morrison and Wayne A. Conaway
• Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, by Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov

Learning Chemistry in  Year

Here’s a wonderful article by our friend Alistair McConville about how, as a virtual science phobe, he decided to tackle chemistry in a year “Taking GCSE chemistry in a year? I must be mad.” Among the many important ideas of this article is that it can be invaluable for a teacher to occasionally step into the role of student.

Barb’s new website!

Barb is very happy to unveil her brand new website at www.barbaraoakley.com. On this website, you’ll find not only a trove related to Barb’s writing and books—you’ll also find all the past “Cheery Friday” emails.  Some perceptive followers have noticed that  the November 24^th, 2016 email was missing from your inbox.  This email was sent, but due to the magical imps of the internet that were operating on that Thanksgiving (Barb’s birthday!), the email was somehow never delivered.  To read this elusive email just go to www.barbaraoakley.com and have fun looking around the website.  While you’re there, feel free to sign up on Barb’s email list for occasional extra insights.

Barb’s website was created by Bookswarm, a digital agency dedicated to delivering projects for those in the world of books—and MOOCs.  If you are a publisher, author, or you work at all in relation to online materials, we highly recommend Bookswarm as a friendly, highly competent agency to help you put your best digital foot forward in a cost-effective way.  If you’ve been planning on a website design or redesign, reach out to Bookswarm today!

Failure to replicate Dweck’s “Mindset” Theory

Mindset theory posits that praise for intelligence can dramatically lower students’ cognitive performance, and that children’s cognitive ability and school grades depend heavily on whether they believe basic ability is malleable. This theory, and Carol Dweck’s associated book Mindset, have been popular for years, although there has been some perceptive pushback from the edges.  However, just out is a major study, “Does mindset affect children’s ability, school achievement, or response to challenge? Three failures to replicate,” by Yue Li & Timothy C. Bates, with the following conclusions: “Praise for intelligence failed to harm post- challenge cognitive performance. Children’s mindsets had no relationship to their IQ or to their school grades. Finally believing ability to be malleable had not association with improvement of grades across the year. We conclude that the belief that basic ability is fixed is harmless, and that implicit theories of intelligence play no significant role in development of cognitive ability, response to challenge, or educational attainment.”

These kinds of findings that upend “settled” science lead inevitably to major defensive turf wars by those with a strong vested interest in having the science remain settled.  Sit back and enjoy your popcorn as the battles begin!

Ivy League MOOC Collection

Here’s a great collection of Ivy League MOOCs by Class Central.  And from the University of Michigan, we’ve been hearing good things about the course “Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision-Making”  with Gautam Kaul. The University of Michigan, incidentally, is betting big on MOOCs—putting over 200 of their on-campus courses into MOOC form. Barb visited U of M’s MOOC-making studios—there’s no question but what they are doing a good job behind-the-scenes in working to produce top-notch courses.

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

Follow our book recommendations on the “Cheery Friday App”

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week’s book recommendation is The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time, by Maria Konnikova. No matter how tough and smart you think you are, there are ways that grifters and swindlers can slip past your defenses and hurt you. This book provides insight by telling stories of how scamming can occur—often using some of our best traits, such as our empathetic kindness. This recommendation comes to us from Senior Mentor (and Amharic Lead) Marta Pulley, who notes some similarities to Barb’s book Cold-Blooded Kindness, a science-based study of a seemingly empathetic killer. Incidentally, Barb is just finishing the audio version of Cialdini’s masterpiece Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, (which we mentioned last week and which is also mentioned in The Confidence Game). Influence also gives great insight into how to avoid being manipulated—which is important if you truly want to help others!

Important New MOOC on Hong Kong Cinema

We have to tell you about a very exciting new MOOC, Hong Kong Cinema through a Global Lens, beginning on February 7th. We’re huuuuge Jackie Chan fans—and, as it turns out, the entire first week of the MOOC is devoted to Jackie’s work. This wonderful MOOC, instructed by our friend Gina Marchetti, Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at University of Hong Kong, and her world-class colleagues, considers “how the local and the global intersect to make Hong Kong cinema an integral part of popular culture around the world as well as a leading force in the development of world cinematic art.” Don’t miss it!

Jackie Chan’s Autobiography—with Competition from the Terminator

While we’re mentioning Jackie Chan, don’t miss his autobiography I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action. It’s an inspiring loser-to-champion story that’s one of our favorite autobiographies ever. Okay, well, we also really loved the inspiration and practical (and sometimes fiendishly clever) guidance on achievement in Arnold Schwarzenegger’sTotal Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story.

The Craft of Building Books that Matter

Here’s an insightful blog post by “bookitect” David Moldawer about book packaging. David writes of the craft of building books that matter. In his post, he speaks of our MOOC Learning How to Learn, its underlying “backbone” book, A Mind for Numbers, and Barb’s upcoming Mindshift. This post is especially because it provides critical insight about the selection of book titles.

Process Instead of Goals

In Learning How to Learn, we emphasized the importance of process over product. Here’s a great article by writer James Clear, Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead, that emphasizes precisely the importance of process.

Books on Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving

Learning How to Learner Joshua Anthony was looking for a good book on analytical thinking and problem solving. We recommended Polya’s classic How to Solve It, which Joshua found a bit narrow for his needs. Instead, he found another book he wished to recommend to Learning How to Learners: Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics. Joshua highly recommends it as a book for students “looking to retrain and reinvent themselves to be more analytical in their thinking.”

Thomas Maier Transplant Fund

And speaking of truly helping others, a little boy, Thomas Maier, who lives several miles from Barb’s home, was born with a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. Thomas can remain alive if he’s able to receive a heart-lung transplant. The family is fighting to help Thomas survive to be able receive the transplant. If you’d like to help (we donated $100), please go 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

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