Author: barboakley

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

We’re going to switch things up today and start our email with a fantastic book we’ve just finished: The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, by Josh Waitzkin. Waitzkin is a world champion chess and martial arts expert–his book provides a fantastic description of the commonalities of many seemingly different types of learning. Josh is a wonderful writer with a wealth of telling stories–his book is hard to put down. Good writing seems to run in the family: Josh’s father wrote Searching for Bobby Fischer: The Father of a Prodigy Observes the World of Chess, which we greatly enjoyed when it first came out. Josh’s experiences reinforce the importance of chunking, which is also emphasized by “expert on expertise” Anders Ericsson–see Ericsson’s excellent book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, which was another recent top pick for us on Learning How to Learn. (And yes, in case you’re counting, we’ve got two books of the month this month, what with last week’s terrific Soft-Wired.)

Class Central, Learning Languages, and Moving to the Top!

We’re happy to report that Class Central, that terrific MOOC analysis and search site, has become the #1 site for discovering online learning resources according to Alexa. This is good news because it means that MOOCs are of increasing importance. Check out Class Central’s listings–they’re particularly valuable when you want to know what other people think is the best class on any particular subject. You might be especially interested to see Class Central’s extensive listings of MOOCs to learn different languages. And speaking of language…

Learning How to Learn Is Growing Worldwide!

We hope you’ll forgive us this week–there is a LOT of activity in bringing Learning How to Learn to many new languages. Below are calls for speakers of Greek, Turkish, Igbo, Hungarian, and Tamil (a bad link there last week, sorry!). It’s really getting exciting in Learning How to Learn!

Learning How to Learn in Greek – Πρόσκληση για μετάφραση του μαθήματος στα Ελληνικά.

Markos Dallas recently joined the Global Translator Community (GTC), which is the community of Coursera learners and translators. Markos is the Greek Lead of Learning How to Learn–he is a school teacher with a MSc in Mathematics Education and he is extraordinarily interested in spreading knowledge and spearheading innovative projects. If you would like to join in the Greek translation team, please post in the discussion forum. Markos says “Η γνώση πρέπει να διαδίδεται. Όμως, ο τρόπος κατανόησης και αξιοποίησης της γνώσης είναι προσωπική υπόθεση. Όποιος-α επιθυμεί να βοηθήσει στη μετάφραση του μαθήματος στην ελληνική γλώσσα, μπορεί να γίνει μέλος της ελληνικής μεταφραστικής ομάδας”.

Learning How to Learn in Turkish: Öğrenmeyi Öğrenmek Türkçe’de

Yağmur is the Turkish Lead of Learning How to Learn. She is research assistant in Counseling Psychology in Yildiz Technical University and PhD student. She loves sharing knowledge, being member of global projects and working in various cultural communities. If you want to be a part of Turkish translation team, please post in the discussion forum here. Yağmur says: “Herkese merhaba, Öğrenmeyi Öğrenmek çevrimiçi kursunu Türkçe’ye çevirme amacıyla oluşturulan bu grupta dersi Türkçe’ye çevirerek katkı yapmak isterseniz grubumuza katılabilirsiniz. Bu dersi Türkçe’ye çevirerek, öğrenme stratejilerini öğrenmek isteyen kişilere yardımcı olabiliriz.”

Learning How to Learn in the Igbo Language–Ịmụta Otú Mụta

Benjaminbenedict is the Igbo Language lead of learning how to learn. He is the Chief Knowledge Worker of Knowledge Centre Africa and at present is rounding off yet another graduate programme at the University of Skovde, Sweden. He is a happy person who loves to share and manage knowledge. All Igbo language lovers can join him here to translate LHTL into Igbo Language. He has also created an Igbo Learning How to Learn Facebook page.

Benjaminbenedict bu onye isi ndi n` edeghari usoro nmuta ihe omumu otu esi amuta ihe. Obu ichie oru amamihe nke ulo oru amamihe obodo Afrika nurukwa na agu akwukwo ozo nke ukwuu na mahadum Skovde nke di na obodo Sweden. Obu onye na enwe obi anuri, nwe kwaa ihunanya n´ihe gbasara amamihe. Ndi nile huru asusu Igbo n´anya nwere ike soro ya na ndi otu ya mee ka ihe ndeghari a nwee isi na ebe a.

Learning How to Learn in Hungarian – Segíts, hogy a “Tanulj meg tanulni!” kurzus magyarul is elérhető legyen

Hungarian speaking volunteers are welcome to join Orsi Meleg’s efforts to launch the Hungarian version of the course. If you are up for the challenge, please read the details in this thread to apply. Orsi has just joined the translation team as Hungarian Lead. She is an economist and has a great passion for social innovation, particularly in the field of education. Currently she is travelling in Asia and volunteering as an English teacher in rural areas.

Learning How To Learn In Tamil – கற்பது எவ்வாறு என கற்போம் – தமிழாக்கம் செய்யும் வாய்ப்பு

Our apologies–last week’s link to the Tamil forum being led by Mahendran Raiyah, was incorrect. Here’s the correct link to the forum–please join in if you’d like to volunteer to help translate Learning How to Learn into Tamil!

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!

Growth Mindset

Here’s a wonderful visual that exemplifies how to reframe negative thoughts about learning into more empowering and helpful mindsets. (Hat tip: Fern Kushner.) Shifting your or your child’s thinking can have all sorts of long term positive effects on their brain and their life. The classic book about this, of course, is Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

Learning How To Learn In Tamil – கற்பது எவ்வாறு என கற்போம் – தமிழாக்கம் செய்யும் வாய்ப்பு

If you’d like to join the Tamil translation team being led by Mahendran Raiyah, please post in the discussion forum here. Mahendran is an electrical and electronic engineer and MBA holder who loves to write and to learn–he’s also a volunteer for social “change-making” initiatives. This is your chance to help improve the learning lives of Tamil speakers around the world!

Learning How to Learn in Persian—بیایید با هم این دوره ی آموزشی را به زبان فارسی ترجمه کنیم

Our new Persian Lead is Näriman Dästpak, who is spearheading efforts to transform Learning How to Learn into a new, entirely Persian language version of the course. If you speak Persian, Näriman Dästpak could really use your help as part of the little team he is forming—go to this thread to join his group! Näriman says “[مشتاقانه منتظر کمک جامعه ی فارسی زبان هستم تا بتوانیم مطالب این دوره ی آموزشی ارزشمند را ترجمه کرده و در اختیار جامعه ی فارسی زبان قرار دهیم]” Incidentally, Näriman holds a masters in materials engineering–and he is also is a musician who plays two instruments (you can catch him on Spotify). He took this course recently and realized the benefits it can bring to the people of his country.

A special guest on the Spanish platform of of Learning How to Learn — Un invitado especial en la plataforma del curso en Español

Además, estamos muy emocionados de anunciar la publicación de la primera entrevista en un idioma distinto al inglés en todo LHTL ! Esta vez fue el turno de la versión en Español, siendo nuestro invitado el director de COLFUTURO, Jerónimo Castro, ofreciendo su visión sobre el impacto de LHTL y los MOOCs en general al desarrollo en Colombia y Latinoamérica (y mención a las conferencias recientes de Barb.). Este hito es una muestra del impacto y alcance que ha tenido LHTL en varios rincones del mundo, y a muchos otros lugares e idiomas a los cuales esperamos llegar próximamente.

Book and Website of the Month

This past week, we read Michael Merzenich’s game-changing book Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life. Dr. Merzenich recently won the Kavli Prize, which is a sort of Nobel Prize for Neuroscientists–he is also a member of the US Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. But despite Merzenich’s in-depth research credentials, Soft-Wired is a simple and engaging book that starts off slowly and builds to a crescendo of neuroscientific insight about how to help your brain stay healthy. Be sure to read the whole book–you’ll be glad you did.

Soft-Wired reveals how our own reactions can reinforce problematic thought patterns, leading to syndromes such as depression, anxiety, and even self-righteousness or excessive doubt. Other common challenges include the fact that as we age, our ability to pay attention, remember, and rapidly process our thoughts tends to diminish.

But, as Merzenich reveals, there are positive actions we can take to help alleviate these problems. Merzenich has poured his insights into a solid, scientifically-based company, BrainHQ, which produces brain training materials to improve brain fitness. Normally, we’re not too keen on brain-training programs, but the training that BrainHQ produces is well vetted scientifically. We say check BrainHQ out–their initial materials are free, and more advanced materials are low cost. If you give BrainHQ materials a try, feel free to post in the discussion forum here to share your thoughts and findings.

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!

An App to Help with Daily Math Practice

Last year, Learning How to Learner Greg Edmunds was struggling to learn Mandarin, even as he was carrying out a 70 hour a week work schedule. This led Greg to our Learning How to Learn course, which ultimately lead him to design and develop a series of learning apps (something he had known nothing about).

Greg has developed a wonderful new app, Smartloq Math, to to leverage smartphone behavior and break what you are learning into micro-practice events, to keep people practicing consistently throughout the day…every day. Here’s an excellent review about how good this app is. If you (or some kids you know) are looking to brush up on math, give this a try!

Acting After Illness

Here is actor David King’s story of recovery after a brain bleed produced his darkest hour. Our MOOC Learning How to Learn helped lead him back to acting! If you are in London on the 8th and 9th of August, you can see David back to work at the Ecetera Theatre Camden–all ticket sales go to support brain and spinal research.

MOOC of the Week

Barb’s currently taking the Coursera MOOC Emergence of Life, by Bruce Fouke of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The MOOC has just started, so feel free to join us!

How to Read More Books

We’re keen fans of writing coach Daphne Grey-Grant–here’s a great blog post from her on how to read more books. Incidentally, you may wish to subscribe to Daphne’s free “power writing” newsletter–her recommendations have helped Barb a lot over the years in both her book writing and research. (Here’s Daphne’s always popular video in Learning How to Learn on how to improve your writing ability.)

An Excellent Guide to Help You Master the SAT/ACT, and other book ideas to improve your learning

We have always admired Robert and Elizabeth Bjork–their groundbreaking work has done much to improve our understanding of memory and learning. Along those lines, Dr. Nicholas Soderstrom, a post-doc in the Bjork lab, has written the excellent book Study Smart:10 Ways to Master the SAT/ACT Using the Science of Learning. This book will not only help you master the ACT/SAT—it will also help improve all of your learning, especially related to preparing for standardized exams. What we particularly like about this book is that it gives you all the ideas in a condensed, but very easy-to-read book. To learn more about the book, click here.

Incidentally, the Bjorks’ work was featured in How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens, by New York Times’ journalist Benedict Carey. If you like to read books on learning, this is a good one to tuck under your belt, along with the ever popular Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. (A complete list of books and tools we recommend to help with your learning is in the course resources section, here.)

Incidentally, we should mention that Barb’s A Mind for Numbers, the foundation for Learning How to Learn, is becoming a big hit in Japan–it is already going into its fourth printing since it came out in May. (直感力を高める　数学脳のつくりかた).

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!

Top 50 MOOCs of All Time

Looking for a good listing of great MOOCs? Look no further–Class Central has created a spectacular listing of the top 50 MOOCs of all time. (Yes, Learning How to Learn is on the list!) Take a look-through and get some ideas for courses you might like to take.

For a Better Sleep, Turn Off Your Cell Phone

Here’s an excellent article in Quartz by Vivian Giang, “Our poor sleeping habits are filling our brains with neurotoxins. In the article, Tara Swart, a senior lecturer at MIT specializing in sleep and the brain, “warns that sleeping next to your smartphone—the one that emits 3G and 4G signals all night—affects your brain patterns, restructuring your brain cells and likely preventing you from allowing your brain to clean out waste material properly.” Take a look at our three minute video “The Importance of Sleep,” for a quick review of the importance of sleep for cleaning your brain.

Books of the Week

Guruprasad Madhavan’s book Applied Minds: How Engineers Think is now out in paperback. Guru is an old friend of Barb’s, and there’s a reason for the friendship–Guru loves story as much as Barb does. Guru’s book is filled with wonderful information about how engineers think, told in the form of stories. Even Walter Isaacson, one of Barb’s favorite biographers, gave Guru’s book a great blurb “…smart, insightful, and fascinating….” And speaking of Walter Isaacson, we highly recommend Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein: Einstein: His Life and Universe. What’s especially delightful about this book are the stories of Einstein’s human side. You’ve got intriguing reading ahead with either or both of these books!

That’s all for this light week of summer. 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!

Virtual Reality

Barb was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Google Virtual Reality Labs last week. Some of the capabilities of the medium are expensive, but really quite extraordinary—she felt like she was on the holodeck in Star Trek. There is a rumble in the air—educators are beginning to realize that their might be value in the new medium. Here’s a balanced article by Carl Straumsheim, “Virtual Reality on the Horizon,” that describes how higher academia is beginning to grapple with this different way of framing the world. (And if you’re looking for an interesting take on the Pokémon Go phenomenon and education, here it is.)

Becoming a Self-Motivated Learner

Here’s a terrific article, “The Golden Age of Autodidacts,” by one of our favorite authors, Carlin Flora, in Psychology Today. We love Carlin’s thinking—here’s her introduction to the article: “It’s never been easier, or more important, to grow your own knowledge base. Here’s what the science of self-directed learning can teach you.” Carlin wrote the terrific book Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are. If you value your friends (which you should), you’ll value this book. Highly recommended!

Is Solitude the Secret to Unlocking Our Creativity?

Here’s another excellent article in the Observer by Jory Mackay about the value of solitude, walks, daydreaming, and being alone in nature in helping us to be more creative.

Book Recommendation for the Month: Grit

This month’s big book recommendation is Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. If you’re a parent, you will find plenty of fantastic ideas to help you raise your children with spunk, verve, and yes, grit. If you’re just looking for new ideas about how to get along better in the world, even as you achieve what you want to achieve, Grit’s for you. Highly recommended!

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!

Learn to improve your writing in English

Writing coach Daphne Grey-Grant, who did a terrific bonus interview about the writing process for Learning How to Learners, has a great post on a useful app for improving your writing. Check it out!

MOOC of the Week

As you know, we’re always interested in people’s very favorite MOOCs. A MOOC that’s developed a well-deserved cult-following is Professor Al Filreis’s ModPo, which is a “fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present.” This MOOC, put out by the University of Pennsylvania-Coursera, is meant for complete novices and as well as those who already love poetry. We’ve been fortunate enough to see Professor Filreis speak in person—he’s an exceptionally caring and passionate instructor who sets a gold standard for commitment to his MOOC students. ModPo will be starting again on September 10th.

Using a second language—like a workout for the brain

Here’s an intriguing article by Lizzie Wade in Wired on how switching between two languages can be tiring—but can give you a good mental workout. You might be interested to learn that simultaneous translators often work in pairs, so that they can trade off after about a half an hour. Translating can be exhausting mental work!

Books of the Week

We often recommend non-fiction in our “Cheery Friday” emails, but we’d like to take a step to the side and recommend one of Barb’s all time favorite works of fiction, Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden. This amazing story of the inner life of a geisha has over 3,000 reviews on Amazon—the vast majority of which are five stars. If you want double the fix on Japan, check out James Clavell’s riveting Shogun. Clavell, incidentally, also wrote the screenplay for the classic movie of WWII heroics, The Great Escape.

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!

Exercise—Even More Research Reveals Its Power for Learning!

Here’s a wonderful article on very recent research revealing that “Exercising After a Task Improves Memory,” The key finding? “The people who exercised hours later had better recall and stronger and more clear activation in the areas of their brain associated with memory retrieval.“ Don’t forget to get your exercise today!

Overcoming Fears of Public Speaking

Learning How to Learner Sheetal Goel has long had a fear of public speaking. She loved the strategies of Learning How to Learn and used them to help improve her speaking abilities. She ended up joining Toastmasters, and talked about procrastination in her second speech for the organization. Kudos to this brave learner for taking the leap, working to overcoming her fears, and moving forward! (Here’s an article about overcoming fears while speaking in public.)

Are You with a Major Publisher or Online Provider? Would you like to handle Learning How to Learn for Kids?

Learning How to Learn is now the biggest, most popular MOOC in the world, with nearly 1.5 million students having enrolled from over 200 countries around the world. The enthusiasm and interest for the course has been exceptional. Along those lines, there has been a strong interest from parents and teachers in a junior version of this curriculum for kids and their teachers. If you are affiliated with a major publishing company or online provider and you would like to partner in producing a junior Learning How to Learn multimedia curriculum targeted for younger audiences, please contact our agent Rita Rosenkranz at rrosenkranz@mindspring.com.

Left Brain – Right Brain

We’re sometimes asked about left brain-right brain issues in learning. This is an area where, as research has shown, real care must be taken. There is no such thing as a left brain or right brain type of person–after all, we use both sides of our brain for pretty much anything we do. However, there still are unquestionable differences in how the two hemispheres function, and it’s a fascinating area to read about. Two of our favorite books in this area are The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, by psychiatrist and neurimaging researcher Iain McGilchrist; and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by surgeon Leonard Schlain, (who also wrote the groundbreaking Art & Physics). All of these books are highly recommended—they will help you think much more broadly about how we 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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

New Glossary for Learning How to Learn!

Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Mentors Linda Walker, Vindra Khanai, and Marta Pulley, Learning How to Learn has a fantastic new glossary of terms available. Go to the discussion forum here to check it out, and to discuss what you see. Incidentally, if you are translating, you might find this glossary exceptionally useful—which leads us to:

Your Opportunity to Become a Language Lead on Learning How to Learn—or to Just to Help Translate!

Learning How to Learn is exploding with popularity as the most translated course on Coursera, with nearly 1.5 million registered students in over 200 countries to date. Have you ever wanted to see the course become fully translated into your language, as it already is in Chinese, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese? Do you have, or do you want to learn, the leadership skills to help a full translation into your own native language happen? Here’s a description of what a Learning How to Learn Language Lead does. If you would like to apply to become a Language Lead for your language, you can apply here. We would love to have you on board! (Please give us a couple weeks to sort things out once you’ve applied.)

We already have Italian, Russian, Bengali, Georgian, and Akan (Twi) Leads, but dozens more Language Leads are needed. This is your chance to get in at the ground floor of a hobby that can make fantastic connections for you worldwide, even as it helps build your local profile as a leader in learning. If you would just like to help out as a translator for your language, that’s always possible on any of the 39 languages supported by the Global Translation Community. Just follow the instructions on this form. (If you’d like to work on a language outside the 39 languages of the GTC, that’s possible, too, but you’ll need to apply as a Language Lead to help us get started.)

Do You Need Writing or Editing? Check Out Rebecca Judd, our Lead Mentor on Learning How to Learn!

Becca Judd, our lead mentor on the English-speaking platform, works as a freelance editor. She’s worked with multiple authors (ranging from best-selling authors to those who’ve yet to be published, and everyone in between), bloggers, and business owners, and they all seem to love her work. Seriously, just have a look at what they’ve had to say about her.

She’s mentioned recently that she has space in her schedule to help more people with their written work. So if you’re writing a book, you might like to look at this page (or contact Becca direct)—or if you’re writing anything else, her main page might be more useful to you. She’s absolutely happy for you to contact her, so please feel welcome to do so! She’s very friendly—and we can vouch for the fact that she’s been invaluable to us at Learning How to Learn!

Degreed

We’ve become aware of an interesting new education tech company called Degreed that that is engaged in the measurement, tracking, and validation of all the learning individuals do throughout their lives. Here’s Barb’s recent webinar to help HR managers and others in industry get a sense of the kinds of cool things we’re doing in Learning How to Learn.

Young Learning How to Learners and Their Accomplishments

We’re always happy to announce the initiative and successes of young learners. Fifteen-year-old Anand Satheesh has published an intriguing book titled Emerson for the Digital Generation. The book shows how a great thinker from the past is what we need to keep us on track today. Buy a copy for your child to pass along some great insights—and to help encourage your child to write her or his own book!

More Intriguing Books of Note

We’ve been finding ourselves leaning on the wonderful research outlined in Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire book Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. If you’re interested in any aspect of the creative process, including how different forms of meditation can enhance or detract from your ability to be creative, check this book out.

Also, if you are university professor who is in any way affiliated with writing textbooks—or if you simply have a yen for oceanography (we do!)—we’d like to direct you towards the book Essentials of Oceanography, by Alan Trujillo and Harold Thurman. This is a stunning book that brings in the best of modern technology—you can use the QR codes by the graphics to go to terrific animations. This book won the prestigious “Text” textbook excellence award by the Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA). Take a look to get great insight into the future of publishing.

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!

Watch a Memory Competition, Live!

Long time Learning How to Learners know that we’re big fans of US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis. Nelson has his third annual memory competition happening in just under 2 weeks from now (June 24-26). It’s being hosted at Dart NeuroScience’s offices and boasts the top 24 memory athletes from around the WORLD, all competing for some $75,000 (not too shabby). The whole competition can be seen live online at http://www.xmtlive.com. There will be sports commentators livening up the high stress action.

Basic information on the competition and how it works can be found at: www.extremememorytournament.com. You’ll have a chance to see what a real memory competition looks like. As a bonus, there will be interviews and tips from the world’s greatest memory athletes and experts throughout the competition. Don’t miss it!

Sleep—even 30 minutes more helps improve learning and health

A great new study using smartphones has revealed people’s sleep patterns around the world. In the US, one in three adults aren’t getting the recommended minimum of seven hours of sleep, and in some other parts of the world, people are even more sleep deprived. Even half hour less sleep can have a big impact on cognitive function and long-term health. An interesting fact that this study brought to (sun) light is that people who spend some time in the sunlight each day tend to go to bed earlier and get more sleep than those who spend most of their time in indoor light. So if you get a chance to go outside today, take it. Incidentally, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, our popular book-of-the-month we recommended last week, has observed that professional musicians find additional naps to be a helpful part of their learning repertoire. If your work is intellectually intense, it may be especially important to guard your sleep!

Learning How to Learn in Georgian! როგორ ვისწავლოთ სწავლა – უკვე ქართულად!

We’d like to pass along an important message from a Learning How to Learner: “My name is Mari Chikvaidze and I am a new Georgian Lead trying to put the team of volunteers together for translating Learning How to Learn into Georgian language (ქართველებო, შემომიერთდით და ერთად გადავთარგმნოთ ეს სასარგებლო და პოპულარული კურსი – “როგორ ვისწავლოთ სწვავლა”!). Looking forward to hearing from you soon! Feel free to connect with me via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marichikvaidze”

Book (and earmuffs) of the week

We’ve been reading the book Procrastinate On Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time, by Rory Vaden. It’s a straightforward read and a nice reminder about what’s important to keep your focus on.

Speaking of keeping focus, we like using earmuffs when we’re learning something really difficult. If you want to go low tech and cheap, we swear by the Peltor Sport Ultimate 10 Hearing Protector. (Yes, these earphones are the ones modeled by Barb’s older daughter in a week three video here). For a higher tech version, try these Bose QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones. They aren’t as good as the low tech Peltor earmuffs. But they are slimmer and look less geeky if you might be wearing them on planes.

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 reminder about Process versus Product

Learning How to Learner Anirudh Varanasi has written an insightful essay about “Focusing on Process rather than Product.” Who knew that losing at water basketball could produce such insight?

No Pay MBA

Learner Laurie Pickard has taken on the order of 30 MOOCs as part of a project to complete an education equivalent to an MBA. She calls the project the “No-Pay MBA,” and she has been blogging about it at www.nopaymba.com since late 2013. If you’re interested in doing something similar, check out Laurie’s blog!

Creating a Data Science Masters from MOOCs

In a similar vein, David Venturi is happily becoming a data scientist—and saving himself a heap of money—by dropping out of one of Canada’s top computer science programs and instead creating his own data science masters degree. Here’s how he did it. Clearly there’s growing opportunity to creatively do advanced studies in a flexible, inexpensive way.

Class Central’s Analysis of Books versus MOOCs

The third part of MOOC analysis site Class Central’s interview about MOOCs versus books, featuring Raj Raghunathan (“Dr. Happy Smarts”), has just been published. Writer Charlie Chung does a terrific job of contrasting the two very different book-MOOC mediums—the entire 3-part series is well worth your while. (Incidentally, feel free to leave a review of Learning How to Learn at the Class Central website.)

Barb’s interview at the Antigua Forum

In January, Barb was lucky enough to attend the Antigua Forum in Antigua, Guatemala. Here is her wide-ranging interview, as produced by the Universidad Francisco Marroquín. You’ll learn Barb’s insights on the future of MOOCs, teaching people how to learn, and her research on the best ways to help others.

Quora

Barb’s Quora session, where she answered top-voted questions about learning, fear of public speaking, and MOOCs, went beautifully. Some of her answers were also posted in places like Inc and the Huffington Post. You can find Barb’s complete set of answers here. (Feel free to vote them up if you like!)

Book of the Month!

Every once in awhile, we encounter an extraordinarily insightful book on learning. This past week, we’ve had the opportunity to read the phenomenal book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. This is the best book we’ve ever read about learning. If you want to improve your abilities in virtually any area, or help your kids to do better, you couldn’t do better than to read this important book. Incidentally, what Ericsson refers to as “mental representations” is analogous to what we in Learning How to Learn call “neural chunks.” Notice that Barb’s Quora answer about the most important technique in learning is right in line with Ericsson’s findings—we just use slightly different terminologies.

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

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