Author: barboakley

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results, by Shane Parrish.  Like half the planet, it seems, we are fans of Shane Parrish’s podcast The Knowledge Project. In Clear Thinking, Shane distills the best of what he’s learned over the years, both from his high-pressure work for certain unnamed agencies and from his wide-ranging conversations with hyper-talented individuals. What we really love about this book are its personal stories of success and failure.  By laying out some of his poor past decision-making, Shane invites us to engage honestly with our own personality quirks and foibles. (It’s actually quite encouraging to realize that even world-class thought leaders can be all-too-human in their thinking!) Drawing from diverse fields, including philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Shane provides us with an accessible yet sophisticated set of mental models and insights that can be readily applied to real-world situations.

Everything rings true with our own experiences.  For example, Shane describes the value of getting accurate information, instead of as relayed through layers of management. As an enlisted woman, Barb would witness generals who might think they were being guided, for example, through a typical training classroom. In actuality, the generals were being taken to a special classroom of hand-picked students—all other classrooms in a quarter mile having been cleared to avoid any “accidental” side visits. These high-ranking officers weren’t witnessing reality—they were witnessing only what they were being allowed to see.  This type of thing happens in the military, in education, in the corporate world—in fact, wherever layers of administration, as Shane describes, allow for murkiness and even subterfuge to emerge, so the bosses on high see only what’s intended instead of the existing real world.

Clear Thinking represents an empowering resource for anyone seeking to hone their judgment, cultivate self-awareness, and chart a purposeful path forward in work and life. Highly recommended!

Barb wins the McGraw Prize (sling-shotting back to New York from Santiago, Chile)

And it is indeed a Cheery Friday Greeting today as we announce that our very own Barb has won the McGraw Prize—colloquially known as the “Nobel Prize for Education.”  Barb is the first winner of a newly created category of the Prize—the Life Long Learning Award—in recognition of our society’s changing need to help learners of all ages grow in and out of the classroom. Barb joins fellow award winners Debra Duardo, Superintendent, Los Angeles County Office of Education, for her work in preK-12 education, and David Wilson, President, Morgan State University, for his work in higher education.  The Prize will be awarded on November 8th in New York City, at the Morgan Library and Museum.  It’ll be a direct flight for Barb returning from the fantastic ResearchEd on November 21st in Santiago, Chile to New York (okay—she can’t resist a stop over on Easter Island! 🙂 )

Northwest Mathematics Conference

Barb will be headlining at the 62nd Annual Northwest Mathematics Conference on October 12-14th, 2023 with some ground breaking presentations:  

• Effective Teaching & Learning: Dramatic New Insights from Neuroscience, Thursday, October 12, 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
• Friday Breakfast Keynote: Interleaving: The Path toward Reconciliation in the Math and Reading Wars, Friday, October 13, 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
• The Pathological Altruist’s Guide to Education: How to Help Without Hurting, Friday, October 13, 11:00 a.m. – 11:50 a.m.

If you’re in the Portland area, register now and Barb will see you next week!

Dr. Monica Aggarwal

Barb was fortunate enough to talk about learning recently on Dr. Monica Aggarwal’s podcast.  Dr. Aggarwal is a cardiologist who uses common sense medical coupled with diet and lifestyle approaches to help improve your health and boost your energy. (We loved her book Body on Fire: How Inflammation Triggers Chronic Illness and the Tools We Have to Fight It). 

Hat Tip to Matthew Tower from ETCH (“Ed Tech Career Home”)

If you are interested in general edtech issues, we highly recommend signing up for Matthew Tower’s ETCH Substack. As Matthew notes: “I follow the news in EdTech throughout the week and write this newsletter on Sunday afternoons. The goal of each newsletter is to give the reader an information-dense 5 minutes of reading on the edtech to start your week. It is informed by my decade of experience in the edtech world, but I try to find publicly available information to back up what I say.” 

Harvard Canceled its Best Black Professor. Why?

In this thoughtful, eery 25-minute documentary, director Rob Montz explores Harvard superstar Roland Fryer’s search for truth. This search appears to have sown the seeds of his destruction.

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

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

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Marie Curie: A Life by Susan Quinn.  Marie Curie is one of the greatest scientists of the last several centuries.  Yet people often know little of the life of this extraordinary woman who helped unravel the mysteries of radiation—to her own, and her daughter’s, ultimate peril and demise. Maria was born in Poland as the fifth and the youngest child of teachers Bronisława, (née Boguska), and Władysław Skłodowski. Władysław was the director of a secondary for boys, where he taught mathematics and physics. Władysław also taught Maria mental math—a trick she used to her advantage through her career. (Would that we commonly taught these skills in elementary school nowadays.)  Meanwhile, researcher Pierre Curie in Paris was beginning to think he would have a career wedded only to science, since he could never find a woman as interested in science as he.  But when Marie moved to Paris, Pierre was bowled over.  Their mutual passions produced a Nobel Prize and two daughters.  Pierre might, however, be thought of as an exemplar of the dangers of excessive focus. It seems he was killed while inattentively attempting to cross a busy street.  Marie, devastated, still forged ahead in her research, winning a Nobel Prize yet again for her solo efforts.  This fascinating book tells the story of this exceptional woman, with a phenomenal memory and even more extraordinary ability to piece together the mysteries of radiation.   

Learning & the Brain Conference, Boston, November 17-19, 2023

Learning & the Brain is one of our very favorite conferences, packed full of great information with terrific speakers.  You’ll see Richard Davidson, perhaps the best-known meditation researcher;  the always informative polymath Paul Kirschner; Annie Murphy Paul, whose books we’ve admired for years; and Robert Waldinger, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the longest, most comprehensive scientific study of happiness and wellbeing ever conducted. Barb’s own presentations will help reconcile the math and reading wars using insights from neuroscience (Nov 17, 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM ET); as well as the keynote on building memories and effective learners, Nov 18: 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM.  Register here to take advantage of the early registration until September 29th!

Smartick Data

One of the coolest developments we’ve seen online are the fantastic data visualization capabilities offered by Smartick Data.  Wow!  You can find, for example, graphs and articles revealing how the number of students with disabilities have trended markedly upwards.  “In the 2000-01 school year, when data collection for autism began, around 93,000 students were reported. This figure has grown nearly ten-fold to 882,000 students by the 2021-22 school year. Similarly, the category of ‘other health impairments’ has seen an exponential increase from 141,000 students in 1976-77 to over a million students in 2021-22.”  You can also break this data out by state.

Here is just the tiniest sampling of the many charts and articles you can easily access through Smartick Data:

• Visualizing The Current State of Teacher Shortages in U.S.
• Numeracy and Literacy Scorecards
• EdTech Titans: The Global Unicorns Shaping the Future of Education
• International Mathematical Olympiad 2023: Unveiling the Champions
• Visualizing the Duration of School Summer Vacations Around the World
• Crunching the Numbers: How Much Funding Do Public Schools Get?

We’ve bookmarked Smartick Data, and return to it again and again to find fun, interesting charts and articles. You can also subscribe, as we have, to their educational newsletter. Smartick is all about teaching kids math, but it’s also so much more. Enjoy! 

“Finland Government has Admitted the Failure of Finland Education”

Indefagatable investigative Japanese educational reporter Manabu Watanabe is back to reporting in English after an all-too-long hiatus. The Bildung Review is Finland’s recent report involving the shocking decline of learning standards in the country since the early 2000s.  Manabu observes: “As we all know, very few people abroad talked about the excellence of Finnish education between 1960s and 1990s. It was only after it had reached to the top in the PISA ranking in the mid-2000s that Finland was hailed as ‘Education Superpower.’ Since then, Finnish teaching has been an exciting topic and celebrated enthusiastically in many foreign media such as TV programs, books, newspapers, blogs etc. Education debates in the world have been revolving around Finland for almost two decades. However, according to the Bildung Review, while proficiency in reading and mathematics strengthened between 1960s and 1990s, rapid decline in learning outcomes began in early 2000s. So if you accept this view of the Finland government, you cannot help but come to the conclusion that the Finnish teaching mythologized after the mid-2000s is useless or even harmful, because it has caused the sharp drop in the learning outcomes. 

In this way, it poses a very painful question especially to those who have been making a fuss about Finland education on the bandwagon.”

Barbara Oakley, cómo aprendemos

Enjoy Barb’s conversation about learning and entrepreneurship at Libertopolis in Guatemala City with Maria Dolores Arias and Jorge Jacobs. 

Modern Firefighter

Learn more about the intense discipline of firefighting–and how learning applies, with Rob Kandle and Barb in this podcast episode of Modern Firefighter.

Sithu Khant’s Journey in Machine Learning

If you are trying to get a foothold in the world of machine learning, read this interesting blog post by Sithu Khant about his learning journey over the past year.

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

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

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Battle Over the Butterflies of the Soul: Camillo Golgi, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, and the Birth of Neuroscience, by Wallace B. Mendelssohn, MD. 

One of the more intriguing rivalries in the history of science is that between the Italian Camillo Golgi and the Spaniard Santiago Ramón y Cajal—both of whom received the Nobel Prize for their interlinked discoveries.  Golgi’s staining methods gave Cajal the start of a methodology he refined to help him get a more comprehensive view of neurons.   Both scientists initially published in back-water journals, so it’s no surprise that each at first remained unaware of the other’s work.   This meant that Cajal published studies claiming he had discovered findings that Golgi had already published. The brash young Cajal also wrote Golgi aggressively to challenge his theories—particularly, Golgi’s hypothesis that only a single, large interwebbed “reticulum” of cells was fused to form the brain’s neural networks. History would show Cajal to be largely correct. This short book by Dr. Mendelson describes the development of staining techniques in photography and neuroscience and examines the rivalry between the two scientists. Why was Golgi so stubborn—and wrong—in the face of overwhelming data? This book by psychiatrist Wallace Mendelson comes as close to what we can know today to the answer. 

TED talk by Sal Khan on the extraordinary opportunities presented by ChatGPT

Learning How to Learner and neuroscientist Leif Gibb writes to point out Sal Khan’s fantastic TED Talk. Leif notes: “I found it inspiring and was fascinated to learn about how Khan Academy is giving its tutoring AI the ability to ‘think’ quietly, chatting with itself to perform multiple steps of reasoning.”  And Leif is also correct in observing: “I have no doubt that the principles of Learning How to Learn can also be incorporated into their AI tutor.” Perhaps in a learning mode, Khanmigo might be able to point out key ideas that a student might find worth practicing retrieval with. Or suggest a few jumping jacks for a break when it’s clear a student is pushing the wall with frustration.  Or home in with interleaving exercises when a student clearly needs a bit of extra practice.  We like Leif’s idea! 

Barb in Panama!

Barb will be in Panama speaking at a number of different events from September 15-18.  The three-hour workshop on Learning How to Learn on September 15th is perfect for professionals who want to keep up with the latest in the deluge of change.  The three-hour workshop on teaching on September 16th—Uncommon Sense Teaching: Effective Teaching & Learning, Insights from Neuroscience—will give you a plethora of insights to help improve your ability to effectively communicate key ideas. And if you are interested in changing careers (for example, going into something more technically-oriented), Learning How to Change, September 18th, is ideal for you.  Sign up today, as seating is limited.

Study finds that the human brain reactivates mental representations of past events during new experiences

This super-cool article describes how neuroscience related to movie-making once again reveals fascinating information about how the brain puts together its understanding.  Researcher Avital Hahamy observes: “We developed a new fMRI method to look for replay of past information in the transitions between movie/story scenes. We basically asked—would our brains replay past information that is needed for interpreting a scene we had just perceived?” 

And yes, it does! “We found that the same brain regions that replay spatial information in the rodent brain also replay narrative events in the human brain,” Hahamy said. “In other words, replay, previously thought to mainly support spatial navigation, could also underlie the human ability to make sense of narratives. Moreover, while research in rodents proposed that replay is used to store past events into memory, mostly when rodents rest or sleep, we suggest it can also be used to make sense of the present, on the fly, while events are unfolding.”

All this is eventually going to help teachers all better understand what’s meant by “higher conceptual understanding” in Bloom’s taxonomy.

Clues about how the brain figures out what’s worth remembering

This article by Yasemin Saplakoglu in Quanta shows how researchers are investigating what sparks interest in remembering things.  As we’ve seen before in advertising expert Robert Cialdini’s books Influence and Presuasion, hooking people with anything that catches their interest opens a window that allows you to feed them other information you want to learn.  This approach apparently works for both students and snails.

Insightful discussion with visionaries in math education

Don’t miss this terrific discussion between math professors Anna Stokke and Brian Conrad, of the University of Winnipeg and Stanford, respectively.  Anna and Brian are the real deal–genuine mathematicians who are deeply concerned about the direction of mathematics education in North America.  The pair discuss modern-day applications of math, and Brian gives advice “for parents who wonder what type of math their kids should learn to be ready for a four-year college degree in STEM or other quantitative fields.  Listeners will receive an update on what happened with the California Math Framework since the two episodes featuring Jelani Nelson (Episodes 11 & 12).  As well, Brian Conrad shares examples of the many false or misleading citations he found permeating a 1000-page draft copy of the CMF. The discussion of those findings illustrates how citation misrepresentation can lead to misunderstandings about math and data science among the general public. This episode is a must-listen for parents, teachers, policy makers and anyone with an interest in math or education.”

The Science of Learning

Check out this Substack newsletter by solidly evidence-based educators Dr. Nidhi Sachdeva, an evidence-informed learning designer and consultant; and Dr. Jim Hewitt, a professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Toronto. Their goal is to keep you updated on the latest breakthroughs in learning sciences while providing a platform where teachers, teacher candidates, graduate students, and researchers can come together to exchange ideas, share experiences, and deepen their understanding of the science behind effective teaching and learning.  

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

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

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!

• Mindshift—the book and MOOC

• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC

• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers

For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week

• Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel, by George Saunders. While spending time in the Tibetan Tergar Monastery in Kathmandu, Barb heard a lot about Buddhist theories of reincarnation and the “bardo,”  an intermediate state between death and rebirth that might also be related to Western conceptions of poltergeist activities.  So, after reading In the Houses of their Dead, it was a good time to also explore how the ideas related to the bardo can be explored in fiction.  This was a spirited effort to explore the afterlife in a way that adds meaning to our current lives. Odd, yet oddly satisfying.
• In the Houses of their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits, by Terry Alford. This meandering book provides background about both Abraham Lincoln and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, through a cast of lesser-known characters, often involved in spiritualism, who were acquainted with both men.  The book provides context on the US era of the 1850s through 1860s. Alford is a good writer, but the final portions of the book were a bit of a disappointment as Alford plodded on through the dispiriting lives of relatively minor, rather disappointing characters.

A Phenomenal Resource for Educators on ChatGPT

The hands down best resource we’ve found for learning about what ChatGPT can do, and how it will affect education, is Ethan Molluck’s Substack “One Useful Thing,” which is well worth the subscription.  We found these articles to be particularly insightful:

• How to Use AI to Do Stuff: An Opinionated Guide

• Superhuman: What can AI do in 30 minutes?

• Setting time on fire and the temptation of The Button  

But on the other hand, so many of Ethan Molluck’s articles are insightful, that you’re best off to simple use these as jumping off points!

Barb to Teach All-Day Workshop at the University of Waterloo

Barb will be teaching a rare, all-day workshop on teaching and learning at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada on August 16th.  Register here for this free workshop by August 11th.   The coverage is broad, and includes the following:

• Learning means linking neurons.
• Metaphors in learning.
• Retrieval practice.
• Sleep, spaced repetition & exercise.
• Focused and diffuse modes of thinking, meditation.
• Procrastination, Pomodoro technique, multi-tasking.
• Fast & slow learners.
• Stress, depression, and the positive effects of learning.
• Direct instruction (don’t be fooled that active learning is all you need!)
• Working memory, long-term memory, octopuses, and illusions of competence in learning .
• Differences in working memory capacity; Working memory test.
• Mental models and schemas (memory frameworks).
• Identity schemas and motivation.
• Teaching & learning means getting in neural “synchrony.” 
• Declarative (hippocampal) versus procedural (basal ganglia) learning pathways and their relation to direct instruction.
• Interleaving.
• Neurodiversity.
• Mirroring and motivation—how this relates to habit and to teaching well online.
• Dopamine, hooks, curiosity and social learning.
• A deeper understanding of retrieval practice – including the role of the hippocampus.
• Greater versus lesser capacity working memory in learning – scaffolding.
• Consolidation; Learning becomes easier as a schema expands; why prior knowledge is helpful.
• Biologically primary and biologically secondary knowledge.
• The challenge of intelligence; bias in education; 
• Reconciling constructivist and traditionalist approaches to teaching and learning.
• The vital importance of open perspectives to new learning.

The Power of Relentless Curiosity in Bangladesh

Barb’s interview with Bangladesh podcaster Md. Rashed Mamun was both fun and insightful. Enjoy!

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

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

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

(Partly) Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Month

We continue our reading of history and society—reading books is one of the best ways to broaden your learning about everything!  This week, we have two books to share:

• Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40, by William Trotter. It’s all too easy to think that war is so rare that it will never happen. When war does happen, then, countries can be blindsided by their own naivete.  Such was the case with the brutal, hellish Winter War between the Soviets and the Finns in 1939-40 as Stalin sought to make an “easy” expansion of the Soviet Union to prepare for the coming conflageration with the Nazis.  Much as with Ukraine today, the Russians were surprised and lost tens of thousands of men due to poor leadership.  Frozen Hell gets right into the nitty-gritty of what happened. A quick read and a good reminder of the dangers of lack of preparedness—and the value of Finnish grit. 
• Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China, by Desmond Shum.  This is a fascinating look at the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by a brave man who stands out from the many others who gain privately as they enable and support mass public harm.  The CCP enabled Shum and his wife Whitney Duan’s rise into China’s billionaire class as the couple used their insider connections and natural smarts to built a massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, as well as one of Beijing’s premier hotels.  But, much as with Bill Browder’s experiences in Putin’s Russia, (as told in Red Notice), Shum and his wife gradually became inconvenient for the CCP, and she was to disappear even while Shum himself escaped to the West. A riveting cautionary tale of how one superpower can operate.  

Neural Manifolds

Anybody who is interested in the latest developments from neuroscience should try their best to understand neural manifolds—a VERY hot topic!  One of the best introductions to this complex topic is that by  Artem Kirsanov,  a computational neuroscience student and researcher. Artem’s enthusiastic and beautifully illustrated video will leave you hungry for even more information about this fascinating topic! 

“Mob Mentality” Podcast

A fascinating development in programming is when small teams work to program together. This is beneficial not only in helping good code develop more quickly, but also in helping programmers have a bit more fun while they’re working.  An excellent podcast about this approach is “Mob Mentality,” by remarkable senior programmers Austin Chadwick and Chris Lucian. Barb was fortunate to be on the show to share ideas and to learn more about this fantastic approach to programming.  Enjoy the episode!

(Here also, incidentally, is a great article about using Agile to teach students to work effectively in teams.)

The Controversial California Math Framework

After an approximately year-long revision by State Board of Education staff, the final California Math Framework was recently approved by the California State Board of Education.  Diligent mathematics professor Brian Conrad is on the case, noting in his most recent comment on the controversy “Given that the [California Math Framework] is going to be influencing math education in this country for the next decade, it is unacceptable that the State Board of Education is providing such an extremely short time period (including a weekend followed by a federal holiday) to review the Framework.  Critical concerns remain, and the CMF does not live up to the standards of a document that sets state-wide education policy.”  

“Citation misrepresentation persists.  Despite objections from more than 440 STEM faculty from across the state, guidelines have still not been developed for data science to be in alignment with math education content standards.  The document also has critical inconsistencies that open up the possibility for public schools to implement the CMF in contradictory ways.  Finally, the CMF still invokes a UC policy on data science courses substituting for Algebra II that has been challenged at multiple levels, including its recent outright rejection by the entire California State University system. All of the above are critical shortcomings, due to which the CMF cannot be approved in its current form.”

In short, the public is witnessing the consequences of regulatory capture of a state governmental agency. On a side note, Stanford University, associated with the problematic developments in the CMF, has recently witnessed the resignation of its president in relation to the disgrace of falsified data.

But there was also a positive development. As Stephanie Lee reports in this perceptive article for the Chronicle of Higher Education: “[F]aculty members across California have expressed concern that the UC system is rubber-stamping courses that bill themselves as “data science” but that do not impart the algebra needed to major in data science or other science, engineering, math, and technology major… Those courses, especially ‘Introduction to Data Science’ and Youcubed, should not have been approved as an advanced math course or a replacement for algebra II.” 

“The vote throws into question California’s math framework, which gives guidance to the state’s K-12 schools about how to teach math.”

There is hope for those who care about legitimate, solidly research-based approaches to teaching and learning!

Noam Chomsky

Don’t miss this spot-on review of MIT linguist Noam Chomsky’s corrosive effects on linguistics as well as politics. What’s sad is to realize that no matter how deceitful or duplicitous their researchers can get, major universities tend to whistle and look the other way.  

“The Autism Surge: Lies, Conspiracies, and My Own Kids”

Jill Escher, the president of the National Council on Severe Autism, writes that in our well-meaning efforts to understand and support neurodiversity, the very groups that should be supporting research into understanding the causes of this sometimes devastating condition are abrogating their duty. Escher’s hard-hitting piece is a must-read at a time when rates of autism are unquestionably skyrocketing. (Again, pathologies of altruism rear their head.)

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

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

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!

• Mindshift—the book and MOOC

• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC

• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers

For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

The Story of Spanish, by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow. This fascinating volume gives a comprehensive overview of the Spanish speaking world and its history by using the unique lens of language.  Beginning with how Spanish evolved from the remnants of Vulgar Latin in the then-obscure Kingdom of Castile and León in what is now northern Spain, Nadeau and Barlow take us through a unique tour of the twenty countries that have evolved to share a common, sometimes locally quirky language.  This is the book we’ve been waiting for to gain a better understanding of Spanish-speaking world.  If you’re learning Spanish, or even just thinking about or admiring the language, this is the book to read. An intriguing companion book is Nadeau and Barlow’s The Story of French. Ever wondered why there are French-language schools in many seemingly unlikely places (e.g. Miami, Florida) around the world, where other major languages, such as Portuguese, don’t have them?  This book explains why!

Computer Programming in Ensemble Groups

Barb had a great time recently on the Mob Mentality Show podcast, about computer programming in groups to solve problems better and keep one another on track.  

Class Central’s Guides to Great Value in Online Learning

We’re always a fan of Class Central and its ability to guide you to good online learning materials through its encompassing review system. Don’t miss Pat Bowden’s Class Central review of the “5 best neuroscience courses to take in 2023.” (Pat and Barb both comismerated that somehow Idan Segev’s
phenomenal “Synapses, Neurons and Brains” just didn’t pop up in the number crunching to be added to the list–yet it is still one of our favorite courses.)  And here is a Class Central report on the best Coursera courses that include thoughtful well-designed peer reviews for a more personal and deeper pathway to mastering the material.  multiple-choice questions.  

Success Academy: Schools in New York Lead the Way 

This important article by Eva Moskowitz,  describes the remarkable success of a New York school system approach:[behind a paywall, but key grafs below]

“The school we founded, Success Academy, has blossomed into a network of 49 schools educating 20,000 children. If we were our own school district, we’d be the fifth largest in New York state. Over the past several years, our mainly poor and minority students have done better on average in all subject areas than students in any school district in the Empire State, including affluent suburban districts. Our success is due in no small measure to the Success for All curriculum that Mr. Greenblatt [who initiated and bankrolled the initial charter school approach] championed.

“The city’s education bureaucracy, which for two decades insisted on using an ineffective reading curriculum that doesn’t emphasize phonics, is finally coming around. David Banks, New York City’s schools chancellor since January 2022, recently acknowledged that the old approach was “fundamentally flawed” and offered the following mea culpa to the tens of thousands of public school parents whose children can’t read: “It’s not your fault. It’s not your child’s fault. It was our fault.”

“Mr. Banks’s admission of responsibility is refreshing, but it can’t repair the incredible damage that has been done. In the two decades it took the city to figure out that phonics work, an entire generation of students has been miseducated, with minority students suffering the most. According to the NAEP test, only 12% of black fourth graders and 18% of Hispanic fourth graders in New York are proficient readers.

“How is it that New York City’s massive Education Department, filled with highly trained professional educators, couldn’t see what Mr. Greenblatt saw? The elevation of ideology over evidence is principally to blame. Instead of objectively evaluating what actually works, educators fell in love with the utopian idea that children would naturally learn to read if only teachers made reading fun. In reality, most children need explicit phonics instruction.

“At Success Academy, we have a simple approach: We do what works.” 

You can read more about this remarkable story in Moskowitz’s riveting book: The Education of Eva Moskowitz: A Memoir.

Coursera’s exciting plans!

This EdSurge article on online learning provides fascinating insight into Coursera’s new personal learning assistant, “Coach.” As Coursera’s CEO Jeff Maggioncalda observes “Coach is going to be both reactive and proactive for learners. It’s going to be a thinking and writing partner in multiple languages.” Coach is able to provide explanations, summarize lessons, link videos and suggest further courses for the learner to check out.

Two types of muscle memory

This fine article “What you should know about muscle memory to help you stay fit” gives insight into the learning process. Key grafts: 

“When you’re initially learning a new movement or skill, you are in the cognitive stage… where your movements are slow and inefficient and there’s high activation in the prefrontal cortex, which is your brain’s thinking region.

“From there you progress to the associative stage, during which your brain is still working hard, but your movements are becoming more fluid and consistent.

“Muscle memory is achieved when you reach the autonomous stage. Your performance is now smooth and accurate, and your brain’s main activity has switched to the basal ganglia, the region involved with automatic functioning.” 

[Hat tip Sylvia Gholson, who notes how she finds these ideas useful for her music students.]

A wonderful link for all things “retrieval practice” 

Apologies, bad link last month for our favorite book on teaching—Powerful Teaching! Also, we’d like to point you toward Retrievalpractice.org, which houses all sorts of additional practical resources and tips on retrieval practice. For a great list of tons of books on the science of learning, also check out retrievalpractice.org/books. 

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

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

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!

• Mindshift—the book and MOOC

• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC

• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Rhythms of the Brain, by Gyorgy Buzsaki. Ever wondered about the various rhythms—alpha, theta, gamma, and more—and how they play a role in our thinking?  Wonder no more, as this in-depth scientific expose walks you through why the brain’s rhythms are so important, and how those rhythms are thought to arise. Buzsaki’s first chapters cover the speed of neural signals and how this matters in large and small mammals.  The book then moves on to describe the different types of oscillators, and how the pulsating signals of individual neurons can aggregate to sinusoidal-appearing waves.  One might wonder how neurons can remain in sync even without direct connections—Buzsaki reveals how the brain’s rhythms can synchronize spatially separated areas, rather like a handful of corks rising and falling together on waves of water. In some sense, the brain’s rhythmic waves can serve as the forward “ticks” of a clock. Theta waves in particular seem to serve as discrete channels that hold higher frequency gamma wave information within them. As Buzsaki notes:  “Linear time is a major feature of our Western cultural world-view, and the experience of time flowing between past, present, and future is intricately tied to everyday logic, predictions, and linear causation… What I am proposing in this volume is that neuronal oscillations are essential for these deepest and most general functions.”  

This is a seminal, not-to-be-missed book in neuroscientific literature. 

Barb in Santiago, Chile for ResearchEd, October 21, 2023

We feel ResearchEd is the most forward-looking, fact-based education conference around.   If you are a Spanish-speaker, don’t miss this superb conference, which will feature Spanish translations of all key activities. Barb will be giving the opening keynote, and the conference will also feature superstars Natalie Wexler, Kate Jones and Katharine Birbalsingh. More information here, and you can register here.

Do your students’ minds go blank during an in-class retrieval practice activity? 

As cognitive psychologist Pooja Agarwal, co-author of our favorite teaching-related book, Powerful Teaching, observes: “You’ve probably had at least one student who was frustrated and said, “But I can’t retrieve anything!” Keep reading for 4 steps you can take to help your students retrieve something.”  This is a wonderfully simple, yet insightful, article!

IDoRecall has brilliant new redaction feature!

You’ve probably had to learn parts of a visual image, but may have struggled in the past about how to create sophisticated flashcards that test you gradually on parts of the image.  Struggle no more!  iDoRecall has a fantastic new redaction feature that allows you to cover up and test yourself on only parts of an image.  This three-minute video explains how easy this is.  

Flashcards beat mnemonics

This deceptively simple essay, by the ever-informative Scott Young (author of Ultralearning), is one of the best essays we’ve seen on internalizing new material–especially when learning languages.

Seeing your learning on Anki

We met Jonas Grincius in Vilnius, Lithuania. After reading A Mind for Numbers three years ago he became inspired to begin using Anki.  Take a look at his inspiring set of Anki statistics—just for the year 2022. Now that’s a cool way to monitor your learning!

A list of best ChatGPT courses to take right now

The always helpful MOOC analysis website Class Central has a not-to-be-missed article by Elham Nazif on the best ChatGPT courses to help you understand this paradigm-shifting new technology. 

Classical Music for the Next Generation

Barb and her Hero Husband Phil were lucky enough to have the best dinner we’ve had in all of Europe at the restaurant Fabrikėlis in the Lithuanian forest with concert pianist Monika Lozinskienė, learning more about current trends in classical music. 

As Monika told us, over the generations, a continuing stream of people begin to turn to classical music in their forties. Except that in this generation, those in their forties are not turning to classical music.  Why? Well, classical performances not nearly as flashy as, say, an ABBA hologram performance, or Beyoncé live or on video. In fact, while we may know a great deal about Beyoncé’s life, the back story of classical music is often hard to come by. We typically know nothing about, for example, great Finnish classical composer Sibelius, whose synesthesia allowed him to “hear” notes arising from certain colors (the green ceramic stove in his living room was dubbed the “F-major”). 

Monika with her husband Robertas Lozinskis are setting out to help excite and educate the next generation about classical music.  And what an exciting approach they’re taking! Take a look at these wonderful duo battling out Paganini Variations for Two Pianos. Notice that you can feel the tones by seeing them, just as a synesthete might do!  Look at the incredible number of notes they are able to hit per second, and their heart rate.  Compare Monika and Robert’s different methods and different feelings as they tackle their play.  Learn about the history of the composer as you listen. Incidentally, Robert comes from a world of being a top-notch video gamer—he used this knowledge to underpin their creative approach to letting us enjoy classical music in a whole new way.  Don’t miss this performance!

If this whets your appetite, you can hear even more with this Pride and Prejudice soundtrack.

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

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

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

 Trilingual by Six: The Sane Way to Raise Intelligent, Talented Children , by Lennis Dippel MD. As the old joke goes:

“What do you call a person who speaks two languages?

“A bilingual.

“So what do you call a person who speaks one language?

“An American.” 

If you have young children or grandchildren, Dr. Dippel’s thought-provoking book provides a fountain of ideas about how to help your child grow up multilingual (that is, not like the typical US-born American!) in the easiest fashion possible—by learning new languages during their earliest years. Learning a language at this early time allows toddlers’ tiny basal ganglia procedural systems—which are then at their strongest—to soak up the rhythms and patterns in the easiest possible way. That is, by just listening and talking!  Incidentally, we have met many professors and business executives who have started out as au pairs. So if you use one of the approaches outlined in Dr. Dippel’s book and hire an au pair, (Dr. Dippel also has many other ideas) you may be providing a step forward in international acumen for both your child and the blossoming career of your au pair.

Raising a Multi-Lingual (beyond Bilingual) Child

Barb’s granddaughter, who is now five months old, is growing up being exposed to four different languages: English, Spanish, French, and Mandarin.  (She just LOVES the happy attention, no matter what the language! Could we add one more language?) If you might have any experience raising a multi-lingual (beyond bilingual) child, and you have suggestions or interesting comments to share, please  comment in the discussion forum here !  (If the link doesn’t take you directly there, just log in to Coursera/Learning How to Learn and go to the general discussion forum.)

Language Learning – Comments on Outdated Approaches

We were asked to comment on  this video  about language learning by prominent linguist Stephen Krashen, because the approaches that Krashen recommends are still prominent in language learning.  What Krashen says is accurate in many ways, (for example, the importance of comprehensible input and a low anxiety environment). But Krashen clearly knows virtually nothing of neuroscience—and to give him credit, at the time Krashen made the video, neuroscience had nothing like the insight it provides today.  

For example, Krashen implies that understanding is all you need to learn a language. That’s perhaps appropriate to say for kids, but not adults (note that all his examples involved children). 

The reality is, as we mentioned above in relation to Dr. Dippel’s book, the habitual “rote” procedural system in humans—so important in language acquisition—changes between infancy and adulthood. Neuroscientific evidence is increasingly revealing that adults have weaker procedural systems, so drill for adults can help facilitate the development of the procedural, intuitive sets of neural links that are so important for adults as well as children.  This fading procedural learning system appears to be related to why infants and toddlers are able to pick up languages with ease—where they cannot do it so easily at age 10, and not nearly as easily at age 20. A fascinating recent book related to the topic that we are in the process of reading, (review to come), is The Cognitive Unconscious: The First Half Century, edited by Arthur Reber and Rhianon Allen.

Do you have colleagues who get lost in the details and just can’t seem to see the big picture?

At last there is intriguing research, published in Nature, that gives a sense of why some people find it so difficult to generalize and transfer ideas: “ Uncertainty aversion predicts the neural expansion of semantic representations .”  The sprightly popular article we link to here, by researcher Marc-Lluís Vives,

gives a sense of why some people can easily see differences, but struggle when it comes to commonalities.  Notice the enlightening imagery of tight versus loose neural connections!

Could this be related to the phenomenon of universities that preferentially select doctoral students who are great at seeing the individual trees but struggle to see the forest?  That is, they do well when focusing on the limited scope of their doctoral dissertations, but struggle to see the greater context of their work. (Certainly gifted social scientists, when put to the test of making predictions involving multiple broad contexts can be  no better  than amateurs.) Or is it related to Kruglanski’s  theories  of the need for cognitive closure and  closed-mindedness ?

Don’t miss Barb on June 5th in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Reliance College “Jefferson” Dinner 

A few last seats have been opened for Barb’s presentation at the Reliance College “Jefferson” Dinner:  “The Road to Education is Paved with Good Intentions…”  Register here  today.  

Anna Stokke’s Brilliant Podcast Interviews on Teaching Math

In  this podcast episode  with experienced teachers Barry Garelick and JR Wilson, authors of  Traditional Math: an effective strategy that teachers feel guilty using , Anna, Barry, and JR share strategies and practical advice that they have used in their own classrooms with great success. This includes ideas about how to get students excited about math, how to effectively use the “I do, we do, you do” method of teaching and the role of understanding in math.  They also discuss critical math topics that teachers should focus on, tips for teaching word problems, how to keep advanced students challenged, and how to help struggling students.  (Don’t miss Barry’s insightful article “ Effective Math Instruction: Hiding In Plain Sight .”)

And in  this episode , Barb and Anna  discuss learning techniques such as chunking and deliberate practice.  They explore why being a slower learner may not necessarily be a drawback and consider whether it’s possible to catch up on math skills later in life.  

The Biggest Project in Modern Mathematics

 This extraordinary  video  by Rutgers University mathematician Alex Kontorovich is the most beautiful, insightful video on math we’ve ever seen.

MathGPT

Here is  an intriguing article  about MathGPT, an artificial intelligence-based program, featured at the ASU+GSV Summit, that is setting a pathway toward revolutionizing the way we learn math.  Of course, getting the patterns of math into our brain—which allows us to gain an intuitive feel for the numbers—is key, and this can only happen through plenty of practice.  But MathGPT could potentially help provide for targeted practice coupled with answers to student questions that could truly make a paradigm shift for students in their ability to learn math. 

Math app for Kids

Check out this interesting app,  Levebee , created to help ALL children learn math, including those with dyslexia, autism, ADHD, visual impairment, and other special needs. The creators have over 30 years experience in special education, where many worthwhile approaches to teaching math to ALL students is taking place.) All instructions in the app can be shown and played in two languages simultaneously. This allows a teacher who speaks one language to work with a student who speaks a different language.

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

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

• Uncommon Sense Teaching— the book  and Coursera  Specialization !

• Mindshift— the book  and  MOOC 

• Learn Like a Pro— the book  and  MOOC 

• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn— the book  and  MOOC . Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

• The LHTL recommended text,  A Mind for Numbers