Category: Uncategorized

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Posted on September 3, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Barb and her Hero Hubby Phil were driving through Montana last week and happened to spot signs for the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Next thing you know, the intrepid duo had parked their little trailer and were off to spend a blistering hot day exploring the battlefield.  In some sense, the Little Big Horn Monument is like an action-packed cemetery, with clusters of gravestones marking the spot of bodies as the battle swept through the gullies and hillsides. But just roaming the hillsides wasn’t enough—they had to learn more.

Enter Nathaniel Philbrick’s extraordinary The Last Stand.  From the very first pages, this exquisitely written book pulls you into the world of bad guys (if Custer’s premeditated attacks on a peaceful Native American villages don’t qualify him as a bad guy, nothing would), good guys like the extraordinary leader Sitting Bull, and everyone in between. The Last Stand gives a tremendous sense of the injustice and inequities experienced by Native Americans around the time of the first US Centennial in 1876. But it also gives a broad sense of place and time thanks to Philbrick’s extraordinary way with words. (Philbrick has won the National Book Award and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.)  This is a rare, hard-to-put-down masterpiece. Enjoy!

TIME Magazine: The Science of Learning Single Issue 

Here’s Time’s most recent special issue, which focuses on learning. The issue also contains an in-depth article on online learning that quotes Barb extensively.  Enjoy!

MOOC of the Month: Bringing the Fun into Teamwork

This week marks the launch of “Remotely Humorous,” created by Stanford Lecturers Naomi Bagdonas and Connor Diemand-Yauman. This MOOC focused on creating more humorous, joyful, remote teams. The intrepid creator duo have teamed up with comedic minds from The Onion, Funny Or Die, and Comedy Central to create a hilarious, interactive learning experience. You’ll find yourself feeling both uplifted and empowered as you reframe to shine joy into your work and life. 

Did we mention that the course is funny? As in, really funny. Neurotransmitters like dopamine play a crucial role in learning and memory, and there are few faster ways to prompt a surge of dopamine than through laughter. So laugh as you learn! You can see the trailer here for a sense of the course.

Click here to signup (and use the code REMOTEHUMOR before September 9th to get 15% off!).

A Nice Interactive Graphic Article about Spaced Repetition

If you’d like to learn more about the powerful spaced repetition technique, check out this article by Nicky Case, which also allows you to occasionally interact with the graphics. Includes a valuable comparative discussion of Anki versus Leitner Box and Tiny Cards.  [Hat tip Roman Hardgrave.]

Career Advice in Mathematics from a World Leader in Math

Terrence Tao is a living legend in mathematics, which is all the more awe-inspiring given his youth. Tao is the winner of the 2006 Fields Medal and is a MacArthur Fellow.  Here is his collection of various pieces of advice on academic career issues in mathematics.

Never Too Old to Change and Grow, Career-Wise!

A LHTLer writes inspiring words for us all: “I’m writing to you because I just want to send some appreciation your way. I took the Learning How to Learn course during lockdown, and your story and techniques inspired me to begin studying computer science at the age of 30, when I assumed I had been long past the sensitive area of neural plasticity to learn something so new and challenging. And yesterday I completed Harvard’s rigorous Introduction to Computer Science. I don’t know if I would have done it without your inspiration. So thank you!!”

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

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

Calling Bullshit

Posted on August 27, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World, by Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West. This very readable book describes how easy it is for journalists, politicians, companies, and yes, even researchers themselves to bullshit people.  As Bergstrom and West note: “Perhaps the most important principle in bullshit studies is Brandolini’s principle. Coined by Italian software engineer Alberto Brandolini in 2014, it states: ‘The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than [that needed] to produce it.’ Producing bullshit is a lot less work than cleaning it up. It is also a lot simpler and cheaper to do. A few years before Brandolini formulated his principle, Italian blogger Uriel Fanelli had already noted that, loosely translated, ‘an idiot can create more bullshit than you could ever hope to refute.’ 

We also like this book because it provides fresh perspectives on the black box of artificial intelligence algorithms; how to understand conditional probability in simple, visual ways; how p-hacking leads to a misleading research landscape; and why even superb scientists can publish irreproducible results. This is an important book that we feel is destined to become a classic. Also good for audio listening.

A New Campus Diary Podcast Series from EdSurge

Fall 2020 will bring the first full college term of the COVID-19 pandemic, and no one knows quite what to expect. New social distancing rules have been issued for students—and already broken. How will it all work out?The indefatigable Jeff Young from EdSurge has started a new podcast series that features the audio diaries of professors and students to follow campus life during this unprecedented pandemic semester. Here’s the first episode.

“Groupiness” in Social Interactions

This article describes research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Rachel Kranton and colleagues related to people’s tendencies to think like and identify with a group—very relevant to today’s educational trends related to cooperative learning.  This topic has long been a fascinating one for Barb, sparked by Donna Musil’s BRATS: Our Journey Home, a documentary about the apparent different ways of thinking of some children who grow up moving all the time. Barb moved every year or two during most of her formative years because her father was in the Air Force.  Ultimately, she grew more comfortable with the discomfort of never quite being like her classmates.  When she moved from rural Texas to tony Malibu, for example, she didn’t look right (she wore the wrong jeans), she didn’t sound right (thick Texas twang), and ultimately she didn’t think right, at least according to the ruling cliques of middle school. 

Today, Barb is sometimes surprised by how people will reach judgments by appealing, not to facts, but to the idea that, “why, everybody thinks that way!” This is notwithstanding the fact that some despicable social movements of the past were spurred by the fact that nearly everybody thought in the same problematic way. Kranton’s research is just the beginning of the deeper work that’s needed involving groupthink and concepts outlined in Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. Barb can’t help but wonder, can formative experiences during youth, including experiences in the educational system, also play a role?

The Value of Online Learning in Helping You Get a New Job

One of Barb’s former face-to-face engineering students wrote to say “Welllll…after completing learning how to learn, I was continually asking myself if I had become obsessed or “addicted” to the MOOCs! Ha, ha, ha. The hardest part was choosing a path and deciding how to chain them together for a complete and even greater experience.

“And it seems like I managed to get it at least kinda right! I started my new job last week and one of my interviewers let me know that what sealed the deal for me were the courses I had taken during my time off.

“Pretty cool!”

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

Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It

Posted on August 20, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It, by Ian Leslie. Barb has an upcoming talk for Novartis on curiosity for their Curiosity Week, (it will start with the story of the worst professor Barb ever had, and this professor’s inadvertent role in inspiring the corny video editing behind Learning How to Learn). So meanwhile, Barb couldn’t help but become more curious about curiosity.  Ian Leslie’s book is a scorcher on the topic—highly readable and beautifully researched.  Here’s a sample: “Sir Ken Robinson’s 2008 [TED] talk on educational reform—entitled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”—has now been viewed more than 4 million times. In it Robinson cites the fact that children’s scores on standard tests of creativity decline as they grow older and advance through the educational system. He concludes that children start out as curious, creative individuals but are made duller by factory-style schools that spend too much time teaching children academic facts and not enough helping them express themselves. Sir Ken clearly cares greatly about the well-being of children, and he is a superb storyteller, but his arguments about creativity, though beguilingly made, are almost entirely baseless.”

This is also a great book for audio.  Enjoy!

Five Rules to Make the Most of Your Online Learning

Here’s an article Barb wrote for The Indian Express about how to make the most of your online learning. A key point: “Do not think about finishing the course! Just think about putting in the time: Good online learners use processes that involve putting a certain daily amount of time into their chosen course. (It is best, at least at first, to only do one online course at a time.) Your daily goal is always to put in the time you’ve allotted, whether it’s five minutes or five hours. This means never missing an ‘X’ on your calendar, signifying you’ve done your day’s studies.” 

Learn Faster and Remember More

We’re always fans of Farnham Street, and their comprehensive article on learning shows why.  Key graf: “The greatest enemy of learning is what you think you know. When you think you know something, learning something new means you might have to change your mind, so it’s easy to think there’s no room for new ideas. But not wanting to change your mind will keep you stuck in the same place. Overcoming our egos can be one of the big challenges of learning. Therefore, being willing to admit when you’re wrong and adjust your thinking is the thing that will help you learn the most.”

11 Teacher-Recommended Math Apps and Online Tools

This is a terrific article by Emelina Minero in Edutopia that wades through and provides many inspired recommendations for apps and the like to help kids learn math. (We would just add one of our favorites to the list: Smartick.)

Ever Wondered How to Ensure You Look Properly Professional in Your Online Synchronous Sessions?

Wonder no more, as Andrew Ishak takes you on an increasingly bizarre journey through how one professor ensures his students feel suitably at home in his carefully arranged office. [Hat tip, Mako Haruta]

MOOC description about interesting course

Here is a fascinating research paper about the development of the world class “Understanding Multiple Sclerosis” MOOC,  distributed by the University of Tasmania, which is also the creative fountain behind the phenomenal “Understanding Dementia” and “Preventing Dementia” MOOCs. [Hat tip Pat Bowden of Online Learning Success.] 

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

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

Memory Superpowers!

Posted on August 14, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Memory Superpowers!: An Adventurous Guide to Remembering What You Don’t Want to Forget, by Nelson Dellis. It’s probably clear from our many past postings that we’re HUGE Nelson Dellis fans. That’s because four-time US memory champ Nelson isn’t just a memory expert—he’s also one of the best memory teachers in the world.  Nelson’s latest fantastic book is geared toward helping teens achieve remarkable memorization skills. If your child is a struggling underachiever, read a little section of this book together each evening so you both can learn how to outwit the Memory Thief. If your child is an overachiever, encourage them read this book on their own so they can achieve still more, all while enjoying adventures in the Forest of Forgettable Names and the Great Word Pyramids, maneuvering around the Pirates of the Periodic Table and journeying through the Himalayan Memory Palace. Nelson notes: “10-14 is the age range (but not limited to that. I mean, lot’s of adults could read it and get a lot out of it. Some advanced readers under 10 could read it too.” Truly a fun and highly practical guide to helping kids achieve remarkable memorization skills.

The Importance of Becoming a Self-Directed Lifelong Learner

This penetrating article by Dr. David Handel, CEO of iDR, is well worth reading.  Barb and Terry’s philosophy when it comes to learning is to never take for granted the received wisdom of decades-old theories and stipulations, but instead to go back to first principles in more foundational disciplines such as neuroscience and cognitive psychology and see what derives from there. David’s article goes even more deeply into first principles, meta-learning, meta-thinking, and taking charge of your learning.  Incidentally, David is co-Founder of iDoRecall, our very favorite flashcard system.

Supercharge your Pomodoro: How to Stay Focused and Productive During These Challenging Times

With many of us working from home, it can be difficult to stay focused when your usual routine is out the window. This is where our favorite mental tool, the Pomodoro Technique, comes in. Over the past few years, we’ve been following the development of TimeChi. Unlike other Pomodoro timers, TimeChi works by scheduling customized focus cycles by blocking both physical interruptions and digital distractions—and making sure you take regular breaks. TimeChi also helps track your productivity with personalized dashboards, so you can further optimize your work environment for deep work to get the most out of your time. You can get a feel for TimeChi—and preorder if you’d like—at Indiegogo.

A Message from Some of Coursera’s Top Instructors

Here’s an uplifting video from some of Coursera’s top instructors (including Barb!) to help boost your spirits.

An Inspiring Video Story of Dedication to Learning

Veveonah is a 18-year old Malaysian girl who lives at the extremely rural edge of eastern Malaysia in a village named Kampung Sapatalang. She was a freshman student at the university. However, due to the Malaysian Movement Control Order, universities in Malaysia were closed—online became the only mode of delivery in the spring semester. Veveonah found the highest hill near her home and climbed on a tree to get a relatively stable 3G connection. This is where she took her final exams. By the time she completed her exams, it was sunset, and she could only sleep on the tree for that night. She tells (and shows) her story here—watch out for the Asian giant “murder” hornet!  

The good news was that, after Veveonah posted her experience on YouTube, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission responded that the government will take actions to connect rural areas as soon as possible. [This video is a hat tip to our good friend Kenzen Chen of National Chiao-Tung University, who notes: “She is brave, dedicated, and many of her videos amaze me!”]

Interesting Insights on Online Learning

LHTLer Paul Burgmayer has been researching around the web for advice about online learning for students, parents, and teachers.  The best advice he’s found for teachers on how to teach is from the Education Endowment Foundation in the UK which in April posted a really nice summary called “Best evidence on supporting students to learn remotely.”  It is solid work supported by published research.  Their conclusions are not startling but good reminders of what matters most.

 Paul continues: “There’s not a lot out there for how to help students learn.  The best one I found is part of a blog series by a company called Neo LMS which is part of Cypher Learning.  Their newest post is 7 Tips on How to Adapt Teacher-Student Rapport while Teaching Online, which covers a lot of what I’d consider the basics.  This article links to a couple of other blogs on the same site which are also helpful.  One is on teaching students how to learn which seems related to the Learning How to Learn Coursera course.  The other post is about browser extensions that can promote learning by avoiding online distractions and helping facilitate studying.

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

Online Teaching with Zoom

Posted on August 6, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Online Teaching with Zoom: A Guide for Teaching and Learning with Videoconference Platforms, by Aaron Johnson. We had previously read and liked Aaron’s first book on online teaching, Excellent Online Teaching. Aaron’s new book provides a solid overview of how to use Zoom for teaching—his insights are also more broadly applicable to any sort of online teaching.  And the price is right—both books are free on Kindle Unlimited!

Another Top MOOC: Design Thinking for the Greater Good

Lead Mentor of our companion MOOC Mindshift, Scott Mathews, brings us another fine MOOC review, this time of “Design Thinking for the Greater Good,” by the University of Virginia via Coursera.

Scott notes: “Design Thinking for the Greater Good: Innovation in the Social Sector, from the renowned Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (Go ‘Hoos!) gives us a human-centered, as opposed to an organization-centered, approach to creative problem solving. This approach is especially useful for structuring thinking about problems that are complex or amorphous.

The four iterative processes  of design thinking are 1) ‘What is?’ 2) ‘What if’ 3) ‘What wows’ and 4) ‘What works.’ The first phase is typically the longest, defining the problem by involving people who actually do the work and not just managers/department heads. The second phase is brainstorming…everything is  on the table, no matter how unlikely it may seem at first glance. The third phase is determining what solution(s) stand out. The fourth phase determines what may work, with iterative testing and prototyping.”  

Scott concludes: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a template like this to help guide departmental budget meetings? :)” He’s now enrolled in a companion course by the same professor, “Design Thinking for Innovation.”

Headline: “Teachers Are Wary of Returning to Class, and Online Instruction Too”

The title of The New York Times article, as well as the article itself, summarizes the attitudes of teachers’ unions in relation to teaching either in person or online. This no doubt is what is fueling joking prankster headlines like “Teachers Refusing To Go Back In The Fall Launch ‘Every Child Left Behind’ Movement.” This article in The Atlantic, “I’m a Nurse in New York. Teachers Should Do Their Jobs, Just Like I Did,” makes a perceptive case for why schools are essential to the functioning of our society—which should mean that teachers are essential workers. 

And lastly, this article in The Federalist observes: “If there was ever an argument for school choice, this is it. When enrollment dollars are on the line, delaying school or doing extended closures would be unthinkable. But when public school districts have a monopoly, then they can easily justify this move.

“Whether or not they offer a genuinely good education or even stay open, most students have to attend these schools because they have nowhere else to go. By contrast, private businesses cannot hold their customers captive this way. If they close, they lose customers and go bankrupt — which is exactly what happened to many companies during the COVID-19 shutdowns.

“More importantly, school choice rewards passionate, hardworking teachers with better compensation and actual students to teach. Right now, there isn’t much incentive to be brave and go to work, nor is there extra compensation for those who provide high-quality instruction. No school is competing for students or the best teachers; rather, they are competing for government funds and more relaxed standards, which only incentivize questionable excuses and weak performances.”

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

Zvi Galil of Georgia Tech

Posted on July 29, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

The Most Important Movement in Higher Education Today

We feel that former Dean of Computing Zvi Galil of Georgia Tech, along with Georgia Tech’s innovative faculty, have produced the most significant leap forward in higher education of recent decades with their Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) degree. The program’s creation is described in Zvi’s own words here. (The article’s embedded video is also worthwhile.) Zvi begins: “We took the words emblazoned on the seal of Georgia Tech—’Progress and Service’—as our mission. To start with, we committed the program to a unique admissions policy—GRE is not required, and instead, OMSCS students have to obtain grade B or higher in two courses from a specified list in their first year to be officially admitted [for admission requirements see here]. While the selectivity of the on-campus Master in Computer Science program (MSCS) is slightly higher than 10%, 70.7% of the more than 26,000 OMSCS applicants were admitted. Added to the novel admissions policy, I insisted on keeping OMSCS tuition affordable—less than $7,000 for the full degree, payable by course, rather than $40,000 for a public on-campus program, or $70,000 or more in a private university.” 

The results have been outstanding. If you are a university administrator dreaming of providing social justice for your students, you couldn’t do better than to emulate Zvi Galil and Georgia Tech’s example.

Book of the Week

The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad, by Emily Thomas. Thomas’s book helps explain why travel is so useful and important, and such a valuable tool for creativity. (Although it doesn’t quite get to why travel can, for some, be such an addiction.) Although the book can be a bit uneven, Thomas gets into unusual, often-overlooked aspects of travel. For example, the European “Grand Tours” that served as a sort of finishing school for the wealthy were apparently just as often an exercise in debauchery. We particularly appreciated the descriptions of how travel has changed over the years—mountains and empty spaces, for example, weren’t always seen as beautiful. Thomas’s description of the meaning of sublime is alone worth the price of the book, and echo Barb’s experiences at the South Pole Station in Antarctica. If you’re pining for travel, this book will help serve as a temporary touchstone to assuage your longing.

Barb’s Travel Adventures

Despite COVID, Barb has found a relatively safe way to fuel her travel addiction, at least in the USA, by traveling with her Hero hubby in their pickup, pulling a little self-contained travel trailer. You can see the scenery, mask at hand, as Barb just passed through the Willamette Valley in Oregon. She’s now visiting with old friends in Lake Chelan, Washington, where there are surprisingly good rosé  wines. Her stay with old friends also gave Barb a good internet connection for the Course Hero conference she just presented new materials at. (This included debut materials on the value of the hidden procedural system; and the presentation many of you had been waiting for on online learning.)  Incidentally, trailering into place, she’ll be social-distance-speaking in-person for the Logan-Magnolia Community School District in Logan, Iowa on August 10th.

MOOC of the Month: Mountains 101 from the University of Alberta

Lead Mentor of our companion MOOC Mindshift, Scott Mathews, observes: 

“My new favorite Coursera course is “Mountains 101” from the University of Alberta, Edmonton. It’s a 12-week course that I completed in one week…like a book that you just can’t put down, it’s that good. Who knew that learning scientific information about mountains and their environs could be so fascinating to a non-scientist? The course is exceptionally well-produced, with useful supplementary material for each week, including some practical “How-to” videos from professional mountain guides (and no peer-reviewed assignments.) The forums are lively, and they are actively mentored by one of the instructors.” 

(Yes, we’ve touted this course before, but it’s worth touting again!)

The Youngster Learning How to Learn Challenge

LHTLer Apoorv Mathur writes: “My eight-year-old son and I recently completed your course Learning How to Learn on Coursera. We watched the videos on TV and completed the quizzes on a cell phone. It was really cool for both of us to be learning together in COVID times. We really appreciated how you explained the concepts and the partnership with Dr Sejnowski.  My son created a series of two minute videos referring to the techniques you taught. We also got the certificate recently too (which can only be issued on my name since my son isn’t 18).”

If you want to see the brilliant, uplifting enthusiasm of the coming generation, look no further than Apoorv Mathur’s talented son. He’ll reaffirm your own natural excitement about learning!

GPT-3—Taking Language Generators to a Higher Level

For those of you who are interested in language analysis, GPT-3 is the latest thing. It is a deep learning network with 195 billion parameters. As this MIT Technology Review article notes, the number of parameters is the bottom line when it comes to language analysis. All of this will eventually be quite important in performing widespread peer evaluations via AI—an intriguing company along those lines is Intergrader.  

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

Urban Myths about Learning and Education

Posted on July 23, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Urban Myths about Learning and Education, by Pedro De Bruyckere, Paul A. Kirschner, and Casper D. Hulshof. This book, originally published in 2015 (and followed by a 2019 sequel), is as topical as ever. Killing commonly repeated educational myths is, it seems, its own cottage industry, although it probably isn’t nearly as lucrative as the sales of learning styles assessments. What we particularly like about Bruyckere et al’s book is the personal nature of the writing. Sometimes it feels as if a good friend is writing to you, making mildly snarky side-comments about the strange things they’re discovering when trying to detect the source of some of education’s most popular—and utterly bogus—imagery and ideas. Sometimes seemingly solid research citations lead nowhere. Anyone involved in education would find gold in this easy-to-read but thought-provoking book.

Steven Strogatz on Synchronization, Networks, and the Emergence of Complex Behavior

We’re big fans of Steven Strogatz, (see our review of his wonderful Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe).  So it was a pleasure reading Steven’s interview on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape Podcast (look around and you’ll see the link if you would prefer to read instead of listen). Barb’s daughter Rachel was inspired by Steven to switch from being an artist to instead apply for and now be deep in the throes of graduate studies in statistics.  Now that’s an inspiring author!

Una mente per i numeri: Un metodo di studio (non solo) per la matematica

Yes, A Mind for Numbers is now out in an Italian edition. Let your Italian family or friends know!

Useful Insights on Teaching Math—And a Delightfully Nerdy Football Cheer

LHTLer Stephen Greenberg, a mechanical engineer turned math teacher, notes “In the Spring of ’64, I went to see the Director of Personnel at the Buffalo (NY) public schools, mostly as a curiosity. He asked me if I knew anything about math or science, and I explained my education. Three minutes into the interview, he asked ‘When can you start?’ That’s how desperate that district was for math and science teachers. Two things I have stressed to both my students and their parents, understanding and fluency. It has been, and continues to be, one joyous ride. Not such a bad thing to memorize something beautiful like the nearly isosceles 20, 21, 29 right triangle.”

Stephen also sends along the football cheer from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute RPI, (not particularly noted for sports excellence):

e to the x, dy dx

e to the x dx

square root, cube root, cosine, sine

3.14159

disintegrate ’em, RPI!

A New Timer for Pomodoro Aficionados

LHTLer Raymond Griffiths sent along a link to this intriguing new countdown timer, currently under production and just beginning to ship. If you like the Pomodoro, this might be just the ticket for you. (But read the comments if you’re concerned about the shipping date.)

A Brief History of the Whole Universal Grammar Kerfuffle

Here’s a quick review of the recent history of linguistics research: What do all languages have in common? – Cameron Morin. We feel that linguistic and language research is going to be a hot area, what with all the data and advances that artificial intelligence is making available. [Hat tip: Steven Cooke]

Defending Explaining Postmodernism

One of our favorite books of philosophy is Stephen Hicks’ Explaining Postmodernism, which we reviewed previously.  Here’s Stephen’s eloquent podcast rebuttal to kibitzing on the margins.

PhD Comics

An old joke about becoming a Ph.D., has it that “B.S.” stands for “bullsh*t,” “M.S.” for “More of the Same” (or “More Sh*t”), and “Ph.D.” stands for “Piled Higher and Deeper.” We’ve heard good things about (and enjoyed!) Ph.D Comics. This article by Sara Coelho in Science notes that Ph.D. Comics deals with “everyday frustrations of life in the lab – procrastination, dealing with advisers, serving on committees, lack of inspiration…Supervisors interested in learning what’s on their students’ minds might find PHD an illuminating place to start.” 

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

The Wave

Posted on July 14, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean, by Susan Casey. Recent research on the dead water phenomenon (see below), reminded us of Casey’s book—a New York Times best-seller and one of our favorites about waves. Casey herself is something of a phenomenon. She was the long-time editor of O, The Oprah Magazine, and she had unprecedented access to surfer Laird Hamilton, joining him and other surfers to begin experiencing waves as surfers experience them. But she explores the bigger picture as well, looking at things like rogue waves, disappearing ships, and Lloyd’s of London insurance practices. Interesting look at the fascinating phenomena of waves, which Barb has been interested in ever since her own years at sea.( Her old, well-thumbed copy of Waves and Beaches: The Dynamics of the Ocean Surface has been reread many a time—when, that is, she wasn’t sea-sick with the dynamics of that ocean surface!)

Behind the Dead-Water Phenomenon

There is a major project investigating why, during the Battle of Actium (31 BC), Cleopatra’s large ships lost when they faced Octavian’s weaker vessels. Might the Bay of Actium, which has all the characteristics of a fjord, have trapped the Queen of Egypt’s fleet in dead water? This fascinating article describes research into the dead-water phenomenon. (Perfect fodder for scintillating dinner conversation!)

A “Wow” Upgrade on iDoRecall’s Already Phenomenal Flashcard System!

Barb’s favorite flashcard system (she even agreed to serve as iDR’s Chief Learning Science Advisor), is iDoRecall. What’s great about this system is that it’s intuitive—just watch a brief video or two and you’ll be able to use a full range of features.  Even better, though, is how iDR connects you naturally with the material you’re trying to learn. Barb uses it, for example, both with important research papers she is trying to internalize, and with the Spanish word and sentence flashcards she creates.  

The new upgrade on iDR takes the system even more in line with great learning:

  • iDR has added metacognition training. Throughout the app, you can trigger suggested questions to help you think about your thinking so that you can hone your ability to reflect upon your thinking and check-in with yourself to see how well you truly understand what you are learning. 
  • iDR has been re-built from the ground up to address the learnings coming out of thousands of conversations with the users of the MVP version.
  • iDR works in the browser on computers and mobile devices. Shortly, they will be releasing native desktop apps.

iDR is a perfect system for professors and teachers to encourage their students to internalize important materials. In fact, to support educators,  iDR has developed a free program for the Fall 2020 Semester to give educators access to iDR with their students and schools for use with their faculty and students. Those who are interested should fill out this form. 

Online Teaching as Effective as Face-to-Face—Insights from the Trenches

We received this fascinating email from Rusty Rae, who in March of 2008 became the manager of the Areva Technical Institute in Redmond, Washington, which was a training center for North American clients of the software company (Areva). This company published the complex software that controls the flow of electricity on the grid. And then the financial crisis hit, forcing Areva’s training to go online.

“The level of complexity of this software is perhaps a factor of 10 — maybe more — than a program like Photoshop. It also required significant time and hard drive space to install. Fortunately, I found a vendor who provided what one might call a cloud-based virtual server farm (using VMware). This allowed the technical institute to offer what we termed and marketed as instructor-led online training (ILOT) to clients located anywhere there was basic internet pipe. In fact, we also wound up having students from as far away as Australia join some of our classes.

“At this time we sent a Skype invitation (today it would likely be Zoom) to the learner along with a link to the cloud-based virtual machine, which was identical to the machines in the training institute on which students did their lessons. This training focused on teaching engineers of all levels, from new-hires to veterans, how to install, set up, and use the software. Sessions ran approximately $500-700 per day depending on the level of complexity of the course (and therefore the level of instructor required to teach.)

“For every course there was an assessment of both the learner, the course and the instructor. Additionally, each course was judged by learners using the Net Promoter Scoring system. This allowed us to collect significant data to compare the differences between instructor-led in-person courses; instructor-led online courses, and courses delivered at client sites.

“With respect to student assessments, they measured both knowledge acquired and ability to apply this knowledge in real-world scenarios.

“We were actually a bit surprised at the results after the first year. We found there was little difference between the assessment scores in the three groups. We really expected those learners remotely located to show scores that were lower. We weren’t sure how much — but that was the expectation. However, though the scores were a skosh lower statistically (and I don’t have the specific numbers available), the three data sets were nearly identical. 

“There are several things that led to these results. I believe the first was our course development process, which was based on Malcolm Knowles Principles of Adult Education and utilized the ADDIE framework for development, giving each course a level of consistency. A second was the competence and caring of our instructors who were more than simply course delivery experts. They not only knew the product frontwards and backwards, but also knew multiple pathways of knowledge transfer. A third area which was helpful, particularly for the remote learners, was the establishment of a rudimentary community of practice. Though not as robust as I would have liked, it gave those who were struggling with some of the really difficult configurations and uses an outlet for their frustrations — and the opportunity to find answers to their questions from others — both online and at time by phone or Skype conversation. 

“The course assessment by learners was also a great tool for our team, both in terms of understanding how to improve both the actual design of the course and how the instructor could improve his or her delivery. It certainly gave the development team some insight into improvement of the next version of the product.

“I’d say one of the issues facing teachers who have had to jump into online teaching is the lack of experience with these tools and scenarios. This affects both teachers and learners.

“From those teaching at the college in particular I find a lack of basic knowledge in teaching. In a face-to-face course a lecture in which the prof drones on about their subject may pass muster, but with online scenarios that simply doesn’t cut it.

The Bilingual Brain

Posted on July 10, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Bilingual Brain, by Albert Costa.  We’re suckers for books on bilingualism, and this recent book, by multilingual Albert Costa, (who is in real life a leading researcher on bilingualism), really delivers the goods on what we know from neuroscience.  Unlike many authors who are in love with their discipline, Costa is an honest broker—he thoughtfully describes areas where research may be reflecting a bit of wishful thinking about the benefits of bilingualism. But he also has intriguing perspectives on how, for example, making decisions while speaking a foreign language can result in a more rational decision. As Costa notes: “I realized that we had discovered something interesting when I was explaining these results to my mother and son over lunch and they both said at the same time: ‘No way!’ If people who were more than fifty years apart in age were surprised by the same phenomenon, it was because they could not believe that their moral judgements, what most identified them as individuals, could be affected by such an insignificant thing as the language in which a moral dilemma is presented. And believe me, my stories almost always bore them.” If you’re trying to learn a new language, this book will give you fascinating insights into how your brain will change. Count us now as Costa fans! Also good for audio.

Thinking about Transfer in Education

We sometimes hear from teachers that the ultimate goal of their teaching is that students be able to easily transfer their understanding of one topic to other, more distant topics. This interesting post by Rob McEntarffer, Assessment/Evaluation Specialist, Lincoln Public Schools, explains why transfer is not as simple as you might think. This contrasting article involves quite a bit of wishful thinking about teaching transfer, but who knows what the future will bring.

MOOC of the Week

Amongst the best of MOOCs currently available on online learning is Get Interactive: Practical Teaching with Technology, from the University of London. It’s intended for people who are new to e-learning, but it is also heavily activity oriented, a review of classical features of instructional technology, but updated and expanded. Week One allows you to learn about LMS’s and select one which you will use to create a practice course. You’ll learn about a wide range of instructional design tools, such as LMS, Padlet, social media, and various presentation design programs such as Piktochart.   Lots of hands-on interaction and practice. Great “how to” instructions. And it’s only 3 weeks long! [Thanks to the ever-perceptive Scott Mathews, Lead Mentor Mindshift]

From the Annals of Silly Studies on Why Online Teaching Is Not As Good As Face-to-Face

Every once in a while, a research article is published that’s just plain questionable. Such a study is  Arias, J. J., et al. “Online vs. face-to-face: A comparison of student outcomes with random assignment.” e-Journal of Business Education & Scholarship of Teaching 12, no. 2 (2018): 1-23. This study concludes that “Students in the face-to-face section have statistically significantly higher exam scores and statistically significantly greater improvement on the post-test instructor questions.”

The problem with the study is that the online version of the course consisted primarily of a bunch of Word documents stuck online.  This is a bad online class.  It’s a little like comparing a teacher who is enclosed in a large cardboard box with a teacher who is able to teach in normal face-to-face fashion. No surprise—the face-to-face teacher is better! The authors are to be commended for controlling for sample selection, but without having courses of comparable quality, the results are of little use.

The Role of Fruits, Nuts, and Vegetables in Maintaining Cognitive Health

As this worthwhile paper from Experimental Gerontology notes, “Many fruits, nuts, and vegetables are neuroprotective yet widely under-consumed. Intake of these foods is positively associated with cognitive ability. Dietary supplementation with these foods can improve cognitive ability. Increasing fruit, nut, and vegetable intake may forestall cognitive dysfunction.”  Yes, food matters when it comes to cognition!

For The First Time, Scientists Have Captured Video of Brains Clearing Out Dead Neurons

If you look at the video on the lower part of the article by David Nield in Science Alert, it’s pretty cool. “‘This is the first time the [clearing out of dead neurons] process has ever been seen in a live mammalian brain,’ says neurologist Jaime Grutzendler from the Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut.

“Further down the line, these findings might even inform treatments for age-related brain decline and neurological disorders – once we know more about how brain clean-up is supposed to work, scientists can better diagnose what happens when something goes wrong.” [Hat tip: Victoria S.]

Thank you!

(Barb here) I want to thank the many Learning How to Learners helped Michael Gratowski last week.  Caring people really can make a difference—my niece Meg and her husband Michael are overwhelmed by your generosity. Michael is about to start treatment—fingers crossed! 

The Craving Mind

Posted on July 2, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Help Michael Live

Here is a rare request directly from me (Barb) regarding a life-or-death situation. My niece Meg’s husband Michael is facing a rare, life-threatening neuro-biological disease. Michael and Meg are a young couple whose life has been completely upended. And Michael is the love of Meg’s life.

If you might, please go to the GoFundMe page here and give whatever help you can (Meg, being Meg, didn’t ask for nearly what is truly going to be necessary). If you can’t because of your circumstance, please share this with your Facebook friends and family, Twitter, and other social media. Every bit can help this young couple overcome this life changing challenge. Our families ask that you keep Michael and Meg In your thoughts and prayers.

Book of the Week

The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love—Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits, by Judson Brewer. For years, we’ve been looking for a good book that gives insight on the science of meditation. This book is a great one that goes far beyond simple addiction and gets to the heart of issues such as why our minds get stuck on people who annoy us, and squirrel-like thoughts that can keep us from focusing as we’d like. 

Amongst many quotable gems, we liked how Judson described what the “RAIN” process of what to do when getting caught up in obsessive thinking: “RECOGNIZE/RELAX into what is arising (for example, your craving) ACCEPT/ALLOW it to be there INVESTIGATE bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts (for example, ask, ‘What is happening in my body or mind right now?’). NOTE what is happening from moment to moment. The N is a slight modification of … ‘nonidentification.’ The idea is that we identify with or get caught up in the object that we are aware of.” Also nice for audio. [Hat tip: Mako Haruta]

Class Central—the Best Way to Get Oriented with What You Want Out of Online Learning 

This little video gives a great overview of Class Central’s awesome services in allowing people to explore and discover the best online learning materials.  (CEO Dhawal Shah even mentions his favorite course—Learning How to Learn!)  Check out Dhawal’s kitchen as you learn more about one of the most important launching points for online learning.  And in related news, both Learning How to Learn and Mindshift both made it onto the list of 100 Most Popular Courses During the Pandemic. Yay!

Do-It-Yourself Pandemic: It’s Time for Accountability in Models

This perceptive article, by Barb’s friend Guruprasad Madhavan at the National Academies, describes how lessons from real-world engineering can improve the design and standards of models being used in COVID-19.

A No-Holds-Barred Look at Ontario’s New “Improved” Math Standards

This article by traditional math instructor Barry Garelick points toward why math ability in modern school children keeps declining. If something feels wrong to you about how schools are currently teaching math, Barry’s article walks you through why and how that is happening. 

Virtual Workshop “Learning How to Learn” (in Spanish: Taller Virtual Aprendiendo a Aprender)

On July 7th, the virtual workshop “Aprendiendo a Aprender” will be presented by M.Sc. Orlando Trejo, our co-instructor for the Spanish version of LHTL. The virtual talk will be held in Spanish, and will be hosted by Universidad Antonio Nariño, sede Cartagena, Colombia. This will be a great opportunity for Spanish speakers to stay tuned with the latest mental tools for learning, in order to take the best advantage of online learning resources while studying from home. Reserve your seat here (Spanish).

Zach Star’s Nerdy, Funny Videos 

We’ve been pointed toward the advanced math/engineering tutorial and just plain fun videos of Zach Star. Here’s Zach’s review of A Mind for Numbers, which provides outstanding examples that go further than Barb did in the book. Zach’s sarcastic take on how some engineering professors teach is a hoot. (All we can say is, Zach’s a bit too buff to pass as a typical engineering professor…)  

The Pomodoro Technique–an Invaluable Tool for the Online World

When it rains, it pours.  This article on the Pomodoro Technique by R. Dallon Adams in Innovation caught our attention because it covers the technique in thorough detail. (And, well, it also quotes Barb.) And we also enjoyed Dean Kissick’s article on the technique in the New York Times.  We thought we’d read it all when it comes to the Pomodoro, but these articles gave us a new, heartfelt appreciation for one of our very favorite teaching tools. [Hat tip: Gian Luca Poggi]