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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Four time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis has done a fascinating interview with expert language learner Gabriel Wyner. Gabriel is author of the GREAT book Fluent Forever—an invaluable guide to help you learn languages more easily and remember what you’ve learned.

If you would like to join Nelson in helping to support research on memory, please take the Extreme Memory Challenge.

Outstanding recommendations from our Learning How to Learn Italian Lead, Cristian Artoni

Cristian Artoni is an operations manager and analyst on the staff of the Chief Operating Officer for a major Italian transportation company—he has taken over 50 MOOCs and puts his MOOC and book learning to great use. He is also the Lead of the Italian platform of Learning How to Learn, which will be coming out soon. Cristian is always worth listening to—this week, he has several great recommendations:

Book of the Week

Cristian strongly recommends Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, by Maria Konnikova, who received the 2015 Harvard Medical School Media Fellowship. Cristian notes: “Obviously this book is a hymn to the focused mode of the power of concentration and observation. To see does not mean to observe!”

MOOC of the Week

And Cristian also recommends an upcoming MOOC: “Introduction to Neuroeconomics: How the Brain Makes Decisions,” by Vasily Klucharev of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow through Coursera, starting September 19th. If either neuroscience or business is your thing, this MOOC is for you.

What’s Most Important? Learning about How to Learn!

Here are several recent video snippets that emphasize the importance of learning about learning. Brian Chesky (the self-made billionaire CEO and founder of Airbnb) said that the most important thing an entrepreneur can do is “to learn how to learn.” Similarly, American businessman and investor Mark Cuban notes: “If you don’t have a thirst for learning and acquiring information, you’re SOL…”

Daily Bits

If you like your learning in micro-doses, we’re fans of “Daily Bits.” Check out their micro-courses and see if there’s one that you’d like to get a bit of daily learning about.

Learning How to Learn in Arabic! تعلم كيف تتعلم

Arabic speaking volunteers are welcome to join Ghada Abdel Salam’s efforts to complete the Arabic version of Learning How to Learn. If you are up for the challenge, please read the details in this thread to apply. Ghada has just joined the translation team as Arabic Lead. She is a lecturer and HR specialist with great passion for social work, especially women empowerment. Currently she is working and studying in the US. You can contact Ghada on Facebook, Linkedin, Gmail, or directly through Transifex.

Urdu Translation of Learning How to Learn: سیکھنے کا ڈھنگ سیکھیں

Urdu speaking volunteers are welcome to join Zubair H. Shaikh’s efforts to launch the Urdu version of Learning How to Learn. Zubair is the author of a presidential award winning books series, Mera Iqbal, written in Urdu to motivate students towards Urdu poetry, develop their interest & to introduce them to Allama Iqbal’s vision & philosophy. Zubair also teaches the Urdu language at school level and conducts training workshop for Urdu teachers in Pakistan. Zubair took Learning How to Learn as his first ever online course—he’s found it immensely useful. Zubair says “The ideas that have been shared in the course are extremely beneficial for my future learning, and off course I look forward to forming a team together so that we can work to share these ideas even further amongst Urdu speakers!” To join Zubair, please post in the discussion forum, here!

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

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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week, we’ve been having a blast reading about our body’s other “brain”—which, you might be surprised to learn, is in our gut. Over the years, we ourselves have learned to tune in to our gut when we’re making decisions—if there’s a little bit of an “off” feeling down below, we tend to rethink our plans.

Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ, by Giulia Enders, is a fun and insightful book—and worldwide bestseller—with all sorts of information about why we really do, in some cases, think with our gut. The sketches by Giulia’s sister Jill Enders give nice “diffuse” breaks while you’re reading. (Okay, and we also enjoyed the potty humor. 🙂 ) Giulia is studying medicine at the Institute for Microbiology in Frankfurt—we think she’s a regular up-and-coming Oliver Sachs and Michael Crichton, some of our other favorite doctor-writers. (Hat tip, Arnim Rodeck.)

MOOC of the week

We’ve heard great things about the the Coursera MOOC Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop, taught by Douglas Kearney of the California Institute of the Arts. It is, by all accounts, not only insightful, but one of the funniest MOOCs around.

Hindi Translation of LHTL: लर्निंग हाउ तो लर्न इन हिंदी

Hindi speaking volunteers are welcome to join Ashok’s efforts to launch the Hindi version of LHTL course. If you are passionate about helping others please find the details on this thread to get in touch with Ashok. (Make sure you are logged into www.transifex.com before clicking on the forum thread.) Ashok says “the people who will benefit from your efforts will forever be thankful for bringing some really good information from research into their language.” Ashok is co-founder of QOS Technology, a cyber security firm based out in Bangalore, India. He strongly believes that knowledge should be available to everyone and language should not be a barrier in pursuing world-class courses.

Learning How to Learn – in Amharic (Amarinya) – “የመማርን መንገዶች ወይም ዘዴዎች ማወቅ” በአማርኛ

Our new Amharic Language Lead, Marta Pulley is inviting Amharic speaking volunteers to help translate Learning How to Learn into Amharic. This is an exciting, challenging, and a rewarding opportunity. If interested, please read the details here. Marta is passionate about education; which has been her primary reason for immigrating to the United States. She is currently the Online Learning Specialist at Essex County College in New Jersey. Marta has long served as a Mentor for Learning How to Learn—Barb was lucky enough to have dinner with her during her travels. Marta’s quite amazing!

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

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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

A Sneak Peek Into Barb’s New Book

Barb was recently on Dave Goldberg’s radio show—she let slip some intriguing insights related to her forthcoming book Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential, (coming next April from Penguin!). Feel free to pre-order this science-based book of adventure—it’s essentially the sequel to our course Learning How to Learn. (All proceeds go towards the medical school debts of Barb’s older daughter Rosie (yes, she’s the young woman in the earphones here at minute marker 3:36. 🙂 ).

Contention in Memory

The New York Times has published an intriguing extract from the book Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets, written by Luke Dittrich, the grandson of the neurosurgeon who halted H.M.’s seizures, but destroyed critical aspects of his memory. This is an intriguing, beautifully written book, but it’s aroused no end of consternation, as noted here. (And here is Dittrich’s rebuttal to his critics.) If you would like to discuss the book and its varying reactions, see the postings by Ajoy Bhatia and Cristián Gallardo in the discussion forums. (Hat tip, Linda Walker.)

Celebration with Testing—but Controversy with PISA

Here’s a fun tip on how to reframe testing and assessments in a positive way. Interestingly, the article concludes with the usual nod towards Finland’s high performance in math on the international PISA test. But there is actually much controversy about Finland’s stature in this area. Finland has scored high on PISA, but lower on other internationally recognized tests. In fact, while countries like Chile and Korea have increased by more than 20 points for their 8th grade students over the past decade on the 2011 TIMSS test, Finland’s performance has declined by an eye-opening 38 points.

Some see PISA as skewing their assessments to favor countries that conform to specific theories espoused by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which runs PISA. Professor Yong Zhao, author of Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World (a book we hold in very high esteem), argues here that PISA results should be ignored entirely. He is not alone in his criticism. You might be surprised to learn, as Professor Zhao discusses in his book, that students in different countries can get quite different questions on the PISA—meaning that entire countries can vary markedly in their rankings due to behind-the-scenes decisions on which questions to score and include. If you have an interest in the testing controversy, check out our friend Manabu Watanabe’s series of intriguing articles and follow the links. Education is much like science as a discipline—in that sense, you may wish to read the perceptive article “Saving Science: Science isn’t self-correcting, it’s self-destructing.”

Are You a STEM Instructor?

As we’re heading back to the fall semester, we’d like to recommend the outstanding book: Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide, by Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent. Rich and Rebecca have had more influence than any other educators on Barb’s teaching abilities. If you want to learn more about teaching effectively and efficiently in STEM, you couldn’t do better than to buy this great book.

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

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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

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

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

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

Learning How to Learn Is Growing Worldwide!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Growth Mindset

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book and Website of the Month

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

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

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

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

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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

An App to Help with Daily Math Practice

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

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

Acting After Illness

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

MOOC of the Week

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

How to Read More Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Top 50 MOOCs of All Time

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

For a Better Sleep, Turn Off Your Cell Phone

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

Books of the Week

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

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

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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Virtual Reality

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

Becoming a Self-Motivated Learner

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

Is Solitude the Secret to Unlocking Our Creativity?

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

Book Recommendation for the Month: Grit

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

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

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

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Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Learn to improve your writing in English

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

MOOC of the Week

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

Using a second language—like a workout for the brain

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

Books of the Week

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

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

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

Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Exercise—Even More Research Reveals Its Power for Learning!

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

Overcoming Fears of Public Speaking

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

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

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

Left Brain – Right Brain

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

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

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

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