Category: Uncategorized

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

MOOCs for Teacher Development

If you are an elementary or secondary school teacher anywhere in the world, we would really appreciate it if you might take the following very brief survey about MOOCs. This will be very useful for a panel being hosted at SXSWEdu called ‘MOOCs & Teacher PD: Mindless Snack or Hearty Fare?‘ with our friend Charlie Chung from Class Central, and Coursera’s Julia Stiglitz.

Can You Help by Becoming a Mentor for Learning How to Learn in Chinese?

Are you a speaker of Chinese and would you like to help out by volunteering on as a Mentor for 学会如何学习, the new version of Learning How to Learn in Chinese? If so, please volunteer here! Learning How to Learn is now not only the most popular course in the world—it is also Coursera’s most widely translated course. This is because Learning How to Learn is something that is helpful for virtually everyone, everywhere. Your own help in improving this course can make a difference in allowing people to better their lives!

Become the Spanish Lead for Aprendiendo a Aprender?

We are looking for one person to volunteer to become the Spanish Lead for the new Spanish Language Platform of Learning How to Learn — Aprendiendo a Aprender. This person would be responsible assembling a team of volunteer Spanish-speaking mentors, sending out monthly or weekly emails to the entire set of Spanish-speaking learners, and helping improve the translation quality of the course. More information, including a link to the application form, is here.

Encouraging Reading In Young People

Our Learning How to Learner Bhairavi from India has begun a wonderful new “Purple Patch Initiative” of providing the first book to Indian parents. This program is also meant to empower parents by also giving them tools to make the book reading experience with their child successful. You can help by checking out the Purple Patch Initiative’s Facebook page, here. In a related vein, health care providers in the US often participate in program called “Reach Out and Read.” Each year, when a child gets his or her annual checkup, they get a book. Here’s a little more information about the US program. If you might like to start or participate in a similar program in your own country, you may wish to reach out to Bhairavi or to the US program for ideas or connections.

Learning and Changing

Here’s a fascinating article about why scientists can’t decide about whether salt is killing us. It seems that when scientists review the evidence, they are biased and “reluctant to change their view in light of new facts.” Unfortunately, even being a really smart scientist is no protection against jumping to conclusions and then persisting in the path you’ve chosen—regardless of contrary findings. This is part of what Learning How to Learn is about—helping you to step back and finding your own areas where you’re stuck, to help open your mind and accept new possibilities.

Excellent Books about Finding Your Hidden Biases

Here are some of the best books we know of to help you begin climbing out of your hidden biases:

• On Being Certain, by Robert Burton.
• Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, by Carol Tavris.
• Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, by Mahzarin R. Banaji.
• Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan, and David Sloan Wilson. (It’s your own thoughts that you know what’s best to help others that can surprisingly often lead you astray.)

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!

Interleaving

One of our learners, Quin Benson, has used the discussion forum to mention an excellent article: “The Interleaving Effect: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning.” We’ve often found that learners in math, science, and engineering benefit greatly from tricks like placing problems on flashcards. Write out the solution by hand on the back of the card to help “neurally encode” it. You can mix the cards up and pull them randomly to check your ability to solve the problem. Not knowing in advance what section a problem is from forms the very essence of interleaving. (Hat tip: Senior Mentor Linda Walker.)

Upcoming Visits by Barb to the Hague, Anaheim, and Princeton

Barb and some of the Learning How to Learn Mentors will be in the Hague for the Coursera annual conference on March 21-22. If you’re interested in attending a meetup with us there, please post on the discussion forum, here.

And here’s an intriguing video about the upcoming On Course Conference, April 7-9, 2016, in Anaheim, California. Barb will be headlining this one. She’s been to On Course conferences and events in the past, and loves them—they have a great way of helping you to nudge students to start thinking for themselves. Barb will have plenty of time between sessions, so please come up and say hello. Hopefully you can share some coffee or tea while you discuss learning.

And don’t forget the upcoming IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference in Princeton, New Jersey on March 5th. This is going to be a great event, with lots of insights about teaching in STEM, kicked off by Barb’s keynote. So do come if you have the chance! Here is the complete program description.

Fantastic Biographies!

Both Terry and Barb are big fans of biographies—they’re one of the best ways to learn from the lives of other people you admire, or about history. One of Terry’s recent favorites is Tales From Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience, written by Terry’s friend Mike Gazzaniga. The book describes how Mike’s work led to a whole new insight into how consciousness is distributed broadly between the two hemispheres. And one of Barb’s all time favorite biographies is Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford. Weatherford traveled thousands of miles, many on horseback, in the Great Khan’s footsteps. Biographies just don’t come better than this.

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!

Time to Go Surfing—or to Ride a Unicycle

In the MOOC, we use the example of a surfing zombie to represent process versus product. That is, the idea of getting into the flow of your work. It turns out that the surfing zombie is a good metaphor for something else—the value of learning a new sport. Read this great New York Times article by Gretchen Reynolds: “Learning a New Sport May Be Good for the Brain.”

A Free Online Bachelor’s Level Biology Education

Learning How to Learner Brian Brookshire has put together an excellent post on how to capture the bulk of a bachelor’s degree in biology entirely through free MOOCs offered by top tier universities. As he relates in his posting, Brian has a bachelor’s from Stanford, and would like to pursue his doctorate in biology—despite the fact that he hasn’t taken any formal college or high school courses in biology! How to get himself prepared at low cost? You guessed it—MOOCs. (If you are a top researcher looking for a highly creative, keenly-motivated student, I’d suggest looking at Brian.)

Taiwan in the News!

Taiwan has some VERY exciting MOOC-related activities coming up—Barb will be there on April 21-22. Aren’t you curious now to know what’s going to happen? Stay tuned!

A Mind for Numbers has been continuing to grow globally in popularity—it’s now published in traditional Chinese: 用對腦，從此不再怕數字：學會如何學習，以如何創意思考，解決(幾乎)所有的問題! Enjoy!

Great Books about Statistics

We have a minor hobby of reading books about statistics and probability. In fact, statistics and probability shape everything around you, so the more you learn, the deeper your awareness of life. You don’t need to understand every detail of the math to still pick up useful insights. In fact, many of these books don’t rely on equations to convey their main ideas. Here’s our “all star” listing:

• The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, David Salsburg. One of the best histories of statistics, wrapped up in beautiful stories. A wonderful book!
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. This first is still our favorite of Levitt and Dubner’s wonderful series of books. You couldn’t find a better way to understand everything from how and why school teachers cheat to the strange world of sumo wrestling.
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t, by Nate Silver. Sometimes it’s hard to get a grasp on Bayesian ways of thinking. Not when Nate Silver writes about it! He not only makes everything easy to read—he makes it exciting!
• The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne. Okay, we’re suckers for history with regards World War II, so that makes this excellent book a “two-fer”–fascinating insights about probability mixed with compelling stories about vital historical events.

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!

Why don’t we ride zebras like horses?

Chris Higgins in Mental Floss points us towards one of the most informative, funniest little videos we’ve seen in a long time: Why Don’t We Ride Zebras Like Horses? This video grows from one of our favorite books, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. Diamond helped create a virtual genre of large scale studies of people and their cultures. One of the most recent books to emerge from that genre is our top recommended book last year, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

Learning How to Learn continues to grow—in many different languages!

Learning How to Learn continues as a juggernaut in the world of MOOCs. We have had nearly 1.4 million registered students since the course’s birthday. Learning How to Learn is the most-translated of all Coursera’s courses, with completely translated Spanish, Chinese, and Portuguese versions, and videos captioned in many other languages.

If you’d like to help with translating Learning How to Learn into your favorite language, please sign up for the Coursera Global Translator Community (GTC). (Take a look at the great pdf that walks you through the signup process.) Once you’re signed up with a Transifex account, just make sure you’re logged in to Transifex and you should then be able to find the translation project for Learning How to Learn here. If you have a problem, just email our own special Learning How to Learn contact at Coursera, at LHTL-translations@coursera.org.

Complexity theory

We’ve long had an interest in complexity theory. Our friend Zach Caceres, who heads the Michael Polanyi College, a wonderfully open program for obtaining a college degree at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín, has recommended the Complexity Explorer at the Santa Fe Institute. This website has excellent online courses and other educational materials related to complex systems science.

GREAT general book to get you started on chaos theory

If you’re not a scientist, (or even if you are) and you want to get a compelling overview of the birth of chaos theory—a sort of fraternal twin to complexity theory—read James’ Gleick’s Pulitzer Prize nominated, million copy best-seller Chaos: Making a New Science. It’s now in its 20th anniversary edition. We recall once speaking with a philosopher who made erroneous presumptions about how the world works (he hadn’t studied chaos theory). This misunderstanding crept back into his studies of philosophy. Whatever you know, or think you know, it can be helpful to broaden your understanding by learning at least a little about important new areas.

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!

Leadership conference with a difference – 25 May 2016 (Barb’s thrilled to be back in England!)

There’s a wonderful upcoming leadership conference “Liberating Leaders,” on May 25, 2016 at Bedales School in the UK. The conference is for school leaders, aspiring leaders and sixth form pupils. It was designed in partnership with TES, one of the world’s most influential educational publications. “Liberating Leaders” is a great conference not only for those in the UK, but for those around the world who are looking for more international leadership perspectives. You’ll gain the tools and knowledge to be innovative in running a school while helping students develop as individuals. (Bedales has been famous ever since its founding over a century ago as a humane alternative to the authoritarian regimes typical of late-Victorian public schools.) Student delegates will be given the tools to prepare them for taking on leadership roles in their schools. Barb will help start the conference with her keynote—it would be great if she might meet you there!

Meetup in the Hague

A reminder: Barb and some of our Senior Mentor Team will be having a Learning How to Learn meetup at the Hague Marriott. We’ll be in the Great Room Lobby & Bar from 6:00 – 7:00 pm on March 20th. If you’re planning to attend and haven’t posted on the discussion forum already, please add your post on the discussion forum here. We’re in town for the Coursera annual conference. Coursera works hard to share innovative new tools to improve our MOOCs—the Learning How to Learn team is about to embark on some new learning!

“Dabble in Something Different”—A Rule of Thumb for Remaining Creative

One thing Barb likes to do to remain creative is to spend a little time reading books, watching television shows (she’s currently engrossed in Season 4 of House of Cards), or taking MOOCs that have nothing to do with whatever she is working on. In fact, the further away the subject is from whatever she’s working on, the better. She feels this “dabble in something different” philosophy has helped her keep a creative edge, and has also helped her maintain an openness to new ideas and approaches.

Along the lines of this “dabble in something different” philosophy, when Barb was in Utah several years ago working on a book, she became friends with Creighton Horton, an assistant Utah attorney general. Creight has gone on to write a spectacularly interesting book A Reluctant Prosecutor, about his life as a prosecutor in Utah’s criminal justice system. A Reluctant Prosecutor gives a very different perspective on a world of bombings, murders, political intrigue, public corruption, polygamists, imperious and eccentric judges, capital cases, con men, overreaching cops, venal public officials, and innocent people convicted of murders they didn’t commit. Barb was surprised to learn that there are even better ways to defend the disadvantaged if you are a prosecutor than as a defense lawyer.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for something different to fuel your mental juices to remain creative, A Reluctant Prosecutor is just the ticket.

Teach your Child the Memory Palace Technique

Four time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis has written an adorable children’s book I Forgot Something (But I Can’t Remember What it Was). What a wonderful way to introduce a child you care about to a technique that can be valuable for them throughout their life.

That’s all for now. 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!

Communities of Learners

Jules Rowley has an excellent post titled “Communities of Learners” in the Learning How to Learn alumni forum. Take a look!

Class Central on taking MOOCs for College Credit

Class Central has just published an important article, “MOOCs for Credit.” It describes different ways you can potentially get low cost college credit by taking MOOCs. If you’re in college, or supporting a child in college, this article is well worth your time. MOOCs’ economies of scale and great teaching mean that there are at last realistic options for reduced college costs. Remember, with MOOCs, you can check out rankings and select from the BEST instructors and instruction in the world. (And yes, in the meantime, face-to-face instructors can use ideas from top MOOCs to up their game.)

A VERY special book for STEM Instructors

Do you teach science, technology, engineering, or mathematics at any level from high school through advanced university levels? If so, you will want to get and read Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide, which is an extraordinary book by Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent. Richard and Rebecca helped launch Barb’s teaching career, so if you like how Barb conveys the material in Learning How to Learn, you will love Teaching and Learning STEM.This is definitely a five star book—Barb even wrote the foreword. Check Dr Felder’s website for more information and resources related to the book. (Richard and Rebecca’s interviews in week four of Learning How to Learn are favorite bonus interviews out of the entire course.)

A great book on developing charisma

One of the books we recommend most often to people who are trying to move forward in the working world is The Charisma Myth: How anyone can master the art and science of personal magnetism. Time after time, we’ve found ourselves recommending some bit of advice from the book, like feeling your toes to bring your drifting mind back during important conversations. This book is packed with useful, practical information.

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!

Help our friend Nelson Dellis Kickstart his “Art of Memory” project

Many of you have seen our previous videos from Nelson Dellis, the four time US Memory Champion. (Nelson is also a champion for research into Alzheimer’s, which led to the death of his grandmother and Barb’s father.) Nelson is building an online application/website called Art of Memory, which is a one-stop-shop for learning memory techniques, managing strategies and memory palaces, and for training your memory. He is running the Kickstarter campaign so he and his team can develop the idea and build a fully functional beta version of the site so people can start training and memorizing. If you’d like to help him out on this campaign, it would be much appreciated, and also potentially useful for you. Here’s the link for you to see some short videos and explanations of how it works. (Membership is much reduced for folks who back the project on Kickstarter.)

Misuse of p-values

We’ve been asked by statistician and epidemiologist Sander Greenland to please help spread the word about misuse of p-values in relation to research. Here are two easy-to-read articles that can help you avoid pitfalls: “Statisticians issue warning over misuse of p-values,” from Nature, and “Statisticians found one thing they can agree on: It’s time to stop misusing p-values” from FiveThirtyEight. (Here is Sander and his colleagues’ comprehensive paper about this important topic.)

How MOOCs foil distraction

Here’s a great article by George Leef, Director of Research for the John William Pope Center for Policy Research, on how MOOCs can improve education by providing great new approaches for effective teaching. Leef notes that: “by expanding the range of choice for students, online courses catalyze healthy competition. That is vital in education, a field that has long rested contentedly.” Our very own Learning How to Learn receives mention!

If You’re So Smart Why Aren’t You Happy?

One of our fellow Coursera instructors, Raj Raghunathan, has written the intriguingly titled If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? Barb’s read it, and it’s a thought-provoking, excellent read.

Our minds often encounter negative stimulation, which we of course tend to focus on. After all, if our ancestors hadn’t been focused on negative stimulation, they might not have had kids and we might not be here! So it’s healthy for us to look for positive insights like those in Raj’s excellent book. Plus, it’s a real treat for us to find a fellow MOOC instructor who isn’t afraid to step beyond the usual expectations and to explore a vitally important issue like happiness!

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 Wednesday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

We’re a little earlier than our usual cheery Friday greetings this week because Barb’s speaking this Friday (April 8th) to help launch the On Course Conference in Anaheim, California. Come join us if you’re in the area! (And meanwhile, happy Wednesday!)

Gaining a competitive advantage

We’d like to recommend the fascinating website, Five Good Questions, of our friend, investor Jacob Taylor. After a chance lunch with Warren Buffett, Jake has dedicated years to studying what makes Warren and his partner Charlie Munger so successful. Jake writes “Although they were both blessed with exceptionally high IQs, I believe their astounding wisdom comes from reading so many damned books. Their real competitive advantage is that they’ve simply out-read everyone else. Want to be the smartest person in the room? It’s simple. Read more. It’s a truly egalitarian hack that’s available to any of us who dedicate the time.”

In Five Good Questions, Jake hauls authors like Barb onto his show and asks them five good questions to gain insight into their subjects. Jake’s approach is one we highly recommend in Learning How to Learn. Don’t just take a topic like investing and study it in the usual way (after all, that’s what most investors are doing), but instead, reach out for new insights from unusual sources.

Learning How to Learn in Russian “Научись учиться” – давайте переведем вместе!

Our new Russian Lead is Dauren Adilbekov, a wonderful young man who is spearheading efforts to transform Learning How to Learn into a new, entirely Russian language version of the course. If you speak Russian, Dauren could really use your help as part of the little team he is forming—go to this thread to join a terrific group!

Procrastination

We’ve heard from many learners over the years that procrastination is one of their biggest issues. Recently, a number of you sent us links to Tim Urban’s hilarious and thoughtful TED Talk on procrastination. (Tim’s blog “Wait but Why,” is terrific also—but it’s like candy for procrastinators, so be careful!)

If you want help with procrastination beyond the advice we give in Learning How to Learn, we highly recommend the following books:

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg. This information featured in the very structure of Learning How to Learn—we described Charles’ work when we were discussing how to tackle the habit of procrastination.
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport. We’re big fans of Cal Newport. His book is highly recommended for anyone who’s planning to learn or accomplish something difficult.
• Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg. What can we say—using stories to convey key insights about productivity makes a book not only useful, but fun to read!

A FANTASTIC MOOC and book

We recently discovered the extraordinary MOOC Memory and Movies: Explaining the Psychology of Memory Through Films, by psychologist and neuroscientist John Seamon, along with his brilliant accompanying book Memory & Movies. What a great way to learn vital insights about memory—by using excerpts from great films as the key to help unlock our understanding. We ourselves learned a great deal, not only about memory, but about the role of memory in great movie-making. Both the MOOC (which begins April 11th) and the book (which has even deeper insights than the MOOC) come with our strongest recommendation—enjoy!

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!

Handwriting is better than typing for note taking

The Wall Street Journal recently published an excellent article, “Can Handwriting Make You Smarter,” summarizing recent research which shows that handwriting is much better than typing when you are taking notes. Also, we’re big fans of Harvard cognitive psychologist Michael Friedman’s work on note taking—you can see his helpful paper here.

Recommended MOOC Specialization of the Week—And some great learning games

Our friend Dhawal Shah of the MOOC analysis site Class Central highly recommends the new Machine Learning specialization on Coursera—in part because he finds the courses are highly practical. On another topic, Dhawal’s associate Anuar Andres Lequerica has developed a listing of great games for learning—these games are very useful for teachers.

This week’s highly recommended books

We had a chance to chat yesterday with Kat Arney, a science writer and the author of Herding Hemingway’s Cats: Understanding How Our Genes Work. Kat is really quite something—she’s asked some of the smartest questions we’ve ever been asked on an interview. Her book has gotten rave reviews from media outlets like Nature. Mark Stevenson, (the author of An Optimist’s Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer “What’s Next?”) wrote: “Herding Hemingway’s Cats will instantly turn you into the most interesting guest at any party—it’s a joy to read and a masterclass in making the complex story of life accessible, entertaining and relevant.” We can hardly wait to get our copy, but meanwhile, feel free to beat us to the punch in reading Kat’s book!

Oh yes, and if you’d like another great book recommendation on intriguing topics, try Jon Ronson’s outstanding So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. If you’ve ever wondered how people’s lives can suddenly be destroyed with a moment’s thoughtless posting—and how these lives are sometimes put back to rights—this book is for you.

Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

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

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Cheery Tuesday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Taiwan MOOCs!

It’s another early greeting for you all this week! This time, our message is early because Barb’s just arriving in Taiwan to help introduce an International Conference on MOOCs which runs on April 21 and 22nd. The Taiwanese government is visionary in their emphasis on the value of online education—if you happen to be able to attend, Barb would love to meet you!

Remember that Learning How to Learn has an simplified Chinese version of the entire course: 学会如何学习：帮助你掌握复杂学科的强大智力工具. The traditional Chinese version of the course supplemental text, A Mind for Numbers, is 用對腦，從此不再怕數字：學會如何學習，以如何創意思考，解決(幾乎)所有的問題. The simplified Chinese version of A Mind for Numbers will be coming soon. (The meticulous publisher, China Machine Press, has worked with Barb to prepare some special extras that you’ll enjoy).

Barb in Colombia (Bogotá and Medellín)

And yes, right after Taiwan, Barb will be off to speak in beautiful Colombia to celebrate the 25th anniversary of COLFUTURO. This fantastic organization provides financial support to help Colombian citizens access high-quality postgraduate study programs abroad. Here’s some information about Barb’s itinerary to support COLFUTURO in Colombia by helping spread information about learning. Barb would love to meet you, so if you are in Colombia, please plan to attend one of her talks!

We should point out that Learning How to Learn’s complete Spanish version of the course, Aprendiendo a aprender, which includes all quizzes and webpages in Spanish, is exploding in popularity. So is the Spanish version of the course supplemental text, Abre Tu Mente A Los Números. If you’re a Spanish speaker, or have Spanish speaking friends, these are for you (and your friends)!

Our new Spanish Lead, who will complement Terry and Barb’s instruction on the Spanish platform, is Orlando Trejo, a Professor of Engineering at the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Venezuela. Orlando has a wonderful heart, and he is dedicated to helping Latin Americans improve their learning. Sign up for Aprendiendo a aprender and you will soon begin receiving Orlando’s emails about learning in the Spanish-speaking world!

Exercise and a Healthy Brain

Here’s an interesting article from Gretchen Reynolds of the New York Times: “Walk, Jog or Dance: It’s All Good for the Aging Brain.” As she notes: “It turns out that regular walking, cycling, swimming, dancing and even gardening may substantially reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.” That’s a very big deal! If you’ve been toying with the idea of taking dancing lessons, let this email give you the final nudge. And if you haven’t been thinking of exercise lately, let this email be your initial nudge.

Of course, we can learn even more about exercise’s importance from MOOCs. Here are interesting upcoming MOOCs from the University of Edinburgh-Coursera: “Sit Less, Get Active,” which starts on May 1st; and “Exercise Prescription for the Prevention and Treatment of Disease,” from Trinity College Dublin-FutureLearn, which just started on April 18.

Our favorite book on the value of exercise is Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. (Just skim the in-depth science parts if it gets a bit deep for you.) Exercise allows new neurons to sprout—learning on top of exercise helps those new neurons to survive and thrive.

Amy Alkon’s HumanLab: The Science Between Us

One of the most perceptive writers we know of is Amy Alkon, who specializes in understanding the science behind human interactions. Here’s an interview of Amy and Barb discussing how to be more productive at work. Remember, part of the reason we want to be more productive is so that we’ll have more time to play. Actually, giving yourself time to play also helps you be more productive when you’re working.

Here are two of Amy’s thought-provoking, marvelously funny books: I See Rude People: One woman’s battle to beat some manners into impolite society and Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck.

Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn teamFollow LHTL on Facebook | Join the private LHTL Hall of Fame group | Follow LHTL on Twitter