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Cheery Holiday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

It’s a wonderful holiday season here as we approach the end of 2015! We’ve had a great time learning together with you as the year has rolled by. One thing we’re beginning to appreciate all the more is that learning shares a surprising amount with exercise. Sometimes a little nudging inspiration helps keep you going (hence our weekly emails!). Speaking of both exercise and learning, here’s a terrific article in the New York Times about how exercise keeps your brain young.

Learning How to Learn’s Best Book of 2015

It’s time to share with you our recommendation for the very best book of 2015. It’s the outstanding Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. Sweeping, thoughtful insights don’t come much better than this book, which has changed how we think about issues we’ve long thought important. Thank you to Learning How to Learner Marinda Nel for the recommendation—we learn so much from our learners!

Learning How to Learn makes #1—three times!

Last week we observed that Learning How to Learn was ranked the #1 most popular free online course for professionals by Business Insider. This week we’ve discovered that Learning How to Learn is now not only Coursera’s #1 course, we’re also listed as the #1 Most Popular MOOC of All Time by “Online Course Report.” Thank you for your inspiration, and for spreading the word about learning!

Happy learning, always!

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

Cheery Holiday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

It’s a wonderful holiday season here as we approach the end of 2015! We’ve had a great time learning together with you as the year has rolled by. One thing we’re beginning to appreciate all the more is that learning shares a surprising amount with exercise. Sometimes a little nudging inspiration helps keep you going (hence our weekly emails!). Speaking of both exercise and learning, here’s a terrific article in the New York Times about how exercise keeps your brain young.

Learning How to Learn’s Best Book of 2015

It’s time to share with you our recommendation for the very best book of 2015. It’s the outstanding Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. Sweeping, thoughtful insights don’t come much better than this book, which has changed how we think about issues we’ve long thought important. Thank you to Learning How to Learner Marinda Nel for the recommendation—we learn so much from our learners!

Learning How to Learn makes #1—three times!

Last week we observed that Learning How to Learn was ranked the #1 most popular free online course for professionals by Business Insider. This week we’ve discovered that Learning How to Learn is now not only Coursera’s #1 course, we’re also listed as the #1 Most Popular MOOC of All Time by “Online Course Report.” Thank you for your inspiration, and for spreading the word about learning!

Happy learning, always!

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

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Do You Have a Poor Working Memory? It Can Be an Asset!

A poor working memory can actually help you attain critical “aha” type insights more easily—read this illuminating article: “The Reason Smart People Sometimes Struggle with “Aha” Moments.”

Odds and Ends: A cool productivity tool and a nice article about MOOC trends

We like learning about anything that helps with productivity (so we have more time for diffuse mode relaxation 🙂 ). A new Windows-based tool we’ve fallen in love with is called “Breevy.” It allows you to easily insert phrases you have to retype all the time into whatever document you might like—emails, a Google doc, Word. On another topic, here’s a nice article about “MOOC Trends in 2015: Rise of Self Paced Courses.”

Help with Translating Learning How to Learn

The number of languages Learning How to Learn has captions for is growing rapidly! 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). 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 Barb at oakley@oakland.edu. There’s a particular call for translation into Punjabi and Tswana (both languages were just added for us to be able to use them on the GTC), as well as into Indonesian (Barb was just in Jakarta!).

This Week’s Reading (and Gaming!) Recommendations

As Learning How to Learners know, metaphor and analogy can improve our ability to grasp difficult ideas in math and science. But they also underpin the greatest literature, both fiction and non-fiction. If you want to be bowled over by extraordinary metaphor in fiction, it would be hard to do better than Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. (Truth be told, Barb’s a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy. One of the highlights of her decade was spending the day together in Santa Fe with him—he’s as unpretentious and kind a person as you could possibly imagine.) In non-fiction, Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, about one of the greatest racehorses in history, has some of the best writing this side of the solar system. As you might have guessed, Barb is a big fan of horses—her “gamification” effort to help kids have fun while they learn about horses has become a classic board game: Herd Your Horses.

Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

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

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Think You’re Math Phobic—or Do You Love Numbers? Either Way, Try this Friendly Course

Senior Mentor Susan Fitzgerald has brought this intriguing-looking course, “Fun with Prime Numbers,” to our attention. (Okay, so maybe the name shares a bit in common with the popular television show “The Big Bang Theory” and Sheldon’s ostensible show-within-a-show “Fun with Flags.”) The MOOC’s instructor, Tetsushi Ito, looks like a marvelously friendly professor who understands how to make seemingly arcane material fun and relevant. Watch the promotional video at the top of the page and you’ll see what we mean. We’ve signed up ourselves—the course starts on January 16th.

Transcripts for All Regular Course Videos are Now Available!

Many of you have requested neatly formatted transcripts of each of the regular course videos. Thanks to the talents and hard work of learner Marta Pulley, and the uploading wizardry of Senior Mentor Vindra Khanai, these scripts are now available. Just look to the right of the discussion sections under each video, and you’ll see pdfs of the scripts, along with Powerpoints and other related materials to help you better grasp the materials. (And of course, the supplemental course book, A Mind for Numbers, goes into more depth.)

This Week’s Reading Recommendations—A Couple of All Time Favorites

Speaking of books, this week, we’d like to suggest Daniel Kahneman’s masterful Thinking, Fast and Slow. This is one of the greatest books of psychology we’ve ever read—fully worthy of its long-time best-seller status. Kahneman’s slow thinking is analogous to our focused mode. But his fast thinking is more related to knee-jerk, emotional responses, rather than the “not focused on anything in particular” neural resting states of what we term the diffuse mode in Learning How to Learn. More directly related to Learning How to Learn’s focused and diffuse modes is the great classic of creativity literature, Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking. Read both brilliant books to enjoy two contrasting views on how to “chunk” key aspects of brain function.

The Power of Chunking!

And since we’re on the topic of chunking, check out this wonderful mashup of riveting dance scenes. Imagine the gradual, tiny-chunk-by-tiny-chunk growth of mastery that produced those magnificent moves. A vast repertoire of chunks underlies all forms of expertise, whether in dance, sports, language, math, or science. Chunked expertise, as Barb’s seemingly befuddled younger daughter reveals in week 3 of Learning How to Learn, even underlies the ability to back up a car.

Do you think that these extraordinary masters of dance can necessarily explain aloud how they perform each of their magnificent moves? Might thinking about explanations actually interfere with their ability to move so effortlessly? In the same way, do you think that children demonstrate more expertise with math if they can explain every step of their answers? Reach Katharine Beals and Barry Garelick’s terrific, counter-intuitive article “Explaining Your Math: Unnecessary at Best, Encumbering at Worst,” in The Atlantic to find out.

Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

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

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Our top book this month is Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives, by Tim Harford. We love this book, which speaks to the extraordinary power of serendipity and seeming sloppiness. One of our favorite writers, Adam Grant, summed Messy up this way: “Utterly fascinating. Tim Harford shows that if you want to be creative and resilient, you need a little more disorder in your world.” Adam’s own terrific complementary book is Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.

Barb at DevLearn

Barb will be at one of her favorite conferences—DevLearn, in Las Vegas, on November 14-16th. Unlike many more academically-focused conferences, DevLearn is eminently practical and has marvelous sessions and pre-conference workshops. Along with giving her own talk (check out the 45 second video), Barb will be taking the pre-conference workshops on the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite and on Mastering the Visualization of Storyboarding for eLearning. We must always keep learning, after all!

Help in discovering “Super-learners” Scott Young is an intrepid “Marco Polo of Learning.” (We featured him in the bonus interview at the end of week 2 of Learning How to Learn). Scott is looking for superlearners—people who have completed, interesting, aggressive self-education projects in the past. If you fall into this category, please email Scott at personal@scotthyoung.com.

Learning How to Learn trending on front page of Reddit

If you’d like to read one of the most thorough and careful summaries of the key ideas of Learning How to Learn that we’ve ever seen, please check out this excellent post on Reddit, which apparently rode to the top in popularity.

Exercise and Learning

Here’s a very readable article from Quartz about the importance of exercise in learning, and in top mental performance: “A neuroscientist says there’s a powerful benefit to exercise that is rarely discussed.” (Hat tip, Manuel Ataíde). Of course, Terry reinforced that point in week four of Learning How to Learn, in the video “How to Become a Better Learner.” An excellent book by a developmental molecular biologist that expands on the value of exercise, and many other ways to get the most value from our brain,s is John Medina’s Brain Rules.

MOOC of the Week

We’ve discovered a new MOOC platform, World Science U, that is putting forth exceptionally high quality science courses. These kinds of courses can be difficult to do well, but physicist Brian Green is doing a fantastic job spearheading just the kind of approach that suits how our brains best learn.. (Incidentally, we loved Green’s book The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory), Check this new MOOC platform out, especially if you have always wanted to learn about subjects like relativity, but never thought you could. .

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!

Learning Styles Hurt Learning

Our very own Terry Sejnowski hosts Professor Beth Rogowsky as she gives an outstanding analysis of how “Learning Styles Hurt Learning.” Beth’s own research on this is here: “Matching learning style to instructional method: Effects on comprehension.” The important book on learning that Beth alludes to in the discussion is Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel. Another terrific discussion of the challenges with learning styles can be found in Dan Willingham’s excellent book Why Don’t Students Like School?

Happy viewing and reading!

Nelson Dellis’ MIND SHOW

Many of you know that we’re fans of four time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis. Barb was recently on Nelson’s podcast “MIND SHOW,’ sharing stories about Antarctica, how the MOOC Learning How to Learn came to be, and insider hints about Barb’s new book Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential, which is one of Penguin’s lead titles for Spring, 2017 (pre-order now!)

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

Your Brain and Law School

Barb’s old friend from the outstanding UPenn Neuroscience Boot Camp, Professor Marybeth Herald from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, has written a five-star-rated book on how to be successful in law school: Your Brain and Law School. As one reviewer notes: “I believe that [law] students who read this book will have a significant advantage over those students who don’t. Law professors should read this book, too. It will teach them a few things about how they should be teaching their students.” Professor Herald also writes a blog on similar topics called Your Brain, Law School, and Law Practice at Ms. JD.

The Spanish Platform of Learning How to Learn—Aprendiendo a aprender

Don’t forget to tell your Spanish-speaking friends, colleagues and relatives, that there is an Spanish version of the course: Aprendiendo a aprender. Even the quizzes and web pages are in Spanish. Here’s an article by El Mundo reporter Berta González de Vega, “De odiar las matemáticas a doctora ingeniera: la profe más popular de Coursera” that describes the background of the course better than any article we’ve ever seen in English.

And of course, A Mind for Numbers, the recommended course supplemental text, is also available in Spanish: Abre Tu Mente A Los Numeros.

A Pomodoro Type Timer called “Forest”

Learning How to Learner Brad Bruenell has written a great forum post about a Pomodoro type timer called “Forest.” Brad writes: “This app is especially helpful for people like me who get distracted by their smartphone when trying to focus. The app works by “planting a tree” when you start a timer and rewarding you with a fully grown tree at the end of the timer. However, you will kill the tree if you leave the app while the timer is active, forcing you to leave your phone alone. The app keeps track of all the trees you grow and it’s gratifying seeing all the trees you grow over time. Hope this helps some of you like its helped me!” Check out Brad’s post–and a link to the app, 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 Month!

We’ve always got our eye out for great books on how to be a more effective human being. This is how we stumbled on the fantastic Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz. This is a riveting book—Voss was the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. But the insights that Voss provides about how people think, and how to really listen, are invaluable. Incidentally, you might be surprised to hear one of Voss’s insights: super-smart people make poor hostage negotiators. Read Voss’s book to learn why.

Barb in Guatemala for the ANTIGUA10X forum!

On November 18th, Barb will be speaking at ANTIGUA10X, a visionary forum to exchange leapfrogging ideas and practices to transform communities in a sustainable way. A few tickets are still available, so come join the learning adventure!

学习之道

A Mind for Numbers has just come out in a new, simplified Chinese Version: 学习之道. (The traditional version is available here: 用對腦，從此不再怕數字). Remember that you can recommend the Chinese version of Learning How to Learn to friends, co-workers, and family–this version includes all quizzes and webpages in Chinese. Here’s a nice review of the course on a Chinese review aggregator website.

Mindmapping, concept mapping, and recall

Check out the discussion forum thread here, where Yahya Jalaludeen has initiated an interesting discussion about mindmapping versus recall.

Nelson Dellis’ MIND SHOW

Unfortunately, there was an inadvertent bad link to four time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis’s MIND SHOW. Here’s the proper link, where Barb and Nelson share stories about Antarctica, how the MOOC Learning How to Learn came to be, and insider hints about Barb’s new book Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential, which is one of Penguin’s lead titles for Spring, 2017.

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

Call for New Learning How to Learn Mentors!

We are recruiting some new mentors for the English speaking version of Learning How To Learn. If you are interested in joining us as a mentor, we invite you to apply using this Google form. Please read the information on the form before you apply, and please apply only if you are sure you meet the criteria! We expect a high volume of applications, and we won’t be able to respond to everyone individually. If you are selected as a mentor, you should hear from us within the next few weeks. Thank you for your interest, and happy learning! 🙂

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

We’re big fans of Steven Johnson, and we’re already engrossed in his brand new book—Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World. We couldn’t agree more with Johnson’s observation that you’ll find the future wherever people are having the most fun. Some of our previous favorite Steven Johnson books include Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, and The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Johnson’s polymath views of history and society make him an author well worth following.

Free textbooks—and a browser-reader for the visually impaired

We’d like to bring to your attention a great source for peer-reviewed open textbooks, which are available in both printed and digital formats, from OpenStax College. There are all sorts of books, ranging from chemistry to physics to algebra and calculus. You can download these books and read them in a browser. There some terrific advantages to reading in a browser. For example, if a student of yours has dyslexia or has other visual impairments that might make reading difficult, he or she can easily study the pages using an extension called “Speak it!” [Hat tip, Learning How to Learn Italian Lead Cristian Artoni.]

Class Central Career Guides

Class Central’s new career guides are getting a lot of attention—if these subjects are of interest, check ‘em out!

• The Best Intro to Programming Courses
• The Best Statistics & Probability Courses

Exercise and Memory

Here’s a nice reminder article about how exercise some four hours after learning appears to improve memory related to that learning. Learning How to Learner Mark Wideberg started a discussion forum thread in that regard. [Hat tip, Senior Mentor Linda Walker.]

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 Thanksgiving greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

As you know, we’re big fans of biographies. And we’ve got an exceptional one to tout today: Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff. Great biographies give a sense of what might have been happening behind the scenes in important times in history. While giving a sense of the person, they also give a great feel for the place and time. Read Schiff’s book and savor a trip back to the tumultuous times when the Roman and Egyptian worlds collided. Highly recommended!

Barb in Guatemala City

This week’s email is a little early, because Barb is in Guatemala City, set to speak at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín on Friday, November 25th, at 10:00 am. If you have questions, please contact Karen Maeyens at karen.maeyens@ufm.edu. The presentation is free. Please plan to attend if you’re anywhere in the area—Barb would love to meet you!

The Art of Running

As you know, there’s a wealth of research showing that exercise plays an important role in allowing us to learn and remember more easily. For those of you who enjoy running, here is an interview by our friend Jake Taylor with Malcolm Balk, author of the book Master the Art of Running: Raise Your Performance Using the Alexander Technique. Jake’s website, 5 Good Questions, is a great resource about books, most especially if you are interested in investing. (Hat tip Hrvoje Horvat.)

MOOCs of the Week—Language!

Our recommended specialization this week, which features exceptional teaching, is Teach English Now! Theories of Second Language Acquisition, through Coursera-Arizona State University. This course introduces you to second or foreign language theories and practices for teaching and assessing listening, speaking, and pronunciation. If language is your “thing,” enjoy! Another very popular language-related course is FutureLearn’s Understanding IELTS: Techniques for English Language Tests, created by the British Council.

Why Handwriting Is Still Essential in the Keyboard Age

Here’s an insightful article in the New York Times by Perri Klass, MD on why handwriting is still one of the best ways to engage your mind in the material. We here at Learning How to Learn often write by hand when we’re trying to grapple with the most difficult material. Even a few words can help “chunk” key ideas in whatever you are trying to learn.

As we’ve mentioned before, we love Palomino Blackwing Pencils for our note taking. These pencils have the most extraordinary feel of any pencil we’ve ever used. Once past the initial sharpening with a standard pencil sharpener, we use a cheap plastic Staedtler manual pencil sharpener, which we set right beside us whenever we are writing. As for the actual note taking, we tend to use either quadrille pads or Moleskine squared notebooks.

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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