Category: Uncategorized

Running the Room

Posted on September 20, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Greetings from Dublin, Ireland! 

Book of the Month

Running the Room: The Teacher’s Guide to Behaviour, by Tom Bennett. This book is a masterpiece of specific advice about how to handle a classroom, written by a former nightclub manager turned teacher who has become one of the world’s leading experts on classroom management. It’s virtually impossible to summarize the many pithy insights of this extraordinary book, but this snippet gives a sense of the approach:

 “I once saw behaviour deteriorate from excellent to terrible in a matter of a few weeks. The school had a challenging demographic, but the behaviour was good because the senior staff led a team of motivated teachers in a rigorous way. Then along came a new head, whose first words to the students were, ‘I want you to see me as a friend,’ and ‘I will always give you another chance.’ Within a week, the most ambitious of students had tested his word and found that he would indeed permit anything as long as they thought he was a nice guy. Within a second week, the change in behaviour was palpable. A month later, with little support, teachers started to give up. The school went into a terminal nose spin. But it was OK: the school head moved on after a few years to another school, and no one was hurt apart from thousands of children who had their futures shredded by naivety, incompetence and the fairy tales we tell ourselves to feel good.”

Tom’s book, along with his company’s training, provides critical information that should be taught in every pedagogical program:

  • How to deal with students who are late
  • What are the best ways to work with parents?
  • Managing cover lessons successfully
  • How to tame smartphones
  • The best way to design a seating plan
  • How to start the lesson for the first time
  • Dealing with low-level disruption
  • Getting the class quiet when you – and they – need it most

Whatever your approach to teaching (or parenting), you will almost certainly benefit from this book. A bonus is that Tom is a funny, insightful writer—you’ll enjoy even as you are learning.

Barb’s ‘round the world travels (face-to-face unless otherwise noted) 

Barb will be in Europe and Asia speaking for a variety of private and public institutions over these next two months—take a look and see if she will be travelling or speaking near you!

  • September 24, Dublin, Ireland, opening keynote for the ResearchEd conference. (Sorry, this one’s already packed, with a waitlist to get in.)
  • September 27, Svalbard (Spitzbergen) Norway, Longyearbyen Skole (the world’s northernmost school); if you’re in Svalbard, Kirkenes, or Oslo, contact Barb at oakley@oakland.edu).
  • October 2, Kirkenes, Norway
  • October 3-8 Oslo
  • October 9-11 Amsterdam
  • October 15 Tokyo Books Kinokuniya Tokyo, Japan 
  • October 18-25 Bangkok (speaking on behalf of Siam Commercial Bank; for more information, please contact Nisha Nipasuwan, nisha.nipasuwan411@gmail.com)
  • October 19 Ministry of Finance Learning Week of the Republic of Indonesia (webinar); (for more information, contact Okto Sulaeman okto.sulaeman@kemenkeu.go.id of the Ministry of Finance).
  • October 26-November 2 Kathmandu, Nepal (hosted by Tergar Oseling Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal. Translation into Tibetan will be provided; for more information please contact Joseph.Faria@tergar.org)
  • November 3-5 Delhi, India (speaking on behalf of Coursera, for more information contact Manisha Vasdev, mvasdev@coursera.org )
  • November 7 Singapore (extended workshop at NTU, for more information contact Dr Sally Siew Hiang Ng, sally.ngsh@ntu.edu.sg)
  • November 9 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (speaking on behalf of ETS Data Publishing and Coursera at leading Vietnamese universities and companies, for more information contact Albus D Hoang duc@edlabasia.org) 
  • November 11-14 Hanoi, Vietnam (speaking on behalf of ETS Data Publishing and Coursera at leading Vietnamese universities and companies, for more information contact Albus D Hoang duc@edlabasia.org) 
  • November 15 Mankassar University, Indonesia (webinar); (for more information, contact Sulfikar Sulfikar, sulfikar@unm.ac.id)
  • December 20, Defense Language Institute, Monterey, California (webinar); (for more information, contact Jon Phillips,  R FAC (CIV) jon.phillips@dliflc.edu)
  • In-person talks to come next spring at Karolinska Institutet and Dalarna University in Sweden and in universities in Finland (for more information, contact Ann Rudman ann.rudman@ki.se); Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (headlining again for the indomitable ResearchEd; for more information, contact Paul W Bennett, pbennett@ns.sympatico.ca); Reedley, California  for more information, contact Deb Borofka deb.borofka@reedleycollege.edu; and more!

Creating a Revolutionary Academic Program

Here is a terrific article by Umakishore Ramachandran and Zvi Galil about how the extraordinary low-cost, high value Georgia Tech Online Master’s in Computer Science (OMSCS) program was created relying on massive open online course (MOOC) technology. By relating their experiences—discussing the creative solutions they found as well as describing how they overcame challenges, Umakishore and Zvi hope to help colleagues and peers embarking on similar endeavors.

The 4 things it takes to be an expert

This is a wonderful analysis of what it takes to acquire expertise—and why so many experts perform in an unexpectedly poor way. This is one of the coolest videos we’ve seen on the vital importance of deliberate practice! [Hat tip, Adam Trybus.]

Better learning is today’s competitive advantage

This podcast interview with host Bill Ringle and Barb explores how the Pomodoro Technique can be used—and misused.  Enjoy!

A first blog post

Here’s a wonderful perspective by Elizabeth Templeman on Uncommon Sense Teaching, the book.  Key graf: “I should mention that learning about learning is central to my role, coordinating Supplemental Learning, and to guiding my amazing team of student leaders so that they can, in turn, guide hundreds of students, through their SL sessions, to learn more strategically and effectively. I only wish I’d known even a fraction of this when I was a student myself, many years ago, but it’s never too late to learn more about ourselves and how we perceive and process the world around us.

Next 3 years, I will be…

This is a wonderful blog post by an aspiring young man, Si Thu Khant, in Myanmar.   ‘…during the past few years, I’ve aimed to become a highly productive person. I created all the guidelines for an effective productive person and watched all the channels on YouTube that focused on productivity. I set up my daily life using all of the productivity applications. NONE OF IT WORKED FOR ME. I don’t know why, but I believe it is because my soul doesn’t desire the ordered things.” 

The world needs more such creative, independent thinkers. If you like Si Thu’s writing, feel free to reach out and let him know.  You could end up changing a life.

Lengthy Podcast for Parents with Lydia El Khouri and Barb

This extended interview contains some of the best questions Barb has ever been asked related to learning. Lydia El Khouri’s perceptive questioning brings out great insights related to learning that can be extraordinarily helpful for you as a parent.

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

Launch of the Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization!

Posted on September 9, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Special Cheery Friday Greetings from Learning How to Learn!

If you’ve been wondering why our Cheery Friday emails have been a bit sparse lately, you need wonder no further!  This is a very special greetings. Today, we announce the launch of our final MOOC Teaching Online, which completes the full Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization. Hurray!

We should start by saying that courses about teaching online are often just repurposed general teaching courses where you can spend weeks revisiting dusty, often outmoded theory.  Not in our specialization!  In our latest course, you’ll see how insights from movie-making, along with core ideas how to motivate unmotivated students, form the heart of Teaching Online.  Teaching Online gives you a fresh perspective with important teaching-related ideas that weren’t covered in MOOCs 1 & 2!  In Teaching Online, you’ll learn, for example, not only how students form expertise—but you’ll also see what is going on in students’ brains as they sync together during social learning. You’ll also see what happens as Barb is almost eaten by a giant frog; Georgia Tech’s online learning expert, Professor David Joyner, insidiously steals bowls (and occasionally, the show); and our very own dear Terry Sejnowski dons his wizard cap. 

I​f you’re an educational administrator or business executive, you’ll find Teaching Online is terrific not only for university and K-12 instructors, but for industry trainers. If you want your instructors to really understand the practicalities of online teaching, from microphones, cameras, facial expressions, capturing attention, videotaping tricks to make teaching easier, and ultimately, make the information stick better, this is that course.  If you’re a Chief Learning Officer at a major corporation, you’ll find this course to be invaluable in helping your corporate trainers to up their game.  We pack more practically useful, in-depth content in one course than many universities do in entire specializations (and we’re funnier, too!) But there’s more!

MOOC 1: Uncommon Sense Teaching is like no other course on teaching—it weaves late-breaking insights from neuroscience with personal insights from the classroom to provide unexpected, yet practical, new approaches.  You’ll discover how to bring out the best from all your students in today’s diverse teaching environment, where students often have a wide range of abilities. 

MOOC 2: Uncommon Sense Teaching, Part 2 will help you discover the hidden strengths of neurodiversity, and the value of forgetting. It will also help you discover hidden insights about critical thinking which, oddly enough, relate to our habitual thinking patterns! 

You can sign up for the entire specialization. (Yes, it’s that good!)  Or you can instead audit each MOOC for free by going to the individual MOOC and choosing the audit option at the bottom of the registration.  The animations and illustrations used in each MOOC are available for free under each video, even if you are just auditing. (Your patience is appreciated, though—please give us another week to finalize and upload the gifs for Teaching Online).

So here, after 1.5 years of devoted labor, is the Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization and its three MOOCs—you can take either MOOC 0 or MOOC 1 first, and enjoy MOOC 2 after MOOC 1.  Enjoy!

Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization

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

In Love with the World

Posted on August 19, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Hello from Abu Dhabi! Barb will be spending the week here keynoting and sharing during the professional development week at visionary—and swiftly climbing in the international rankings!—Khalifa University.

Book of the Month

In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying, by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Helen Tworkov. We’re a bit meditation-heavy lately. But this is because in her upcoming trip to Nepal in October-November, Barb will be spending time at the Kathmandu Tergar Osel Ling Monastery. (Barb, Terry, and Beth’s book Uncommon Sense Teaching is used there as a textbook, thanks to its neuroscientific insight that also supports the monastery’s Buddhist perspectives.) In Love with the World is a fascinating book about the world of meditation because it centers around world-renowned Buddhist monk Mingyur Rinpoche’s near-death experience and the insights he gained from it.

Basically, Mingyur Rinpoche decided to do a “wandering retreat”—which meant going out into the real world instead of withdrawing into solitary meditation. In some sense, he sought to escape the patterns that had been locked in by his habitual, basal ganglia-based procedural system.  As he notes: “To break the mold of my conditioning, I had needed to do something a little extreme. In order to break through our conditioning and confront old habits, we might deliberately reverse a common pattern, at least for a limited time: If we habitually pick up a cup with our right hand, we commit to using our left hand; or we vow not to check our media devices more than once an hour; or for one week we promise never to exceed the speed limit when driving. I do not drive, but I have been told that this can be quite difficult. Anything that interferes with mindless repetition can function as a wake-up call, and an antidote to automatic, mindless behavior and habitual fixations. To encourage curiosity and flexibility, it’s important to discover our limits, and then stretch a bit further. In terms of lifestyle, a wandering retreat for me was a very big stretch, no doubt about it. But… That’s how I’d ended up on this train, all alone, in the middle of the night.”

Inside the Massive Effort to Change the Way Kids Are Taught to Read

This insightful article by Belinda Luscombe in Time describes why so many children—and adults—are unable to read.  

“As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. ‘For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,’ recalls Weaver. ‘And we hated it.’

The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. ‘This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,’ says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. ‘So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.’ It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. ‘Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,’ he says.

“Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics.”

TikToker or Filmmaker? Baron Ryan walks us through his TikTok process

This fascinating video walks us through TikTok star Baron Ryan’s creative process in making his videos.  There is much food for thought here for online teachers regarding the ease with which Baron creates his videos.

Inspiring Words from Yu Cao! 

Learning How to Learner Yu Cao writes: “I am a passionate learner. I have benefited tremendously from your course in Learning How to Learn. During my school year, when I worked to get my Ph.D., I applied various learning methods in your book. I now also teach my students the strategies I learned from you when I teach calculus. It is delightful to keep learning new things using the techniques!”

And here, incidentally, is a wonderful review of Learning How to Learn on Class Central, our go-to repository of reviews of the best MOOCs out there!

The “Diffuse Mode” and The New York Times’ Spelling Bee

Our dear friend Jenny Wolochow Sr. Product Manager at Coursera, notes how this article describes how to be a better solver of the Bee.”My last bit of advice is to come back to it. Give your brain a break, and you’ll see something you didn’t see before.” Yup—make use of that diffuse mode!

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

Waking Up

Posted on August 11, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, by Sam Harris.  This book is meant to be a common sense guide to finding spirituality without necessarily springboarding from a religious tradition. In Harris’s hands, we gain a clearer understanding of mindfulness. “It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant.” (But for those LHTLers amongst us who are interested in such matters, it seems cultivating mindfulness translates to continuously maintaining focus and concomitAntly diminishing both anxiety and creativity, perhaps a mixed blessing.) 

As Harris notes: “The crucial point is that you can glimpse something about the nature of consciousness that will liberate you from suffering in the present. Even just recognizing the impermanence of your mental states—deeply, not merely as an idea—can transform your life.”

Harris has knocked around the world of meditation for many years—long enough to have a good feel for both the best and the worst of meditation experts and spiritual gurus.  You’ll find yourself thinking about Harris’s ideas  long after you finish the book.

OpenStax: A Best-Selling Textbook Is Now Free

As Liam Knox notes in Inside Higher Ed, award-winning and prolific author and professor emeritus John McMurry has recently decided to move his classic book Organic Chemistry from industry giant Cengage to OpenStax, a nonprofit based at Rice University that is dedicated to developing open education resources (OER), learning and research materials created and licensed to be free for the user.  “That means for the first time, the digital version of Organic Chemistry and its accompanying solutions manual — usually priced at almost $100 — will be available for students to download free.” OpenStax is growing wildly in popularity. “According to a recent survey by Bay View Analytics, faculty use of OER materials grew significantly over the past few years, especially during the pandemic. In 2015 only 5 percent of faculty said they used OER course materials; in 2022 that number had jumped to 22 percent.”

OpenStax Free College Textbooks and Related Flashcard Sets

Barb will present Teach You Students How to Learn in a webinar hosted by iDoRecall and OpenStax.org on August 17th at 1 PM EDT. Go ahead register, and you’ll receive a link to the recording so you can watch whenever it is convenient. Barb is the pro bono Chief learning Science Advisor of iDoRecall who has developed comprehensive sets of flashcards for most of OpenStax’s portfolio of Creative Commons high school and college textbooks. Everyone can access these flashcards for free. When you practice memory retrieval and struggle with the answer, you can click a link to open a PDF of the book at the precise, relevant location to refresh your memory.

Momentum builds behind a way to lower the cost of college: A degree in three years

This article by Jon Marcus in The Hechinger Report describes “A rare brand-new nonprofit university, NewU [with] a comparatively low $16,500-a-year price that’s locked in for a student’s entire education and majors with interchangeable requirements so students don’t fall behind if they switch.”  Part of the savings—and a big part of the draw—is that NewU offers bachelor’s degrees in three years instead of the customary four. Students are looking for a more efficient education, and a three year degree—much as what is offered in European universities—appears to be just the ticket.  As the article notes: “We didn’t think the three-year bachelor’s degree was going to be the biggest draw,” said Stratsi Kulinski, president of the startup college. “But it has been, hands-down. Consumers are definitely ready for something different.”

Barb Revisits Discussion of Pathological Altruism with the Atlas Society

Here’s Barb thinking she’s only on a podcast, so she’s especially frumpy when contrasted with the not only whip-smart, but also stylish President of the Atlas Society, Jennifer Anju Grossman. The Atlas Society is a benevolent group that tries to do good through rational, objective thinking. In this blundering (on Barb’s part) discussion, Barb manages to gratuitously diss objectivist heroine Ayn Rand even while praising some of her valuable ideas about pathologies of altruism. Here are the links to the webinar recording on YouTube and Facebook—take a look and listen and see what you think!

Zoom Party with Dr. Agarwal!

Join the Zoom Party from 5:00pm – 6:30pm EDT today (Friday, August 12) with Dr. Pooja Agarwal, co-author of one of our favorite books on teaching, Powerful Teaching.  These Zoom parties are a lot of fun—Barb went to one of Pooja’s previous ones this summer, and she plans to go again tonight.  See you there!

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

Flicker: Your Brain on Movies

Posted on July 22, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Month

Flicker: Your Brain on Movies, by Jeffrey Zacks.  We have no idea how this magnificent book slipped under our radar when it was first published in 2014, but it’s a doozy!  Zacks is a renowned neuroscientist, but he also loves movies. The result let’s us peer into Zack’s life’s work, including an in-depth look inside movies to see what makes them work, and what makes us love them. 

Most followers of Learning How to Learn, as well as virtually all cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists are aware of working memory.  But few are aware of the importance of “event models”–the contents of working memory.  We believe the concept of event models, which Dr. Zacks helped pioneer, will become an important one in education, and particularly online education.  More about that to come in our upcoming MOOC 3 of Uncommon Sense Teaching! 

99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos: A Guide for Online Teachers and Flipped Classes, by Karen Costa. This simple, upbeat, encouraging book gives a nice boost for creating simple online videos for your classes that can be used over and over again (hence the “sustainable”) part of the title.  As Costa notes: “I’m here to shout from the rooftops that videos will make your life easier! Let me explain. How many e-mails or phone calls from students do you respond to each term asking you the same questions over and over? Tons, right? I teach first-year students, often in their very first online course. They have a lot of questions, and they need almost constant support. Being a great teacher is time-consuming. What if we could support our students and save ourselves time in the process?… This time is given back to me tenfold in the time that I save from answering countless and repetitive questions term after term. I have taught with and without these videos, and I can attest to the fact that in the terms in which I use videos, I receive far fewer frequently asked question-type queries from my students, and the quality of my students’ work is much better. That means I also spend less time working with students on revisions or resubmissions, because they are more likely to get it right the first time. While creating a video might cost you 15 minutes, it will pay you back in saved time.” 

If you’re looking for a quick-to-read motivator to get you going with simple videos, this is a good book to get you started.

Jump into the “Everest Memory Masterclass”!

5-TIME USA Memory Champion and Guinness Record Holder, Nelson Dellis’ amazing “Everest Memory Masterclass” is open for registration this week! You’ll learn all the things you need to have an amazing memory for life—you’ll learn how to apply memory techniques to suit all the important situations in your life where memory is essential. Barb herself is in one of the bonus interviews. Nelson is limiting the size of this cohort, so make sure to check it out and sign up! Signup here.

Barb on Fast and Slow Learners 

Check out Barb’s podcast discussion of fast and slow learners with Mike Bergin, the President of Chariot Learning and Founder of TestBright, and Amy Seeley, President of Seeley Test Pros. This is a hot topic in learning, so you’ll be interested to hear the latest!

A review of good flashcard apps

Here is a nice article by Ransom Patterson of College InfoGeek of five top flashcard apps, along with discussion of the pluses and minuses of each.  At a time when learners are increasingly realizing the value of retrieval practice, this is a helpful article indeed.

Long-term effects of using the MOOC ‘Learning how to learn’ to teach learning techniques

This intriguing study provided insight into the long-term effects of using the MOOC Learning How to Learn to teach learning techniques on students’ foreign language learning behavior over a two year period.  The upshot?  As author Beate Luo concludes: “Time spent on Learning How to Learn was time well spent.”

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

Ten Fallacies that Make Founders Fail

Posted on June 21, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Month

The San Francisco Fallacy: The Ten Fallacies That Make Founders Fail, Jonathan Siegel. Many books on entrepreneurship tell you what to look for, and what to look out for.  But they don’t focus on the failures—and how those failures can eventually lead to success.  Siegel’s book is jaw-droppingly good. He knows how to write and how to tell a story—this means that it’s hard to put his book down as he makes point after point from his sometimes disastrous, but ultimately phenomenally successful career as an entrepreneur and angel investor. (Incidentally, the “San Francisco Fallacy” refers to herd mentality in thinking that the enormously expensive Silicon Valley area is necessarily the place to go for tech startups.) 

VERY highly recommended!

The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings, by Nick Gray. The more Barb has researched the neuroscience underlying how we learn, the more she (as a shy person simulating an extrovert) has discovered the importance of personal relationships, not only in learning, but in life.  Interacting with people with whom you have become familiar, as it turns out, activates the brain’s reward mechanisms.  It’s little wonder that we teachers like to use techniques such as “Think-Pair-Share,” and collaborative learning sessions sprinkled amongst the more difficult sessions of explicit instruction.

Which leads us right to Nick Gray’s delightful The 2-Hour Cocktail Party! (Nick himself, it should be pointed out, doesn’t drink, so alcohol isn’t at all necessary for Nick’s approach to work.)  The trick to activating those happy feelings of reward, remember, is not just interacting with people—it’s interacting with people with whom you are familiar.  How do you become familiar with people?  Invite them to a short cocktail party!  And that’s part of the trick—the party should be short.  Nick (in real life, one of the world’s nicest people) shows you how to comfortably set up the part, from sending out the first invitations, inviting your great guests (people you’ve wanted to meet!), pre-party prep, navigating the first twenty minutes, icebreakers, how to end on a high note, and what to do the day after.  

This is a wonderful book—Barb is planning her first party for after the launch of MOOC 3 of the Uncommon Sense Teaching specialization (Teaching Online) in two months!  

Uncommon Sense Teaching, the MOOCs

And speaking of which, MOOC 1 & MOOC 2 of Uncommon Sense Teaching are doing fantastic!  Here is an article in Market Screener about the second MOOC. Key graf: “How have learners responded to the course? It has been wonderfully rewarding to know that many have found it tailor-made to hone their teaching and learning skills. As one learner remarked: “How can we teach, without knowing how learning works?” It’s heartening also to find that many have come away with inspiration, guidance, and hope in these uncertain times – when the teaching experience itself has changed so much. This very evolution in the way we teach has, in fact, led me to start working on another course. Teaching Online, the final course in this series, will launch soon!”

Jump on the Waitlist for the “Everest Memory Masterclass”!

Nelson Dellis (now a 5-TIME USA Memory Champion and Guinness Record Holder) is launching his next cohort for his amazing “Everest Memory Masterclass.” Since last time, he’s revamped the class with more content, interactive sessions, interviews, and strategies––you’ll learn how to memorize names, learn languages, remember your todo lists and calendars, and tons of other practical things! He usually limits the size of his cohorts, so make sure to jump on the waitlist so you can access the class when it goes live in July! Jump on the waitlist here!

Strategie di Apprendimento in Italiano

La nostra amica Maria Luisa Dettori, ricercatrice presso l’Università degli Studi di Sassari (Italy), ha realizzato tre brevi video che hanno l’obiettivo di diffondere la conoscenza delle strategie di apprendimento fra i più giovani, in italiano. I primi due (1, 2) sono basati sui corsi Learning How To Learn e Uncommon Sense Teaching, Il terzo presenta il metodo di studio proposto dalla prof. Saundra McGuire nel suo libro Teach Students How to Learn (Stylus publishing) e altre risorse.

Meditating probably won’t make you a better person

We’re big fans of Adam Grant (here’s our review of his powerful book Think Again.) Adam strikes again with an intriguing, no-holds-barred article on meditation. As he observes: 

“Meditation doesn’t quiet your ego. In an experiment, people who were randomly assigned to meditate actually focused more on themselves.

“Wait, I know what you’re thinking: they were doing the wrong kind of meditation. Au contraire: they did loving-kindness meditation that guided them to be compassionate toward others. And they walked away more self-absorbed! (The same was true for people who were randomly assigned to do yoga.)

“At the end of the day, I’m a social scientist: I want to get to the truth about how well-being practices affect us. And sometimes the best way to do that is to present the argument that the defense doesn’t want to hear.

“Mind-body practices have a place in our lives. But focusing inward on your own sensations can shift your attention away from other people. If you want to become kinder, you might be better off investing your energy in action and interaction. There’s no substitute for listening to other people’s problems and volunteering to share your time, talents, and ties with them.”

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

Distributed Classroom

Posted on June 2, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week

The Distributed Classroom, by David Joyner and Charles Isbell. Online teaching has a sometimes confusing welter of terminology. Common buzz words include synchronous, asynchronous, remote, flipped, hybrid (blended), and hyflex. (This article provides a quick overview of what these terms mean.)  Where Joyner and Isbell’s book comes in is to provide an encompassing perspective on how the many different forms of online learning can be used by universities, high schools, and other educational institutions to meet the needs of diverse populations.  Both authors have been deeply involved in the development of Georgia Tech’s outstanding Online Master of Science in Computer Science (or OMSCS) degree, which has captured 10% of the market for US computer science masters degrees and has become one of (if not the) largest masters program in the world due to its quality, accessibility, and low price. If you are interested in creating better online programs, this book is worth your time.

Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University, by Richard White.  This book has all the ingredients of a thriller—a murder by strychnine of the primary founder of one of the world’s leading universities. In able hands, this book would have been a real page turner—the deceit, acrimony, corruption and malevolence by academicians that underlie the true origins of Stanford University are mindblowing.  Sadly, the bulk of the writing centers on petty details, while skimming over important big-picture issues such as the corrupt means by which Leland Stanford apparently gained his wealth.  A great book if you like petty details.

Barb speaking in person in New Jersey June 25th, 2022

Barb will be giving an intensive three-hour active opening training session for teachers at the Middle College National Consortium Summer Professional Development Institute June 25, 2022 at the Hyatt Regency – Jersey City. Don’t miss if you’re a university professor or K-12 teacher who would  like to know the latest involving practical insights from neuroscience to help instructors!  It’s all here, including the neuroscience of slow learning and how to help your “hiker” students, as well as your race cars, to excel; how to tap into habit-based centers of the brain to help student gain intuition in understanding complex patterns and solving complicated problems; how and whytaking a few moments of neural “breaks” can help with the learning process, and much, much more. Plus, Barb would love to meet you!  For more information about the fascinating insights from the full three-day conference, and to register, go here.

Supporting Students with ADHD and Autism

Here is an excellent compendium by Jennifer Gonzalez (the blog Cult of Pedagogy), about how to best support your students who have ADHD. Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman’s podcast on ADHD is even better. 

This excellent article by autistic learner Chris Bonello explains why he resents being called “a person with autism,” instead of an autistic. As he notes “It is up to us to decide how we identify. It is not up to others to decide on our behalf.” And in her enlightening TEDTalk, Adriana White describes “Autism and Neurodiversity: Different Does Not Mean Broken.”

The “Digitally Enhanced Assessment and Feedback” Conference

Check out this free event next week (Wednesday the 8th June from 14:00 – 16:30 (GMT-London time)) The theme for this event is ‘Digitally Enhanced Assessment and Feedback.  It’s a free event with some world leading experts sharing their thoughts and experiences, and in some cases, their latest research findings.  Register here!

A great opportunity for ed-tech entrepreneurs!

Barb’s friend Elle Wang is a research scientist who is also an experienced judge and advisory board member for such groups as the $1M XPRIZE Digital Learning Challenge and the $5M XPRIZE IBM Watson AI for Good Competition.  Elle has partnered with Maven to build and launch a cohort-based course to teach ed-tech entrepreneurs to develop an efficient and effective research and product testing plan. At the end of the course, all participants will be able to write a compelling project pitch, ready to be submitted to research-focused funders such as the NSF SBIR to win up to $2 million dollars with 0% equity taken. 

In the process of developing this course, Elle is collecting quick feedback via a 1-minute survey, here. If you would like to help Elle out, and/or are interested in the course, please fill out the survey. Incidentally, if you fill out the survey, you be eligible to register for the course with the early bird price and receive invitations to free workshops.

Embrace Discomfort!

We have long lived a life with the mantra of “Learn to grow comfortable with being uncomfortable.”  And wouldn’t you know it, up pops a research study revealing that this approach is a good one for many reasons. As this Greater Good Magazine article about the findings notes: “There are many ways we seek comfort in life. We can find it in a warm shower, a fuzzy cuddle with a cat, or a night on the couch with no obligations… But according to a new study, our desire for comfort could be holding us back when it comes to personal growth. If we want to improve ourselves and achieve our goals, we may want to start actively seeking out discomfort.”

Three cheers to this!  And if you happen to be reading all the way into the distant corner this Cheery Friday, in this-coming autumn, Barb will be off to speak in a high school in Spitsbergen (also called Svalbard), a set of islands far north of Iceland that form one of the northernmost habited places in the world. The great number of polar bears mean that it’s not a good idea to go outside the limits of town without a weapon.  (Polar bears may be cute, but they can also be sneaky b*stards.)

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

iDoRecall

Posted on May 5, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

A new video on Learning How to Learn!

Barb has just made a new video for Learning How to Learners on how to easily create flashcards for retrieval practice while you are in Learning How to Learn—or in any Coursera course.  Check the video out here. (You may need to reset the deadlines for Learning How to Learn, or alternatively, you can find the video here on YouTube.)  The flashcard program, “iDoRecall,” also works well for YouTube videos in general, as well as web pages, pdfs, or what-have-you.

This is one of the most powerful—and easiest—methods we’ve found to retain the information you are learning in MOOCs. Barb loves this flashcard system so much that that’s why she made the video (it’s not a paid product endorsement).

ASEE Presents: Master Class On Effective Teaching, May 17, 18, & 19, 2022 12:00 – 4:00 PM, ET

The next edition of the upcoming Master Class on Effective Teaching, led by none other than Barb, has now been opened for registration.  Feedback on previous sessions of this workshop have been phenomenal: “Three words for this course:  – Astounding  – Invigorating  – Invaluable” “Brilliant insights” “This was amazing…Best $199 I’ve ever spent in my life!”  

This workshop will give you a chance to review and internalize some of the best insights about effective teaching that recent neuroscience provides.  Most great teachers (like you!) are great because you intuit what learners need, and when. This upcoming Master Class will provide you with insight into why you do what you do in your teaching. This insight can help you leverage your natural teaching intuition even further. The materials are based on the critically praised Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn.

Books of the Week

I Love You All the Time and You Have Feelings All the Time by child development expert Deborah Farmer Kris, illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin. These wonderful books are meant to reassure children about your enduring love for your child, whether they are mad, glad, or sad, and also to help your child to recognize and manage their feelings.  Start by skipping past the delightful illustrations to read the letter to caregivers at the back of the book—you’ll get a sense from these brief instructions of how to best use and teach the ideas in the books as you go through the book with your toddler or pre-schooler.  Then enjoy paging through the book together reading aloud with your little one.  Highly recommended and engaging for youngsters!

The Social Learning App

For those of you who would like to join a study group with fellow students, we encourage you to try out this tool: www.wer6.io. It’s going live next week, but you can sign up now.  Give it a try—group learning can increase your motivation and chances of completing the course!

Further insights on Ukraine

In response to last week’s Friday email highlighting information about Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe, we received the following email from a LHTLer:

“Years ago, I joined Learning How to Learn course, and even if it did not change my life, it pitched pretty close to that. Since then I got a scholarship for a Masters degree in the US, and lived in 4 different countries … I am Russian, and the letter hit the sensitive spot. I appreciate your team for speaking up about the invasion and sharing, as usual, useful resources. Me and my many other compatriots are deeply affected by the injustice of this war, and our inability to resist our government…

“My Ukrainian friends are spending hours in the basements studying for exams or learning new languages not only for a much appreciated disruption, but also to keep up with their lives and goals. I see that as bravery and wisdom. My Russian friends are burying themselves in news and history books while observing from afar the destruction that we have involuntarily caused. I am not comparing, of course, but for both sides their learning conditions have changed. What would be your advice on how to make though a new vocabulary list if your house might get bombed, or you receive a notification about another absurd law that might send you to jail? How to keep up concentration and move forward, even in baby steps, when you are in a condition of high uncertainty where your bare survival might not be guaranteed?… I believe that your team’s advice might be valuable for those who are now living though much harder challenges, and still setting up learning goals for themselves.”

As it happens, on Tuesday, Barb gave a lecture on “Teaching Kids in a Stressful Time” for the Ukrainian learning organization Osvitoria. You can access the talk:

In Ukrainian

In English

Stanford Prof Debunks Research Behind New California K-12 Math Standards

Brian Conrad, a Professor of Mathematics and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Math, Stanford University has made waves with his criticism of the fundamentally flawed curriculum of the proposed California Mathematics Framework (“CMF”).  As Conrad observes: “The abundance of false or misleading citations I found in the CMF calls into doubt the credibility of all citations to the literature in the CMF… My grade for the CMF’s accurate representation of the cited literature is F.”

It appears that those with good critical thinking skills may at last be making an impact about the de facto privatization of good teaching the proposed CMF would bring—privatization that would cause the most harm to students with the fewest resources. If you would like to add your voice to the criticism of the non-scientific nature of the proposed CMF, you can discover how to chime in 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

After the Romanovs – Red Notice

Posted on April 29, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

This week, we will digress to discuss how important learning is when it comes to international politics and war.  Let us begin with the book After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport. As Barb was learning Russian back in the 1970s, the exiled “White” Russians (that is, those who opposed the communist “Reds”), had left their mark on the Russian-speaking diaspora worldwide. So it was fascinating to read this book and learn more about this community of millions who fled Russia as a result of the Soviet take-over in 1917.  What makes this book particularly intriguing is the many personal stories. Talented writers and poets in exile, for example, who found themselves lost in melancholia, unpublishable under Soviet censorship; and the mind-bogglingly wealthy who were lucky enough to escape largely penniless to the West, re-emerging as seamstresses and taxi-drivers, or worse, as drunks and suicides. 

On a side note, if you want to better understand the history of what is unfolding now in Ukraine, we highly recommend the Great Courses’  A History of Eastern Europe, by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius. Liulevicius, a professor at the University of Tennessee, is a riveting speaker who makes the complex sweep of eastern European history understandable.  It can be difficult for those in North America to understand the turmoil and upheaval endemic in recent memory within these contentious, diverse regions—until the European Union began to form a fruitful path forward.

After the Romanovs and A History of Eastern Europe are particularly apropos in this sad time when a new diaspora of both Ukrainians and Russian supporters of Ukraine has begun to appear. As leading scientist John Holdren and his colleagues point out in Science, in an overarching goal of overturning Putin’s regime, “Let’s not abandon Russian scientists.”  If you think it’s incumbent upon all Russians to protest the policies of their leaders, you may wish to watch “The Lives of Others,” an award-winning film about how totalitarian societies can make any protest dangerous not only for the person who protests, but dangerous as well for all whom that person might love. 

This is a time when having historical perspective can be valuable.  It is hard to believe, but in her recent visit to Eastern Europe, where support for the Ukrainians is strong, Barb still met some who believed that the Ukrainians had brought the destruction upon themselves by not simply giving in to Putin at the very beginning.  This pathologically altruistic view of the situation overlooks the fact that the last time the Russians controlled Ukraine, they managed to kill some four million Ukrainians in a genocide known as the Holodomor.

Sadly, some true-believers trust the carefully-filtered news they are fed by Russian government sources. The upshot? As one of Barb’s friends notes from a country bordering Russia: “The War in Ukraine is a personal matter for most of us …, as we have our friends, colleagues, relatives there right now. Also there is a big diaspora of Ukrainians here…. So, I am not sure if we are able to forgive anytime soon what Putin and Russia are doing: killing civilians, destroying the country. I really hope that Ukraine will be able to win in this unfair war, as Ukraine is fighting for all of us now…”

For those who would like unusual insights on Putin by a man who has dedicated his life to thwarting him, you can do little better than to read the gripping Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice, by Bill Browder. This book gives a deep sense of the governmental corruption endemic in Russia at virtually every level—and also how this affects ordinary (and extraordinary) Russians.

There are, in fact, many Russians who are deeply supportive of Ukraine, and Ukrainians themselves are feeling the stigma of mis-directed anti-Russian prejudice.  Russians outside Russia who had previously escaped the communist regime are feeling a bias double-whammy. As the famed “Russian Tea Room” notes on the entry to their website: “The Russian Tea Room renounces Russia’s unprovoked acts of war in the strongest possible terms. For 95 years, the NY institution’s history has been deeply rooted in speaking against communist dictatorship and for democracy. Just as the original founders, Soviet defectors who were displaced by the revolution, stood against Stalin’s Soviet Union, we stand against Putin and with the people of Ukraine.” So, if you happen to live near NYC, feel free to stop by the Russian Tea Room—one of our favorite iconic restaurants—and learn about their rich history of opposition of oppression!

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

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

The Brain in Search of Itself

Posted on April 21, 2022 by - Uncategorized

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

The Brain in Search of Itself: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron, by Benjamin Ehrlich.  What a magnificent book!  Longtime fans of Learning How to Learn know that we’re in turn longtime fans of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience.  As a youngster, Santiago struggled markedly with his learning, as this remarkably well-researched and beautifully-written book describes.  We can’t help but wonder whether Santiago might have had dyslexia coupled with dyslexia’s frequent comorbid companion: ADHD. Hints and clues abound through the text:

  •  “…though he struggled to remember the spelling of words or their order within a sentence, Santiagüé never forgot an image… his talent allowed him to reproduce even the most intricate maps to perfection.
  •  “… his academic reputation was far from stellar. Cajal ‘was the typical student who was inattentive, lazy, disobedient, and annoying, a nightmare for his parents, teachers, and patrons,’ one teacher at Huesca recalled. He ‘will only stop in jail,’ predicted another, ‘if they do not hang him first.’ [This is the typical mischaracterization of those with dyslexia as “lazy” and “inattentive.” And it’s pretty tough not be disobedient and annoying when the world doesn’t understand your learning challenges!]
  • “[Santiago] passed his examinations at the end of the year in Latin I, Castilian I, Principles and Exercises in Arithmetic, and Christian History and Doctrine, earning the lowest possible grades—no doubt aided by the fact that [his father] had performed a life-saving surgery on the wife of one of the examination judges.
  • “Careful not to slacken ‘the creative tension of the mind,’ he avoided gossiping and reading newspapers, ceased writing short stories, abandoned the study of hypnotism, and even quit playing chess. He exercised his will not because he was uninterested in the world around him but precisely because he knew himself to be so distractible.  [Those with ADHD can have hyperfocus in what they are interested in—but also be easily distractable.]
  • “All who had known the Nobel Prize winner as a young delinquent responded with the same expression: utter shock.”

Cajal was a fabulously gifted and prescient researcher who pushed back against the stodgy “academic reactionists“ who, then as now, clung to outmoded ideas.  (One of Cajal’s colleagues disparaged the new truths of microscopy as “pure fantasy.”) This is a brilliant, literary coup of a book for all who wish to have a sense of how neuroscience was moved to a solid, modern foundation. A great biography of a great man.

(Incidentally, here is an inspiring story of a modern-day teacher, Lucy Senior, with dyslexia. Lucy observes: “Teachers thought I wouldn’t make it through high school, teachers said to me on graduation, ‘I didn’t think I’d see you here’.” Note her love of and gifts for imagery! [Hat tip Pat Bowden.]

Barb’s visits to Hungary and Romania to promote advances in learning

In case you’d like to brush up on your Hungarian or Romanian, here is an interview with Barb from the Hungarian Prime Minister’s office in Magyar Nemzet, Hungary’s top newspaper (the article was on the front page). We have to say, the University of Szeged, Barb’s host and now the top university in Hungary, is an exemplar of what higher education can do to improve outcomes for students! (Here is the plenary she gave at Szeged for the European University Alliance for Global Health.) And here are part 1 and part 2 of an interview with Raluca Ion of the popular Romanian online magazine Republica.  

“Why I got a PhD at age 61”

Speaking of Hungary, here’s a wonderful story in Nature of Zoltán Kócsi, an Australian originally from Hungary who decided, at age 53, to change his life and become a part-time doctoral student in biology, receiving his doctorate nearly a decade later at age 61. What an inspiring story!

Bringing ideas to mind right before sleeping to “lock them in”

We frequently allude to an idea that Terry particularly recommends. That is, in the two or three minutes right before you go to sleep, bring to mind the key idea or concept you are trying to solve or understand, to help the brain know that that’s what you want it to be solidifying during sleep. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should be doing all your studying right before sleep!) Barb mentioned this recently in a talk, and heard back from one elated participant, “JK”: 

“[Your talk] really resonated with me, particularly the topic of retrieval techniques for learning. My father, Z’L, was a great person and brilliant physician who got me through law school back in 1991. At first, I thought he was crazy when he told me not to study too much and the most important strategy was to run through the main concepts and ideas right before going to sleep. He would call it “do a run through” and “lock it in.” Thanks to this retrieval method, I graduated law school magna cum laude and did half as much studying and re-reading as the rest of my class…  I passed on the retrieval techniques to my 18-year-old son who was studying for his IB exams last year and did not re-read or highlight. He scored 43/45!”

Students Have Different Thinking Speeds. Inclusive Teaching Means Realizing That. And More!

Here’s Barb’s podcast interview with EdSurge about the advantages of slow learners. (If you consider yourself to be a slower learner, this interview is “don’t miss”!)

And here’s Barb’s podcast with Tyler Chessler: “Understanding neuroscience and cognitive psychology to maximize your investment portfolio.” 

For those concerned about misleading representations about math education in California

Facts matter a great deal in scientific research, and in laying the groundwork for education. This article provides insight into the lack of evidence behind proposed new revisions to California math curricula. Key graf: “California is actively considering the adoption of flawed and inequitable guidance on math curricula based on misleading data and inaccurate success metrics reported by San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). In 2014, SFUSD introduced a new K-12 math course sequence to address issues of inequity in math learning. The curriculum delays Algebra 1 by one year and mandates all students to take the same set of courses sequentially from 8th to 10th grade. For the past seven years, SFUSD has traveled nationwide celebrating its successes in spite of lacking evidence for such claims.”

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