Cheery Friday Greetings from Learning How to Learn! Jun 3, 2016

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Barb on Quora!

Remember, Barb’s on Quora today at 11:00 am Pacific time. (Reading answers on Quora forms one of Barb’s favorite “diffuse mode” pastimes) Go here to post questions for her!

MOOCs of the Week!

If you join the Global Translation Community to help translate Coursera courses, you will be lucky enough to meet the fantastically knowledgeable Italian coordinators Marta and Aldo. Aldo, who has a lot of experience with MOOCs, was kind enough to recommend his all-time favorite MOOCs, which he recommends to pretty much everyone he meets online and in real life. These are, (besides our own Learning How to Learn, of course!), the edX courses Science of Stress Management and the Science of Happiness. Aldo notes “I found that these three courses have influenced me deeply, as a father, a person and a life long learner.” Aldo also recommends How To Learn Math, from Stanford Lagunita, as one that fosters well reasoned attitudes and concepts which find application in pretty much any field.

Help Out a Professor Who Wants to Know Whether Learning How to Learn is Useful

Learning How to Learner David Linn is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at a community college in Tennessee. He teaches Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT, Advanced EMT, and Paramedics), and finds that his students enjoy the hands-on components of what he teaches, but have more trouble when it comes to the book-learning portions. Basically, it seems that many students enter the program without appropriate study skills to be successful. David feels that Learning How to Learn seems to offer an opportunity to gain additional, free online support. He would like to know your thoughts about whether Learning How to Learn has been helpful for you. He asks: “I would like to hear about your educational journey so I can adequately assess this format for my class. Please provide honest feedback.”

If you would like to share your experiences and thoughts in a way that might be helpful for David, please post in the discussion forum here.

Reading with intention can change your life

Here’s an excellent article in Quartz about more effective ways to remember and use what you read: “Reading with intention can change your life” (Hat tip Learning How to Learner Ng Yeong Jye on the discussion forums, via Senior Mentor Linda Walker.)

A Great Animated Summary of Focus and Diffuse Modes

Learner Nathan Lozeron has made a phenomenal short animated video based on the course supplemental book A Mind for Numbers to help you understand focused and diffuse modes. We love Nathan’s work—you may even wish to subscribe to his free productivity newsletter.

Our Unusual Recommendation for the Week

Research has shown that writing your notes by hand instead of typing them helps you learn better. So we have to tell you about the way Barb likes to be productive in her work. She uses Palomino Blackwing Pencils for her note taking. These pencils have the most extraordinary feel of any pencil she’s ever used. Once past the initial sharpening with a standard pencil sharpener, (vertical is best) she uses a cheap plastic Staedtler manual pencil sharpener, which she sets right beside her whenever she is writing.

In the evening, before Barb goes to sleep, she uses her wonderful Blackwing pencil to write a brief list of the main things she’d like to accomplish the next day. Writing the “Day” task list the evening before helps her set it in mind to actually accomplish what she wants to accomplish. (She prefers quadrille ruled engineering pads for her lists and doodles.)

When Barb gets up in the morning, she looks over her Day list, and then sets out a little mini-list of three or four mini-tasks on a small Now list on a different part of the same page as the Day list. Using her wonderful pencil, she gets to cross off each of those smaller tasks as she does them. It feels great! As she gradually finishes the items on the bigger Day list, she crosses them off there, too. She usually don’t finish all the items on the Day list, but she makes a lot of progress this way. Barb usually tries to get at least one Pomodoro in early on her toughest task, to “eat her frogs first.”

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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