Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It, by Ian Leslie. Barb has an upcoming talk for Novartis on curiosity for their Curiosity Week, (it will start with the story of the worst professor Barb ever had, and this professor’s inadvertent role in inspiring the corny video editing behind Learning How to Learn). So meanwhile, Barb couldn’t help but become more curious about curiosity.  Ian Leslie’s book is a scorcher on the topic—highly readable and beautifully researched.  Here’s a sample: “Sir Ken Robinson’s 2008 [TED] talk on educational reform—entitled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”—has now been viewed more than 4 million times. In it Robinson cites the fact that children’s scores on standard tests of creativity decline as they grow older and advance through the educational system. He concludes that children start out as curious, creative individuals but are made duller by factory-style schools that spend too much time teaching children academic facts and not enough helping them express themselves. Sir Ken clearly cares greatly about the well-being of children, and he is a superb storyteller, but his arguments about creativity, though beguilingly made, are almost entirely baseless.”

This is also a great book for audio.  Enjoy!

Five Rules to Make the Most of Your Online Learning

Here’s an article Barb wrote for The Indian Express about how to make the most of your online learning. A key point: “Do not think about finishing the course! Just think about putting in the time: Good online learners use processes that involve putting a certain daily amount of time into their chosen course. (It is best, at least at first, to only do one online course at a time.) Your daily goal is always to put in the time you’ve allotted, whether it’s five minutes or five hours. This means never missing an ‘X’ on your calendar, signifying you’ve done your day’s studies.” 

Learn Faster and Remember More

We’re always fans of Farnham Street, and their comprehensive article on learning shows why.  Key graf: “The greatest enemy of learning is what you think you know. When you think you know something, learning something new means you might have to change your mind, so it’s easy to think there’s no room for new ideas. But not wanting to change your mind will keep you stuck in the same place. Overcoming our egos can be one of the big challenges of learning. Therefore, being willing to admit when you’re wrong and adjust your thinking is the thing that will help you learn the most.”

11 Teacher-Recommended Math Apps and Online Tools

This is a terrific article by Emelina Minero in Edutopia that wades through and provides many inspired recommendations for apps and the like to help kids learn math. (We would just add one of our favorites to the list: Smartick.)

Ever Wondered How to Ensure You Look Properly Professional in Your Online Synchronous Sessions?

Wonder no more, as Andrew Ishak takes you on an increasingly bizarre journey through how one professor ensures his students feel suitably at home in his carefully arranged office. [Hat tip, Mako Haruta]

MOOC description about interesting course

Here is a fascinating research paper about the development of the world class “Understanding Multiple Sclerosis” MOOC,  distributed by the University of Tasmania, which is also the creative fountain behind the phenomenal “Understanding Dementia” and “Preventing Dementia” MOOCs. [Hat tip Pat Bowden of Online Learning Success.] 

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

• Get the course recommended text, A Mind for Numbers!
• And Learning How to Learn, a book for kids and parents.
• Follow LHTL on Facebook | Join Barb on LinkedIn | Follow LHTL on Twitter