Raising Critical Thinkers

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent’s Guide to Growing Wise Kids in the Digital Age, by Julie Bogart.  As one endorser notes: “Julie Bogart is a brilliant educator who’s written a wonderful book that shows us how to nurture children’s ability to think critically and carefully. Each chapter offers dozens of questions, lessons, and exercises for helping learners understand their biases, evaluate the sources from which they get information, and consider other perspectives. These tools can enable students from kindergarten through high school to experience the joys of discovery and insight, and they can help young people grow into compassionate adults who want to make a positive contribution to their world. Read this book and use it. Your children and students will thank you, and you’ll learn a lot about yourself, too!”  

And here’s an excerpt from Barb’s foreword:

“Julie approaches critical thinking in an utterly novel way. Like a master poker player, she turns her gaze not only toward the cards being dealt, but also inward to the body’s physical ‘tells’ in reaction to those cards… these bodily reactions and thought patterns can serve as a guide for digging deeper and being more honest, both with those you are interacting with and yourself. It’s this self-awareness that supports you in guiding your children as well.

“As Julie notes, ‘Knowing how to develop well-formed opinions in spite of prejudice and bias is one of the goals of education (and this book).’  Read on, for a wonderfully insightful guide to steering yourself, and the children you love, toward a life of considered, thoughtful insight.

Raising Critical Thinkers is an instant classic.  Highly recommended! Also good for audio.

Using neuroscience to help engineers learn most effectively

Join Barb in this free, 1-hour technical webinar with the Engineering Institute of Technology (EIT), Learning How to Learn for Engineering Professionals, as she shares the most useful, practical insights from research in learning.  (It’s a chance to see Barb live!)

The Engineering Institute of Technology (EIT) is an education provider specializing in engineering. It delivers a range of live online industry-oriented engineering courses, utilizing remote and virtual labs, to students from over 140 countries around the world. 

“Cohorts” from Class Central! (A Cohort on TOEFL Speaking Practice is starting now!)

“Cohorts” is a new buzzword in the online world.  They are study groups that can be led by a peer, a subject matter expert, or even the instructor of the course itself—they add a social layer to online courses. Here is one of the very best of cohorts—Cohorts: Social Learning for Open Courses.  Just starting (you can still join!) is  TOEFL Speaking Practice.  Enjoy!

Nelson’s Everest Memory Masterclass is on sale for Black Friday (25% off)! It’ll be his last cohort for the year, so register now!

Our friend, now 5-time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis is back with his master class on the basics of memory techniques. From how to remember where you put your keys and people’s names and faces, to remembering numbers, speeches, and passwords, Nelson’s class has it all! There’s also a ton of bonus content included: interviews with top memory athletes and experts, Q&A sessions, championship training resources, templates, and more.  Nelson is not only a memory expert—he is also one of the greatest of online teachers. So if you’re looking to improve your memory, this is the upbeat, practically useful course to take.  Highly recommended!  And don’t miss Nelson’s books:

• Remember It! The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget 
• Memory Superpowers!: An Adventurous Guide to Remembering What You Don’t Want to Forget (10 – 14-year-olds)

Stanford Online High School

We are often asked what high school represents the best of modern education.  Our conclusion? Stanford Online High School.  We recently had the chance to interview a Stanford OHS student, and were stunned at her overview of the school, which she loves so much that she is considering taking a “gap year” of extra learning.  “It’s challenging, and makes you excited to learn.  I love how everybody else is also excited to learn!  I got to take ‘Methodology of Science’ in 9th grade, “History & Philosophy of Science” in 10th grade, ‘Democracy, Freedom, and the Rule of Law’ in 11th, and now ‘Critical Reading & Argumentation’ along with ‘Advanced Topics in Philosophy.’”

When you have a school that makes kids excited about those kinds of topics, that school is doing something very right.  Note that Stanford OHS uses careful assessment into courses by their readiness, not solely by their age or grade level—a mastery learning approach. Applications are opening, so if this is the kind of education you want for your 7th through 12th grader, you might check this school out.

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

Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC

The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)

The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)

The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers

And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents.