Archive for 'Learning'
3 Quick Tips on Becoming a Successful Learner
Posted on 10. Sep, 2009 by Koichi.
I found this image in a great blog post that I was reading, and it really struck a chord. How about you? You certainly aren’t one of the 99%, right?
In all before-and-after success stories, there’s one thing that they didn’t tell you about: perseverance. Every one of these people had to work hard to be successful, and even though they make it look easy, it wasn’t! Nothing is as easy as we want it to be, but in the end, if you try hard and take the leap you will make it. Then you will be the one to make it look simple. Today, let’s look at three things you can do to increase your learning potential and be one of these success stories. (more…)
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Take eduFire Classes on Apple’s new Tablet
Posted on 13. Aug, 2009 by Koichi.
Here at eduFire, every single one of us (except for a couple of traitorous interns) are Apple lovers. Everywhere you look you’ll see Apple products. iPhones, Macbook Pros, Mac Minis, and more. Now, for the first time ever, a brand spankin’ new Apple tablet… well, in our poorly photoshopped dreams, anyways. But you knew that right after looking at the picture, right? (more…)
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Effective Learning – Tips for Effective Learning
Posted on 13. Feb, 2009 by jon.
Effective Learning – Tips for Effective Learning.
Great tips for learning from About.com. A few samples:
-Memory Improvement Basics (Maybe they were talking about Marco’s class!)
-Learn in Multiple Ways
-Teach What You’ve Learned to Another Person
It’s true that the most important thing to learn is to “learn how to learn” and hopefully this article is useful in that regard!
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Sugata Mitra: Can kids teach themselves?
Posted on 11. Jan, 2009 by jon.
If you doubt the power of technology in education (highly unlikely if you’re ready this blog!) then watch this video:
Mind-blowing to think what could happen if we properly harness all the fantastic stuff we’re creating and bring it to the world.
(Thanks to Veer and Kareem for the tip.)
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5 Necessary Steps Towards Global Intelligence
Posted on 08. Jan, 2009 by jon.
Was very encouraged by the response to the blog post on Global Intelligence earlier this week (already in the Top 50 on Google for the phrase!). Wanted to follow up with some thoughts on what things are currently lacking for this vision to get closer to reality. In other words, what’s need to get us to a true Global Intelligence System (GIS…I kind of like the sound of that!). Here’s a start. If you have more thoughts please add them in the comments:
#1: Much better filters for content – There just aren’t that many great content filters out there right now (and I mean filters in the “tastemaker” sense of the word rather than the “restrict access” sense of the word). Sites like Digg and Reddit are *way* better than what we used to have but there’s still a lot to be done in this area. For example, I recently came across the excellent videos from the Business Innovation Factory. They’re kind of like a hybrid of Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast and the TED videos. I love ‘em. Which makes sense because I love ETL and have listened to almost every podcast and I’ve probably watched 100+ TED videos.
So why is that I’m only now discovering the Business Innovation Factory stuff? It’s because there’s not a great filter out there for me to discover them. That filter not only needs to be more all-encompassing than something like Digg (which offers a very male, very young, fairly geeky take on things) and it also has to be personalized for my tastes.
People are working on this right now but we still have a long ways to go here.
#2: Connections between disparate networks – I spent a fair amount of time in 2008 learning about nutrition. There are a number of different forums and social networks that are focused on the subject. However, there’s very little that connects these together. Hence, I’m hesitant to invest myself fully into supply my knowledge to any one network because the only people who will benefit from it are the people on that network.
This *is* starting to change. Some examples of companies that are helping to push this change forward including Disqus (which we just rolled out for our blog comments), Ning (which at least allows common authentication across all of its social nets) and Facebook (Facebook Connect could help significantly with this problem).
The silo approach that networks have historically operated with is a huge barrier to true sharing of global intelligence. And I say that knowing full well that eduFire is still predominantly a silo (something we’re intending to improve upon this year).
#3: Easier publishing tools – I think we made a major step forward in this year in the last couple of years. Leading the charge were micro-blogging platforms like Tumblr and Twitter, social networks with easy publishing capabilities like Facebook and Ning and video sharing platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler. It’s getting really easy to share information.
The next major leap forward will be the increased ability for “set it and forget it” information sharing. For example, if I’m giving a talk at a university it needs to be incredibly easy for me to have that talk recorded, uploaded to the Web, tagged appropriately, RSS-ified, etc. Sites like UStream.tv are doing some very cool things in this area. But there’s still too much work involved. As it gets more simple you’ll see an absolute explosion in content.
Of course with the explosion in content the question naturally arises “Won’t we be overwhelmed with all this content?” I think that question is best answered by #1 above (better filters). As long as the filters are high-quality it doesn’t really matter how much content is created. I’ll only see what’s best-suited for me at any given moment.
#4: Better publishing hardware (for audio and video) – Publishing tools only go so far. If the hardware blows, the content that they generate is going to be lackluster. Look at webcams…most webcams end up generating video of people that would suggest to the uninformed observer that dwell in a cave somewhere. The video is grainy, the lighting is bad…and that’s if you know what you are doing.
As with the other items, there are some cool things happening right now. Just about every video blogger I know seems to be talking about the new HD Flip cameras. I’ve also heard of some good audio recording devices for the iPhone. But we’re not quite there yet. We’ve come a long way in the last 3 years and that’s in large part due to the stellar success of YouTube and the relative success of podcasting.
#5 – A different mindset – This really has nothing to do with technology. It’s all about our individual approach to sharing information and knowledge with the world. Too many people (myself included) are still too wrapped up in hoarding knowledge. There’s still too much of the mentality that I need to keep what I know to myself lest you learn from it and benefit. This is called scarcity mentality.
But look at two stunning examples of what happens when you take an abundance mentality: TED and 37Signals. A few years ago I blogged that I hoped TED would be made available to the world. A couple of days later I was surprised to see an email in my inbox from Chris Anderson, TED’s curator, letting me know that something very cool was in the works. Indeed it was. By sharing all of the TED content for free on the Web not only have they helped educate and inspire millions, they’ve also done more for their brand than anything else they could do. Three years ago, TED was relatively unknown outside of certain circles. Now it’s rare that I bump into a young professional type who hasn’t heard of TED.
37Signals is another great example. Sure they’re predominantly a software company that makes killer products. But they’re also one of the best examples of an abundance mentality out there. By blogging openly about their products, methodologies, etc., they’ve built up a legion of fans. Their book Getting Real has inspired many entrepreneurs (while have the nice ancillary benefit of getting a lot of revenue for their company) and their recent live events have been a big hit. Sure, they could have been very covert in their approach to software development but they chose not to. And not only did we all benefit, so did they.
OK, this post is getting on the long-ish side so I’ll stop there but I’d love to hear any thoughts that you might have. What other things are necessary for us to move towards a Global Intelligence System? Please post in the comments!
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Global Intelligence
Posted on 05. Jan, 2009 by jon.
I’ve been pumped to write about this for a while because I think it’s one of the most important trends that’s happening right now. Perhaps the most important trend. I don’t say that lightly either. We’re on the verge of something that’s incredibly powerful and the acceleration of this trend has become really apparent in the last couple of years.
What do I mean by Global Intelligence?
A bunch of people have written about this before and I think everyone has their own definition. I probably started thinking about it a lot right around the time I saw this video:
For me Global Intelligence means the following:
#1 – An interconnected world where when one person gets smarter, we all get smarter. I use “all” loosely here as at this stage of our development it doesn’t mean everyone. It more likely refers to a small portion of society that is digitally connected and actually seeking out information and knowledge. Perhaps that’s about 1% of the world’s population. Maybe slightly higher.
In a world of true Global Intelligence there is a tremendous multiplier effect. Think back 20 years ago. Let’s say that I was studying nutrition and decided to write a book on the subject. First of all, the likelihood that I would even get published was very, very small. If I did manage to get published the total number of people who would read what I wrote would also likely be much smaller than it would be today. So the multiplier effect of my learning would be somewhat tiny, especially in the aggregate.
Fast forward to today. First of all, if I’m studying nutrition I don’t need anyone’s permission to share my knowledge with the world. I simply create a blog or a YouTube channel or whatever and start getting my wisdom out. This has created an explosion in knowledge/content all along the “tail”. And if my work is really good? Well the audience that consumes it is going to be much larger than it would have been in the past.
#2 – The ability for people to get more knowledge out of their head and onto the Internet. Twitter has been fascinating to watch over the last couple of years for this reason. Think back to a decade ago. Getting the knowledge in your brain on to the Web was actually pretty tough. Then along came blogging tools and there was an exponential increase in the amount of knowledge available online. However, blogging was still something that required a fair amount of effort.
Along came YouTube and now people had the opportunity to share their knowledge via video in a much easier way. So you had an explosion in video knowledge transfer, tons of video tutorial sites and an exponential increase in video blogging. Very powerful stuff.
Then came Twitter. Twitter has two distinct components. The “Just has a cup of coffee and preparing for the workday” type of tweet is moderately useful in term of social connectedness, personal expression, etc. However the much more powerful part of Twitter is what’s commonly characterized as the micro-blogging component. It’s essentially a much easier way to get knowledge out of your head and on to the Web than we’ve ever had before.
I installed the most excellent application RescueTime this fall and I noticed something very interesting in my logs. I spend almost as much time searching Twitter as I do searching Google for information. That astounded me. The reason is that a lot of the information on Twitter is very different from what I would find on the Web. For example, if I’m looking for what people are saying about eduFire or another online education start-up I’m more likely to get timely and intimate feedback from someone’s tweet than from their blog post.
This is a huge trend. A while back I wrote a blog post here where I asked our readers how much of the world’s collective knowledge is available on the Web. The answers were interesting and most people tended to agree that a very small percentage of our individual knowledge is available collectively. What tools like Twitter have done is increase that percentage by some factor. Time will tell whether it’s by a small amount or a large one but my guess is that it will be larger than most people think.
#3 – Connection of knowledge seekers with knowledge providers. This is the third component of Global Intelligence. If I have a question (and we *all* ask ourselves hundreds or thousands of questions on a daily basis) there’s almost certainly someone in the world who has an answer. The difficulty is in connecting to that person or that knowledge. Search engines have helped dramatically with this. Social networks are also helping. However, we still have a long way to go.
As friction reduces in this area there is going to be an increasingly realization on the part of most people that they can turn to the Global Intelligence when they have a question rather than using many of the inefficient methods they have used in the past. As they do that you’ll see markets emerge for Global Intelligence and you’ll see much better tools for search and discovery than you see today.
So I’ll leave it at that for now. We’re hardly on an unimpeded path towards Global Intelligence as there are a good number of counter-balancing factors including spam, information overload, the digital divide and proprietary data stores. I’ll address those in a future blog post. But, as I mentioned in our year-end blog post, I am really encouraged about where we’re heading right now and how far things have come in just the last couple of years. It’s going to be fun for all us here at eduFire to play a role in pushing us further down this road.
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39 Free Japanese Courses You Can Sign Up For Right Now!
Posted on 04. Dec, 2008 by Koichi.
Right now, eduFire has a ton of Japanese classes available to the world. The best part? Right now they are free. The earlier you get in on it, the more you can start learning. I’ve made a list, organized by date and level, to help you find the courses that are right for you. More are being added, so definitely take a look at the recently added classes page to find more (another classes in other subjects too!). Here’s that big list I promised you: (more…)
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TeachStreet Expands to the Bay Area
Posted on 19. Nov, 2008 by Koichi.
Our friends over at TeachStreet are probably celebrating today. They’ve just announced their expansion into the Bay Area, and added over 65,000 classes, coaches, and experts to their already robust database. That’s a big number! Congratulations, TeachStreet!
So why do we love TeachStreet so much? I feel like TeachStreet and eduFire have similar goals (to change the way people think about education). We go about accomplishing these goal in different ways, which is what I think makes us such a great pair! TeachStreet offers tools to teachers and students to help them connect. What makes them different from us is that they like to do things in person. If you want to find a class on Japanese, Yoga, Photoshop, or anything else, TeachStreet helps you find someone in your local area to teach it to you. TeachStreet provides a great, free service, and you should definitely check it out if you live in the San Fransisco, Portland, or Seattle areas.
Did you know that you can add a TeachStreet link on your eduFire profile? If you edit your profile, it’s one of the URL options that’s listed there. If you’re a tutor, and you live in one of the areas listed above, definitely give TeachStreet a try if you’re looking to find some face-to-face students. If you’re a student, and you want to find yourself a live teacher, there’s that option as well, too!
Anyways, we just wanted to congratulate TeachStreet on it’s recent expansion, and all it has done to empower teachers and students! Keep up the great work!
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10 Ways to Hack Your Next Exam
Posted on 07. Sep, 2008 by reg.
For many people Fall means exam time. Whether it’s a standardized test to get you into grad school or college or simply a mid-term exam, it seems that once the leaves start to turn it means that it’s time to turn to the books. Some enjoy the challenge. Others dread the anxiety. Everyone wants to know how they can do better.
I’ve spent thousands of hours teaching in my life. A good chunk of that time has been focused on helping to prepare people for various exams including the SAT, the ACT and the GMAT (while working for Kaplan) and for various technology exams while working at a Microsoft training center. In addition over the years I’ve taken each of those exams as well as the PSAT, the LSAT, the CMA and Level One of the CFA. I’d like to share the top 10 “hacks” that I’ve learned over the years and taught to others in the hope that they might be helpful to you.
Hack #1 – Surround yourself with people who expect to score well. In my experience nothing will give you a better chance to score well then surrounding yourself with other people who expect to score well. Life works this way in general (the more successful people you surround yourself with, the more likely you are to succeed) but for some reason people forget about this when it comes to test-taking. If you’re looking to score 170+ on the LSAT you want to be hanging out and studying with others who are looking to do likewise. You’ll learn tips from them and be challenged as you study together in a way that you simply won’t be with people who have more humble expectations. And now with the Web it’s easier than ever to connect with people who have similar lofty aims.
Hack #2 – Block your study time. Almost all exams are timed. Yet for some reason most people they don’t time their studies. Blocking your study time serves two purposes. First, it puts you in more realistic exam conditions to what you’ll experience on Test Day. Second, it’s simply more productive. In Tony Schwartz’s excellent book The Power of Full Engagement he recommends breaks every 90-120 minutes:
The body, if you listen to it, asks you for a break every 90-120 minutes. We override that rhythm at our peril. If people are operating effectively and are following the natural demand of the body, it pays for them to take a form of recovery every 90-120 minutes.
Use a timer and block your study time and not only will it be more enjoyable, it’ll be way more effective.
Hack #3 – Research your study materials carefully. I’m shocked at how many people use crappy study material to prepare for their exam. You’re likely going to invest dozens or even hundreds of hours studying. Why would you not spend at least a few hours planning and researching your approach and materials? Sadly, many people find themselves wandering the isles at a Barnes & Noble and end up grabbing the book that “looks good”. Don’t do that. Go to Amazon and read the reviews. Talk to your friends who’ve taken the exam (preferably the ones who have scored very well!). Frequent discussion boards for your exam and ask questions there. And if you end up taking a test prep class grill your instructor about the best study materials (if he or she can’t give you intelligent advice you may want to switch to another class!). The time you spend upfront will be well worth it!
Hack #4 – Teach someone else. This is perhaps the most underutilized form of studying which is a shame because it’s one of the most effective. Perhaps the most effective. You’ve heard the adage that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else and that’s definitely true for test prep. I recently read the excellent book Disrupting Class which contained a great story about someone who discovered this to be true:
Dan recounted to us that as he began to teach accounting, “All of a sudden, I understood it! I had grunted through all those years as a student by sheer guts and willpower, memorizing all the rules. But I never understood why we had to do all of those things. As soon as I had to prepare for class and teach it, I understood it!”
The ideal is to find someone who’s preparing for the same exam and who hasn’t studied very much yet or is not expecting to score very high. Offer to tutor them for free. It’s one of the best ways to reinforce your knowledge of the material!
Hack #5 – Tuck studying into the cracks of your day. We’re all busy but most of us have little gaps here and there throughout the day where studying is possible. Over the course of a day all those gaps add up. Find creative ways to study during those gaps. For instance, preparing flashcards that you can put in your backpack is a great idea. Then the next time you’re in line somewhere break them out and do a quick study session.
Audio can be another great way to maximize your study time. There are audio learning materials available for many exams and even if there aren’t you certainly can create your own. Ideally you can get these onto your iPod or iPhone and listen while you’re in the car, at the gym, etc. I used this hack a lot when preparing for my CMA exams and it was amazing how much studying I was able to do without taking any extra time out of my day.
Hack #6 – Become an expert in the details of the exam itself. Over the years I taught many people who spent lots of time preparing for the exam without having much of an understanding about how the actual exam scoring and timing would go. Big mistake. If you’re going to do anything to prepare the first thing should be to know how the exam is administered. Is it pencil and paper? Computer adaptive? How long is each section? How does the scoring work? You should know the exam so well that you could write a blog post describing all the details that is completely accurate. All of that information is (usually) publicly available so there’s really no excuse for not understanding how the exam is constructed. This hack alone will mean a big difference between scoring well and scoring poorly.
Hack #7 – Utilize The Million Dollar Proofreader Hack. This one can be very effective, especially if you practice it ahead of time. If you’re taking a traditional exam (this doesn’t work as well for computer adaptive exams although you can adapt it), try this once you’ve completed all of the questions. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. When you open them pretend like you are looking at someone else’s exam. Now pretend that you’ve been given a task. For every mistake you can find on that person’s exam between now and when time is up, you’ll be given one million dollars. Go back in and dissect every question as if there were huge stakes on the line (given how much your score can impact your future, there probably are!). In almost every case you’ll find at least one mistake and often many more!
Most people simply get through the questions and stop and wait aimlessly for time to be called. That’s a big mistake. Don’t be like them. Go after those millions.
Hack #8 – Do dry runs. Here’s a secret borrowed from Olympic athletes. Do at least a couple dry runs before your big exam simulating the actual conditions of the exam as closely as possible. If you know your exam is going to be at 9 AM on a Saturday morning then starting a few weeks before do a practice exam on Saturday mornings at 9 AM. This will get your body and mind conditioned properly for the test and you’ll also find out what works (e.g., a good workout the night before) and what doesn’t (e.g., partying until 3 AM the night before) in terms of being ready to go.
For your dry runs try as hard as possible to simulate the conditions of your exam. If your exam is going to be on a computer do your practice exams on a computer. Try to do the timing the same as it will be for the actual exam. Basically you want to set it up so that when you walk into the real exam you trick your body and mind into saying “Hey, I’ve been here before. It wasn’t that bad.”
Hack #9 – Get a tutor. Why a tutor? Simply put it’s the most efficient way of being taught. If you sit in a class with a lot of people you’re likely only spending a fraction of your time learning stuff that’s highly relevant to you. With a good tutor you should be spending almost all of your time on challenging questions and problem areas specific to you. Classes aren’t bad per se but if you really want to hack your exam and get a top score an individual tutor might be a better route to go.
Places like Kaplan and Princeton Review provide private tutoring face-to-face. If you want online tutoring you can find it here and on an increasing number of other websites. craigslist is also a great place to find tutors. It’s amazing how many smart people hang out in the “Tutoring & Lessons” category there!
Hack #10 – Write the exam. This is probably the most advanced of the hacks. And it’s not for everyone. But if you’re looking to get that killer score that will get you into Harvard Law or Stanford undergrad then this is something you should definitely try. Here’s what you do…sit down and pretend you’ve just been given a job by one of the testing companies to write 50 questions for the next year’s exam (you’ll want to do this after you’ve done a number of problems so you’re familiar with the question types, structures, etc.).
By forcing yourself to write really good questions (and importantly, provide really good answer choices) your brain will work in a different way. You’ll start to lay “traps” for the prospective test-taker such as an incorrect answer choice that would be correct if a step in the problem were skipped. By writing questions in this fashion you’re going to be much less likely to fall into those same traps on test day. Writing questions like this can take a fair amount of time and mental energy but it’s an elite form of test prep that will give you an extra edge over the competition.
I hope you’ve enjoyed 10 Ways to Hack Your Next Exam. If you have other strategies for prepping for a test please post in the comments!
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How to Change the Way Kids Learn
Posted on 09. Aug, 2008 by reg.
Interesting article from Clayton Christensen and my friend Michael Horn:
How to Change the Way Kids Learn
This in particular was very interesting to me:
A group of 50 Minnesota teachers laid off from rural schools because of declining enrollments banded together in 2004 to start an online charter school called Blue Sky. They each have the same number of students as they did before (150), but the teachers describe their bond with each student as far stronger and more nuanced. The students call or e-mail at all hours because they are taking courses at all hours. Online, each student is an individual. Even children who were formerly behavior problems in school seem to have shaped up. It’s hard to be a behavior problem in a class of one.
Bonus points (and maybe a T-shirt) for anyone who offers up in the comments the best answer for how that directly relates to this.
(Props to Sundeep for the tip.)
