Learn smarter, deeper, happier - a top educator's top tips

‘acquiring knowledge and skills and having them readily available from memory so that you can make sense of future problems and opportunities’.  Quote by Peter Brown

What is learning? 

• Sounds simple but incredibly complex

• Brain contains 86 Billion neurons

• Change the neural pathways

• 90% of brain processing is subconscious

• 20-60% of energy

• K computer – 4 X faster but $10,000,000 running costs

• Individual – genetic, experience

• Never know what someone has really learnt

• If only we could download – maybe one day

• Until then – improve processes

• Scared to talk about it

• Old fashioned

• Emphasis on grades – UK vs Estonia

• My learning journey

• Society

• Govt

• School

• Teachers

• The system – another brick in the wall 

• Learn better – change the world

Downloadable materials

• Chart - Acquire / Make Meaning / Transfer

• Pyramid - Unconscious incompetence to Unconscious competence > like riding a bike

• Spend 5 minutes freewriting

  • Pen and paper

  • Any learning experience – woodworking to Japanese

  • 2 minutes - Negative experience

  • 2 minutes - Positive experience

  • 1 minute reflecting on the difference

  • Take insights from the positive

  
  

Shallow vs deep

Shallow

• Why am I learning this?

• How does this connect to my life?

• How will I use this?

• I am just being made to do this

• To learn

• Who cares?

Deep

• I can understand why this matters

• This is relevant to me

• I can apply this

• I can see how this connects to other things

• To know

• I care

Happy learning

• You’re motivated  to do it

• You’re prepared to put up with the tough bits – particularly the start

• You understand your learning journey

• You have some fun

• You gain satisfaction

• You feel inspired to know more

• You feel more confident

• You feel passionate

• You move forward

• You’re a better human

• Playful mind set

• Deconstruct/reconstruct

• Insights

• Patterns

• Autonomous

• Prepared to Fail

• Experimentation

• Self aware

• Open to Experience

• Intrinsic Motivation

• Self discipline

• Self Acceptance

• Flexible

Stages

• Preparing to learn

  • Motivation

  • Benefits

• Engaging in learning

  • Planning

  • Doing

• Applying your learning

  • Learning by doing

  • Real world

• Reflect

  • Embedding

  • Recalling

• Strengthening your learning

  • Moving forward

  • The power of collaboration

PEARS Tips

• Before most activities we prepare – gym, sport, cooking, so why  not learning

• Getting brain ready to learn

• Research backed

• If you don’t prep – less likely to commit

• The importance of motivation and goal setting

• Personal contract

‘student’s attention span improved immediately after the session and showed significant lasting improvements in the overall performance after a 4-month training course’. Yal

• The Priming Effect

• Gets the brain moving

• Puzzles, Word games, Doodles

• Most useful for creativity, problem solving, making connections

• Physical as well

Other ideas

• Stand up, shut up your eyes – imagine

• Left hand, right hand drawing

• Move your body

• Try it

• 35% +

• Self aware

• Your personality

• Context of your own experience

• Believe it’s worth while

• Believe that you can do it

• Fits in with your ambitions, aspirations

• Understand why its relevant to you

• Prepared to work and not do other things

• If it doesn’t matter to you then you won’t learn it long-term

• Understand yourself

• Set some goals

• Make a contract with yourself

• Simple, informal, personal

Learning goals – some primer questions

• Why do you want to learn?

• What do you want to learn?

• What is your general experience of learning?

• What is your experience of learning similar to this subject?

• What do you do well in learning?

• What do you do badly?

• What have you learnt that could help e.g work at a regular time each day?

• What support could you get to help you e.g You Tube, friends?

• What resources do you have – time, space, equipment etc ?

• When do you learn best?

• What is your deadline?

• What time can I allocate to this learning?

• Where will I do my learning?

• When will I do my learning?

• What might stop me achieving my goals

• If I work backwards from success, what are all the parts that need to fall into place

• Who has learnt this successfully and what can I learn from them

Motivation statement

• I want to learn this because

• If I complete this, these are the benefits

• I will complete by x date

• I will commit this many hours

• I will work at these times

• I will work to this timeline

• I will check in on these dates

• I will tell these people about what I’m doing

• I will overcome difficulties by

• I will reward myself in this way

• Multiple ways fires the brain up

• Variety is key

  • Space

  • Location

  • Time

  • Approach

  • Process

  • Media

  • Subject

Spacing

• Distributed practice – deliberate distraction -

• Temporal break – allows mind to recover e.g fartlek in running – just as fast HIIT   

• Short spaced out study sessions vs cramming (rote)

• Mix up topics to improve learning

• History example – different countries across same period

• Whereas blocked learn about same country across time

• Replicates real life – multi disciplinary –

• Not just an excuse to stop and move on

• Increases interference

• Uses different parts of brain

• Forced disruption makes brain more agile – just like basketball

• Discriminative contrast – males you see differences and understand them better

• Helps you develop new strategies, make connections – see a theme and apply to another discipline e.g USP in marketing could be applied to the Brexit slogan – take back control or make America great again 

• Break into text rewrite in own words

• Deconstruct/reconstruct

• Practice

• Repetition

• Connection

• Part of whole – mini to maxi – unconscious

• A Chunking activity involves breaking down a difficult text into more manageable pieces and having students rewrite these “chunks” in their own words. ... Chunking helps students identify key words and ideas, develops their ability to paraphrase, and makes it easier for them to organize and synthesize information

• Insights not information

• Useful not just recording

• Recall and apply

  • Summarise key concepts

  • Review

  • Apply to real life

  • Reflect

Hand writing

• Retain and digest material better

• ‘significantly outperformed’

• Slower (less word count) but better 22 vs 33

• Verbatim less engaged

• Two studies by Princeton ‘laptops are harming academic performance’ Pam Mueller

• ‘those who took notes by hand could rephrase what they heard into their own words, and appeared to digest and think through the material in a more engaged way’ Wall Street Journal

There are four stages to good note taking:

1. Note taking

2. Note making

3. Note interacting

4. Note reflecting

Note making vs note taking

• Better your notes, the better you learn

• Listen and take notes in your own words.

• Leave spaces and lines between main ideas so you can revisit them later and add information.

• Develop a consistent system of abbreviations and symbols to save time.

• Write in phrases, not complete sentences.

• Learn to pull out important information and ignore trivial information.

• Take what you’ve learnt and make it useful

• Memory context dependent – beyond classroom

• Reflect on relevance and how it will apply. E.g. Maths, history 

• Embed relevance when learning – good teaching will always show how learning might be applied

• Find opportunities to apply – design ,questioning, language

• Study ideas, be curious and critical

• Make a habit of connecting to best practice, see our external resource: FSC CONNECT Explainer - Nick from Nikkei

• Habits

• Important short chunks – or gets lost

• Key moments

• Summarise, mind map, quiz yourself

• Chunking and notes

• The rate of forgetting is minimised if students interact (re-read/discuss/write/engage) with their notes within 24 hours. A second repetition for a shorter period of time within a day brings recall back up to 100%. A third repetition within a week for an even shorter time brings recall back to 100%.

Remembering - Complex process

• Record – worthy of keeping

• Remember – lodge in brain

• Retain – decide worth keeping

• Trigger – something will bring it to mind 

• Recall – remember that you know it

• Retrieve – bring it back to consciousness

• Apply – use it in the right way

• Adapt – make more relevant

• Implant put into Deep storage

Memorising with meaning

• Your brain wants to retain information that is useful to you and purge information that is not

• It’s good to forget

• Not failure – natural, adaptive – neuro science

• We haven’t learnt properly

• Not important enough to warrant remembering

• Not applied quickly and regularly enough to become habit

• Importance failing

• Relearning takes less time

• Learn with others, get involved with other people

• Share PEARS

• Teach someone who knows less than you

• Quiz each other

• Be constructively critical

• Find a mentor

• Eat

• Water – 5%

• Exercise

• Sleep – 10%

• Light - 20%

• Identity 

• Mental health 

• Balance

• Motivation

• Mixing it up

• Real world

• Insights

• Reflecting

• Working with others

• Balance