Friday, January 8th, 2010
Scribble while learning - it will help you to remember
A study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology suggests that scribbling helps our overloaded brains to remember details. In this study people who were listening to a dull phone message while doodling were able to recall 29% more than the non-doodling group.
Friday, January 8th, 2010
Winter is good for learning
The days may be cold and short (with lots of snow), but new research states that colder months are good for your brain. A study form Tromso University in Norway found that people’s reaction times, memory and attention span all improve in the winter. Take advantage and catch up on your learning and reading…
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Dunce’s corner banned - but how did it all start? What’s the origin of the dunce cap?
So placing pupils in Dunce’s corner could breach a pupil’s human rights, say councils. This has been used as a punishment in schools since Victorian times. But the original purpose behind ‘Dunces’ was to help pupil to learn better.
The dunce cap can help with concentration
In the 13th century, a Franciscan monk and philosopher, John Duns Scotus, developed a ‘duns cap’ to be worn by children who needed something to help them focus. Detractors of Scotus made fun of the cap. Over time the ‘dunce’s cap’ came to be associated with ‘stupid’ children, and was eventually misunderstood and used to stigmatise and make fun of such children. Most recently, when Ron Davis was working with children diagnosed as dyslexic, he discovered that asking the children to concentrate on this point was enough to allow many of them to start reading (see his book ‘The Gift of Dyslexia’). How do we know about this point? First think about this question: What do the following have in common? Dunces, wizards, saints, yogis. All (originally) knew the importance of focusing on a point above and behind the crown of the head in order to enhance their ability to concentrate and be fully aware. This point has been well known for many years. It is depicted as a halo in many pictures of Christian saints, yogis know it as the 8th chakra (which gives access to universal wisdom), and witches and wizards wore a hat which reminded them to focus on this point in order to enhance their magic powers.
In speed reading and photoreading this point of concentration is used to help to get into a better state for reading faster and understanding more. It also helps to open the peripheral vision which helps to see more text on a page.
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
100,000 words we encounter every day - evolution of reading
The speed of modern life is 2.3 words per second, or about 100,000 words a day. That is the verbiage bombarding the average (American) person in the 12 hours they are typically awake and ‘consuming’ information, according to a new study ‘How Much Information?’ by the University of California, San Diego.
The average American consumes 100,000 words, or about 34 gigabytes of information, every day
More great insights from the study:
- Americans read less print media as an overall percentage of their information consumption, but they’re actually reading more than ever in quantity.
- From 1980 to 2008, the number of bytes we consume has increased 6 percent each year. Over 28 years, that’s a 350 percent increase.
- Video game consumption saw the biggest leap in time spent. That’s not just video games as you know them, but also games on your phone and on social media sites such as Facebook.
Evolution of reading 1960-2008
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
The words that tell the story how we live - top words of the decade
The Global Language Monitor documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon Global English. For example, English passed the 1,000,000 threshold on June 10, 2009 at 10:22 am GMT. A US web monitoring firm has declared the millionth English word to be Web 2.0, a term for the latest generation of web products and services. English gains a new word every 98 minutes (or about 14.7 new words a day).
The Top Words of 2009
1. Twitter — The ability to encapsulate human thought in 140 characters
2. Obama — The word stem transforms into scores of new words like ObamaCare
3. H1N1 — The formal (and politically correct) name for Swine Flu
4. Stimulus — The $800 billion aid package meant to help mend the US economy
5. Vampire — Vampires are very much en vogue, now the symbol of unrequited love
6. 2.0 — The 2.0 suffix is attached to the next generation of everything
7. Deficit — Lessons from history are dire warnings here
8. Hadron — Ephemeral particles subject to collision in the Large Hadron Collider
9. Healthcare — The direction of which is the subject of intense debate in the US
10. Transparency — Elusive goal for which many 21st c. governments are striving
The Top Words of the Decade, as part of its annual global survey of the English language.
The Top Words were ‘Global Warming’, 9/11, and Obama followed by Bailout, Evacuee, and Derivative; Google, Surge, Chinglish, and Tsunami followed. “Climate Change” was the top phrase, while “Heroes” was the top name; bin-Laden was No. 2.
0.2 - the time in seconds taken by the brain to identify a written word.
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
Reading Trends: Micro-summaries of books
Shortage of reading time sparks a trend of micro-summaries for people who don’t have time even to read regular summaries. I guess 24o characters could suffice to summaries almost anything as Twitter made it possible. Originally, started by Woody Allen’s famous quote “I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It involves Russia.”
A few tongue-in-cheek macro-summaries of feel-good books:
>1 How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie: Simile. Listen. Look interested. Remember people’s names. Repeat.
>2 The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle: Stop thinking about the past, stop anticipating the future. In fact, stop thinking. Now.
>3 Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson: Because they keep moving the cheese, you really need to be ready for the cheese to move. Got it?
>4 Outliers: The Story Of Success by Malcolm Gladwell: Get born at the right moment, at the right place, to the right family and then still you have to work really hard. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell is number 6 on The 100 Best Books of the Decade according to The Times
Book summary of ‘Thin slicing’ of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Outliers: The Story of Success
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
Boutique bookshops - re-found pleasures of buying books
With online ordering, high-street chain discounts, (Borders closing down), recession - the future of traditional bookshops doesn’t look great. But according to The Bookseller there is a rise of the boutique bookshops. 34 new independent bookshops were open in the UK this year. In one bookshop in Notting Hill coffee is served in china cups and literary-inspired perfumes are sold with the Austen and Tolken. Down the road, Cinephilia West has a screening room, while Phaidon’s pop-up bookshop in Piccadilly is coffee-table-book nirvana. New bread of bookshops offering everything from cosy reading room to home-made biscuits. This is a return of book-buying as an enchanting experience.
Monday, November 16th, 2009
The 100 Best Books of the Decade according to The Times
The top 10 books of the decade (The Times):
1 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)
3 Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (2004)
4 Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers trans Robert Bringhurst (2002
5 Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (2006)
6 The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (2000) Read ‘Thin slicing’ of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Outliers: The Story of Success
7 Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002)
8 Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood (2008)
9 Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
10 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003)
Check out the full list of the 100 best books of the decade by the Times
Friday, November 13th, 2009
Read only summaries, not chapters - you’ll learn more
Students learn more from summaries than entire chapters
“In a series of experiments, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University compared five-thousand-word chapters from college textbooks with one-thousand-word summaries of those chapters. The textbooks varied in subject: Russian history, African geography, macroeconomics. But the subject made no difference: in all cases, the summaries worked better. When students were given the same amount of the time with each - twenty to thirty minutes - they learned more from the summaries than they did from the chapters. This was true whether the students were tested twenty minutes after they read the material or one year later. In either case, those who read the summaries recalled more than those who read the chapters.” from Errornomics, Why we make mistakes and what we can do to avoid them by Joseph Hallinan
We’ve been saying that for some time now - just download the FREE summary of 37 Speed Reading Techniques
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
Food for thought and reading
The right diet can help with learning
Happy foods for boosting memory, learning power and concentration are bananas (excellent source of starchy carbohydrate, which encourages production of the ‘happy hormone’ serotonin), green vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, spinach and nuts and seeds (great source of magnesium, which helps the body to make serotonin). Other serotonin producing foods are sardines, foie gras and cottage cheese. Of course, chocolate is the one snack that everyone knows instinctively will give them a lift. Chocolate, especially the dark, good quality organic variety, contains high quantities of phenols, antioxidants that boost mood, and N-acylethanoloamine chemicals, which stimulate the brain to release endorphins. But chocolate is fattening, so the key is to have a piece or tow, not a whole bar. Maintaining hydration is crucial to ensure an even mood. Even small decreases in hydration levels can leave your feeling grumpy. Keep water to hand to top up fluids regularly. Based on research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry (BJP) last week.