Want a way to add a little language learning to your blog or Web site - or in some cases your Facebook, iPhone, or other digital channels? Here are 7 sources for widgets that may fit the bill. (Not sure exactly what a widget is? Check out the explanation from Jim Pettiward on BBC Learning English.) Learn10 The Learn 10 widget is a "tool for building vocabulary when learning a language. Users are shown a dynamic list of 10 words from a chosen language pair. Learn10 can be positioned on social network homepages, search engines & blogs, and is available as a Google gadget which can be added to any web page. Subscription to extra features (such as sound) is an option for users. Learn10 is designed to work using the techniques of advertising: frequent exposure to a stimulus in a variety of locations." The Learn10 widget currently works for Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Welsh, English, Czech, Arabic, Korean, Polish, Dutch, Swedish, Chinese, Norwegian, Italian, French, Portuguese, Turkish, German, Hindi, and Danish. And here’s a YouTube video on how to use the Learn10 widget. Language Tools Widget The Language Tools widget from Tropical PC Solutions allows you to search multiple online dictionaries and it will also translate text into various languages. Internet Polyglot Word Widget This Internet Polyglot Word Widget widget "shows a random word in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish. You can click a speaker icon and hear audio pronunciation of this word in these languages. Click "Next" and see the next random word of the day." China 8 China 8 offers searchable dictionaries, phrases, brief lessons and photos in blog and Web site widgets for learners of Mandarin Chinese. Rockie Lingomigo Lingmigo offers blog and Web site Widgets for connecting with others that want to learn Spanish or Portuguese. Word of the Day from Language Learning The Word of the Day Widget from Language Learning is "an easy way for you to learn a new word each day, and allow all of the visitors to your site the same opportunity!" Language Learning offers widgets for Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. Word of the Day from Transparent Language Transparent Language offers one of the more comprehensive collection of Word of the Day Widgets across multiple languages. "Why learn a word a day? Simply click on any "more about this word" button below to visit the specific language. Sometimes we’re flooded with so much information that we don’t have time to digest what we learn. Word of the Day gives you 24 hours to meditate on a single word, reading it, hearing it, and seeing it used in real sentences. We figure sometimes slow and steady wins the race." Know of other widgets you think should be in this list? Be sure to comment and let Mission to Learn readers know about them. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. - Be sure to check out other language learning resources here on Mission to Learn. Related posts:5 Free Web Tools for Learning a Language Collaboratively20 Language Links from the Free Learning MonitorMore than 50 Web Widgets for Your Learning Mix

Lexiophiles has issued its annual list of Top 100 Language Blogs. Knowing that most people will probably focus on the top 20 (which, I am happy to say, includes Mission to Learn), I thought I’d take a minute to highlight some of the blogs further down the list I found interesting. 23. Self-Made Scholar. Learn Free. What can I say - I go for anything that blends "self-made" with "free" and "learn." I’ve come across Jamie Littfield’s blog before and mentioned it in the Learning Monitor, among other places. Well worth a visit. 36. Esperanto Blog Our Esperanto Blog is a series of frequently published articles about Esperanto language. Our blogger, Alex Joy, speaks and studies Esperanto and is very passionate about sharing his knowledge with our readers. Esperanto gets no respect. Maybe this blog is the answer. 46. eduFire. Live Video Learning. I’m high on video these days, and this looks like a very cool site. Notably, the current post is on Top 10 Learning Resources for the Aspiring Esperantist. 59. The Smiling Eggplant. All about Italy I like Italy. I like the name. You might want to combine this one with… 77. Verba Molant. Linguistical blog for Italian language lovers And finally… 85. Women Learning Thai … and some men too .  Expat making her way through Thai language and culture. I’m not sure if the "…and some men too " appended to the blog’s title header means the men are learning Thai or the women are learning men, but in any case, I wanted to be sure to include an eastern language. Well, enough from me. Go check out some of the Top 100 Language Blogs. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn Related posts:Top Eight E-learning BlogsFree Language Learning Resources - The Master List7 Language Learning Widget Sources

This is a guest post by Michelle Fabio. Personally, I am heartened to see  association and nonprofit online education initiatives at the top of the list. This is a great post to bookmark for future reference and share. Use the links at the bottom of the post to do that easily.  - JTC Would you know what to do if someone (or a pet!) was severely injured, had trouble breathing, or started choking in front of you? That is, do you know basic first aid or how to do Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) or use an Automated External Defibrillator (AED)? You never know when you might find yourself in emergency medical situation, which means that you should know at least basic first aid techniques. The good news is that now it’s easier than ever to learn as there are many great free online first aid courses and resources; some even give you the opportunity to become certified in CPR and AED right from the comfort of your home. Here is a list of 10 of the best free online first aid resources: 1. American Heart Association e-Learning: Lots of information on heart emergencies with basic First Aid, CPR, and AED courses (for a small fee) that can be completed anytime, anywhere; also has a Pocket First Aid & CPR iPhone application. 2. American Veterinary Medical Association Pet First Aid: Printable information on how to deal with small and large pet emergencies from poisoning and seizures to broken bones and heatstroke. 3. CPR Dude: Run by an American Red Cross CPR, AED, and First Aid instructor, this site offers lots of information presented in a fun, interactive way. 4. FirstAid4All: Comprehensive resource with information on dealing with emergencies like choking, absence of heartbeat or breathing, poisoning, sunstroke, and electric shock as well as with accidents like burns, cuts, fractures, dislocations, bruises, bleeding, and foreign objects in the eyes or ears; also provides a checklist so you can create your own first aid kit to keep handy. 5. First Aid Web: Offers free self-guiding CPR and First Aid courses with regular quizzes to chart your progress; note in order to receive certification, there is a fee. 6. Health World Online: Instructions for dealing with many different kinds of accidents and emergency situations including animal and insect bites, fainting, frostbite, hyperventilation, seizures, splinters, and more. 7. Kids Health: Great for parents, the First Aid & Safety section covers how to prevent and respond to emergencies at home, outdoors, and also away from home. 8. Mayo Clinic: Lots of information on how to deal with accidents and emergencies, including corneal scratches, chemical splashes, head trauma, snake and tick bites, and nosebleeds; also tips on making your own first aid kit. 9. University of Washington School of Medicine: Includes instruction on first aid for choking, standard CPR, hands-only CPR, CPR for children and infants, and CPR for pets; also printable instructions, videos, fun facts, and even iPhone and Android applications. 10. Waveland Fire Department: Offers guidance on CPR procedures and the Heimlich Maneuver for choking victims, including helpful diagrams and illustrations. Guest post by Michelle Fabio, About.com Guide to Law School, who also writes about online nursing classes at OnlineNursingClasses.com. Interested in guest posting on Mission to Learn? Contact us. Related posts:25 Free Online Resources and Web Apps for Lifelong LearnersMore than 100 Free Places to Learn Online - and Counting35+ Free Online Business Education Sites

Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man, that he didn’t already have.   - America A while ago I remarked upon the "alternative" MBA program that marketing guru Seth Godin had announced. Coincidentally, as I was posting recently on Henry Mintzberg’s criticisms of the traditional MBAs in To Learn, To Lead, Seth offered an update on his program that I would recommend to readers here. The quick background on Seth’s program, is that it involves a small group of people spending six months in New York with Seth to engage in a lot of reading and discussion and learn from various guest experts and field trips. But most of all, it involves spending time working on actual business projects and learning by doing. Seth’s post describes the various activities in the program along with some of the lessons he and participants have learned along the way Maybe the most important thing you’ll learn in this program is that you don’t need this program. There’s not much I’m going to tell you that’s not in my blog posts or books. What this program will do is give you the structure and support to encourage you to do what you already know. But you can do that by yourselves. (Emphasis added.) Yes, we can - in theory - but as often as not, we don’t. We hold ourselves back, put up our own barriers, fail to exercise discipline, and in general, don’t realize our own potential when it comes to learning and life. I certainly believe it is within all of us to overcome these hurdles, but… But, of course, it’s usually not a trivial matter to find, develop, create "the structure and support to encourage" us in our efforts. Traditionally, we’ve manufactured and relied upon institutions - schools, universities, training departments - to help us with this effort. But that reliance has evolved into a dependency that is a very often a poor fit for our current era. And as Seth’s example suggests, some of the institutions on which we have relied traditionally may not be up to the current task. Given the learning opportunities - and the potential to be overwhelmed, misinformed, or misled - that are now possible in a hyper-connected world, I think we increasingly need people who can play the sort of role Seth played with his program. Not purveyors of content, or traditional stand-and-deliver instructors, but curators of experience. People who can help orchestrate a context in which we realize our own potential. And perhaps more than ever, we also need to learn better how to do this for ourselves. It’s a matter of discipline, of asking why and what, of continually developing learning habits. Of learning how to tap into the networks that may be of most help to us - and to which we can add value in the process. How are you going about this in your own life and learning? Have you participated in anything akin to Seth’s MBA? Please comment and share your thoughts. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. - Please join me on the ongoing Mission to Learn. Subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page. P.S.S. - Here’s the classic scene from the Wizard of Oz in which the mysterious Oz distributes gifts to Dorothy and her gang. No related posts.

Mashable wrote about open education recently. This month’s Fast Company (not-quite-so-fast web edition not yet available as of this post) features an article on it. The venture capitalists have been circling for a while. Since it started opening major parts of its curriculum to open access via the Web in 2001, MIT OpenCourseWare has been joined by more than 200 other institutions with similar projects. Is open education starting to enter the mainstream? Adoption Curve adapted from Wikipedia. Click for original. Based purely on user numbers, you might argue that it entered the mainstream some time ago: more than 56 million users have accessed MIT’s open courseware initiative alone.  No doubt many multiples of that number have accessed the wide range of open educational resources now available across the Web. But any dotcom entrepreneur can tell you that user numbers do not necessarily equate to sustainability - a quality that tends to be favored in the mainstream. As Geoffrey Moore argued nearly two decades ago in Crossing the Chasm, there is generally a significant gap - a chasm - between the early visionaries for an innovation and the pragmatists who take it into the mainstream. The latter most definitely seek sustainability - and more often than not, a measurable return on their investment. Why does all of this matter from the standpoint of the lifelong learner? There are positives and negatives. One huge positive is clear: the open education movement as a whole has been a significant force in introducing free educational content onto the Web, and arguably, helping to keep quality levels higher than might have otherwise been the case. Having institutions like MIT, Yale, and Berkeley in the game certainly raises the stakes some. More visibility for open education and its potential role in bringing down the costs of formal education could lead to more, and more strategic, investment in open educational resources that may benefit lifelong learners. On the other hand, money always has a tendency to muddy the waters. The Fast Company article, for instance, seems to lump together such diverse efforts as the open courseware consortium (which offers conent completely free for learners), University of the People (which charges fees, albeit very reasonable ones, for participation), and Knewton (a venture-funded start-up that charges $890 for test prep courses). Each of these initiatives signals a seismic shift in the world of education, but the degree of true "openess" varies dramatically across them. How sustainable structures are built for carrying open education forward - and whether these structures represent foundations or simply new and different walls - seems now to be the core issue. That the movement has evolved to this level - and that an array of new hands are contributing to the work -  strikes me as the clearest sign that open education has crossed the chasm and is poised to become part of the mainstream educational landscape. Wherever it all ends up, the open education movement has helped spark a broad debate about the cost of education, the value of our traditional approaches to validating and accrediting education, and the role of traditional institutions like the university (which open education leader David Wiley, quoted and pictured in the Fast Company article, has said could be "irrelevant by 2020.") As this debate continues to gain ground, so too will open education. What do you think - have we crossed the chasm? Is open education entering the mainstream? Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. 11-Aug- 09 - I did not notice until this morning (via Downes) that the Open Education Conference is using "Crossing the Chasm" as its tag line this year. A coincidence, but a serendipitous one in signaling that some of the people closest to the movement sense that a major shift is occurring. See also the Chronicle article on Obama’s Great Course Giveaway referenced by Downes. P.S.S. - If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page. Related posts:Open Education Marches On At YaleThe Tragedy of Open Education? A Look at a New BlogOER - Open Educational Resources

Ever wish you were just a little bit better at remembering the things you would really like to learn? You can find plenty of memory improvement tips out there, and a whole industry has grown up around the concept of "brain training," but figuring out what’s worthwhile and what’s not can be an extremely confusing process. I won’t claim to be an expert, but I decided to go "learn about" in an effort to cut through all the confusion and come up with some practical wisdom to put to work in my own life. Having now sifted through a wide range of writings on the topic, it seems to me that improving your memory boils down to five key areas. Here are the first three: sleep, physical exercise, and stress management. Stay tuned for the next two -  diet and memory techniques - in part two of this series. Sleep If you are like me, you know from practical experience that your memory doesn’t tend to function as well when you are sleep-deprived. As it happens, a wide range of scientific studies support the idea that sleep is necessary for helping to "consolidate" memory, or at least certain types of memory. (See About Memory for a good list of studies.)  A recent MIT study brought us a significant step closer to understanding the sleep-memory connection by showing that "mice prevented from "replaying" their waking experiences while asleep do not remember them as well as mice who are able to perform this function." The bottom line: Sleep is important; get enough of it if you want to make sure your memory is functioning properly. Of course, that begs the question: what is enough? Unfortunately there is no "one-size-fits-all" answer to that question. The safest bet seems to be to aim for at least the standard 7-8 hours a night recommended for most adults and to pay enough attention to how you feel and act based on that amount of sleep to adjust up or down as needed. For more information on sleep needs from infants up to adults, I recommend an article on sleep requirements from Parenting Science. Physical Exercise Physical exercise is a somewhat grayer area than sleep when it comes to memory, but there seems to be a reasonable body of evidence suggesting that physical fitness and cognitive fitness are linked. At a minimum, a short-term effect of exercise, and in particular aerobic exercise that is continued over a period of at least 30 minutes, is an increase in blood flow and corresponding oxygen supply to the brain. This can help boost cognitive function, including memory. A regular exercise habit can help to improve circulation in general and also ward off stress and depression - two established enemies of optimal cognitive function. Research also suggests that physical exercise may directly benefit the hippocampus - an area of the brain that is essential to memory. A recent study, for example, showed that "elderly adults who are more physically fit tend to have bigger hippocampi and better spatial memory than those who are less fit."  As one of the lead researchers on the study puts it, "Basically, if you stay fit, you retain key regions of your brain involved in learning and memory." So how much exercise should the average person be getting? There’s plenty of debate on the topic, but one reasonable starting point is the Center for Disease Control’s "How much physical activity do you need?" Stress Management As noted above, stress is known to have an impact on cognitive function, and this includes memory. For starters, stress can interfere with sleep, which we have already identified as important to memory. But stress also impacts the brain more directly in both positive and negative ways. On the positive side, when we are presented with problems or challenges, our bodies are stimulated to produce norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that is essential to memory. This can be a good thing when studying for a test or preparing for some other challenge. But too much stress over too long a period takes its toll. The work of neurologist Robert Sapolsky and a range of other researchers have shown that chronic stress can, over time, lead to degeneration of the hippocampus, thus interfering with our capability to process and store memories. (see Memory and Stress). So what are some approaches to managing stress? Getting enough sleep and exercising regularly are an excellent starting point - and these come with the memory benefits already noted. Additionally, there is some evidence that meditation and other well-known relaxation techniques may have a direct impact on the hippocampus - at least in the elderly.  At a minimum, long-term practice of meditation or other relaxation techniques helps ward off chronic stress, an established enemy of memory. If you don’t feel like meditation is right for you, you might consider the simple breathing exercises advocated by alternative health practitioner Andrew Weil. If you are getting the sense that promoting and maintaining good memory is largely a matter of good lifestyle choices and habits, you are right. Stay tuned for more on that as well as some practical memory techniques in part two of this series. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. - If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page. Related posts:25 Sites and Tools to Exercise Your BrainIs Your Brain in a Box?

Time for another round of linky learning via Mission to Learn on Twitter. Seems we had the mind on our mind this time around. Enjoy. The Human Mind & Learning Top five ways to beef up your brain: http://bit.ly/rhU8F Daniel Goleman on building willpower, neuroplasticity http://bit.ly/19iTuX Why is it hard to "unlearn" an incorrect fact? http://bit.ly/Sae7G 50 tips to improve memory http://bit.ly/gt3eB Do we learn more from success than failure? http://bit.ly/BpDcG 4 Steps to Mindfulness: http://bit.ly/bvMDh 10 Questions for Your Reflective Practice: http://bit.ly/19qvy8 New Mission to Learn post on improving and maintaining memory: http://bit.ly/qPGhX # Cool Tools & Resources 15 Free Online Collaboration Tools and Apps: http://bit.ly/196Aqe # Just came across http://www.charityhowto.com/ - site with video training for nonprofits. Looks good #learningmonitor # 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life via BoingBoing: http://bit.ly/rLruD 4 sites to get good free advice online: http://bit.ly/mciTd 10 simple ways to back up your life. http://bit.ly/18SNZn Hit home, given that I recently lost quite a bit due to not backing up properly. The Ultimate Self Education Reading List http://bit.ly/4rRAd8 #learningmonitor New M2L post 7 Language Learning Widget Sources http://bit.ly/3357jg #languages 5 TED Talks on Science that Will Blow Your Mind http://bit.ly/eUL2U #learningmonitor RT @bookoven: @LibriVox now has a catalog of 2,500 (!) free, public domain audiobooks: http://librivox.org #learningmonitor Health & Medical 10 Free Online First Aid Resources - Learn to Save a Life! New M2L post - http://bit.ly/poLCZ The King Kong List for Feee Medical Online Resources from @zaidlearn http://bit.ly/8S2k3 #learningmonitor Learning News Duke professor uses crowdsourcing to grade - via Digg http://bit.ly/1hs34F via @openednews Creative Commons launches DiscoverEd http://bit.ly/OyOjb A little trivia fun on Mission to Learn: http://bit.ly/11Bb6a Open Courseware Consortium Webinar series http://bit.ly/3tqbMb via @openednews #learningmonitor Serious Games Top 100 Learning Game Resources http://bit.ly/IHKVe #learningmonitor Survey of electronic games that teach: http://www.wingz2fly.com/Ga… via epistemic games The CEO Game: A Serious Business Game http://www.theceogame.com/ #learningmonitor Will Wright on educational gaming: http://bit.ly/9Pq5X Have a great weekend, and be sure to follow Mission to Learn on Twitter! Related posts:Surprise! Assorted EdutweetsFree Learning Resources and other Edutweets25+ Sites and Tools to Exercise Your Brain

What's in your Learning 2.0 Tool Belt? While speaking at a conference over the weekend, I noted that I haven’t participated in a lot of formal professional development over the past few years. Maybe I’ve attended a class, workshop, or conference here or there, but the biggest chunk of my learning has happened informally, and mostly on the Web. That got me thinking about the tools I use the most these days for learning. I hope you’ll comment to share your own with other readers, but to start with, here are the five I use most: Search Google is the starting point for pretty much everything. And when I land on a blog, Web site, or wiki that looks like a good resource, the search box is often the first place I go. I also set Google searches as one way of tracking a topic or issue. RSS My RSS reader is pretty much my own little personal learning management system. I’m subscribed to hundreds of feeds (I really need to do some clean-up!), and I’ve got these feeds organized into folders and tagged in all sorts of ways. (Not real clear on what RSS or an RSS reader are? Check out Commoncraft’s brief, entertaining, yet highly educational video on RSS in Plain English.) Podcasts A colleague gave me an iPod a while back in appreciation for some consulting I provided, and I have been addicted ever since. I regularly listen to podcasts across a wide range of topics. I also learn a lot by creating the Radio Free Learning podcast, which I plan to kick back into gear in the next couple of weeks. Favorites? Marketing Over Coffee, Duct Tape Marketing, pretty much any TED talk, and Sound Opinions (okay, that last one is more for personal pleasure than professional development - but I do learn a lot!). Bookmarking I have no idea how many bookmarks I have at this point. A lot of them are local to my laptop, but I’ve gotten more and more in the happen of putting them on Delicious. This is the main way I find my way back to things I would otherwise forget. It is also an area where I need to improve my habits some - e.g., being better about writing descriptions for bookmarks and also spending more time revisiting and mining my bookmarks on occasion. Blogging I put blogging last because it is the tool that plays the biggest role in transforming all of the above into learning, at least as I define it. For me, nothing beats having to write about a topic or issue for really consolidating my knowledge and reaching higher levels of learning. I write a great deal more than actually winds up in my blog posts, and I also post on the blog on my personal Web site as well as on the site for my company, Tagoras. Runner up: Twitter I use Twitter to tag (#learningmonitor) items (and encourage other to tag them) that I might include in the monthly Learning Monitor newsletter as well as to share other resources I come across. More importantly, I learn about a lot of new things from following other tweeps. One of those tweeps is Lindy Dreyer. You might want to also check out her brief list of good people to follow if you are interested in informal learning (provided by Jeff Hurt). Who knows, Twitter might bump one of the other tools above out of the top five at some point. How about you? What are the key tools in your learning mix? I’d be truly grateful if you would comment and share with other readers here at Mission to Learn. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. - If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I’d be truly grateful if you would consider subscribing to the RSS feed. Related posts:Ten Tools for Tracking a Topic or Issue15 Free Online Collaboration Tools and Apps

The human mind is wired to be learning all the time - even during significant parts of the time when we are asleep - but with all the noise, distractions, and interruptions of modern life, it can be hard to find time for truly focused learning. How can you carve out the hours needed to learn Swahili, master delta blues guitar, understand Aristotle’s view of ethics, or _________ (fill in one of your current areas of learning)? One of the easiest ways to find more time is by by stealing pockets of time from other areas of your life. The following are some ideas for reclaiming minutes and hours that you might then apply towards your focused learning efforts. You can look at these as temporary fixes - something to try over a 30-day period. During that time, pay attention to what works for you and what doesn’t - and come up with other ideas for reclaiming time. Television. I’m not an enemy of television. There are shows I like enough to tune into weekly or order on Netflix. But one show can easily lead to another, and before you know it, you’re watching  150+ hours a month like the average American. Want to open up a big chunk of "cognitive surplus," as Clay Shirky has put it? Drop the TV ! Internet. This one is tougher for me - and probably for you, too, if you are here reading this post. I practically live on the Web, and a lot of what I do here is learning related, But, of course, a lot of it really is not. Cut the random surfing, tweets and other non-essential activities by even just 30 minutes a day and you free up a few hours a week for focused learning. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. - Benjamin Franklin Get up earlier.  I’m not convinced that getting up earlier has made me any wealthier, but Benjamin Franklin had it right on the "wise" part. Early morning tends to be a great time for solitude - particularly if you have kids in the house. I find I am at my most creative and productive in the morning, but even if that is not true for you, the time can be spent for review and reflection. Try getting up 30 to 60 minutes earlier. Or if that doesn’t work for you, stay up an hour later. Either way works. Email. Maybe this belongs with "Internet," but I think e-mail is enough of a time sink on its own that it needs to be mentioned separately. Try taking the advice of Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, and check e-mail only once or twice a day at a specific time. I haven’t been able to stick with this habit so far, but it is one I truly hope to make permanent going forward. The world really doesn’t stop when you don’t check e-mail every ten minutes, and aside from freeing up more of your time,  your ability to concentrate shoots up when you aren’t jumping from one e-mail stream to the next. (For a great resource on this one, see Tim’s Change This manifesto on e-mail elimination.) Cut back on shopping. And plan when you do shop. I’m not a big shopper in general, but I know a lot of people are. And even with the little bit of shopping I do, I find that I often end up making multiple trips for shopping that might have easily been handled in one trip if I had taken the time to make a list, review it thoroughly, and plan out my time. If you can, cut back to shopping only for essentials and plan those essential trips well. *Leave work early. If your work allows it, see if you can leave work earlier. If you have a smart boss, the only thing that will matter is if you’re getting your work done — not how long you’re in the office. So really focus on getting the essential work done within the time you have, and leave an hour earlier. Or, go to work late. The flip side of the above suggestion. Again, this is if your work allows it. *Take a longer lunch. Sometimes it’s easier to squeeze out extra time for your lunch break than it is to come in early or to leave early. If you can take 90 minutes for lunch, use the first 30 for eating (pack a lunch if possible) and the other 60 for reading, practice - whatever applies to your learning. Go on a news diet. How much time do you spend reading a daily paper (online or off), checking in on CNN or ESPN, or tuning in to NPR news in the car? I don’t advocate living in ignorance of what’s going on in the world, but try cutting out news for 30 days and see how much you really miss. Probably not a great deal, and in the meantime you free up a lot of time. If you go back to daily news, try cutting down to 20 minutes or less. *Don’t do anything after work. If you make social commitments after work, or business meetings, or whatever, stop making these plans for 30 days and use this time for focused learning. Trim civic commitments. Do you volunteer or serve in an organization or are you a member of some group? That’s a great thing - and I don’t advocate dropping these activities. But often those who volunteer over-extend themselves and commit to doing more than is reasonable. Are there things you are doing that someone else could easily do? Perhaps you could recruit a new volunteer to share or take over an activity. You’ll strengthen the organization in the process and also free up some time. Minimize housework/yardwork. Do these chores take up a large part of your day? See if you can minimize them, just for a month. Relax your standards a little. Or do a speed-cleaning stint once a week for two hours, and don’t clean the rest of the week. Do your laundry once a week rather than multiple times. For yardwork, hire a teenager to do it for a month. Reassess after a month and consider how you might keep these activities to a minimum going forward Cut out non-essential reading. To even talk about cutting into reading pains me, but I do a lot more unfocused, undisciplined reading than I really should, and I’m betting you do too. Cut out magazine reading and most book reading (unless it’s essential) to give you some extra time. This will also include cutting out newspaper and Internet reading, as mentioned above. *Minimize recreation. Partying, drinking, playing sports, playing video games … however you spend your free time, see if you can cut into that time. Use car time efficiently. Cut off the music and NPR and plug in an educational podcast or CD. The car can be a great place for listening to books or practicing a foreign language. Be sure to pay attention to the road, though! Take a walk. Sometimes just dropping everything, putting on a good pair of shoes, and heading out the door can be the surest way to cut the distractions and free up time for focused learning. I try to make this as much of a daily habit as possible. Take a long an iPod with some educational content if you like (try LearnOutLoud or iTunes University), or just use it as a time for reflection. Aside from learning a little, you will also be contributing to your physical well-being (which, in turn, can help your memory.) If you find any of the above particularly effective - or not - in your life, or if you have other ideas for reclaiming time, I’d really appreciate it if you would comment and share with other readers. Some notes on the origins of this post: I am a fan of Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits and have been thinking for some time that I would like to take him up on his "uncopyright" and create a series of Zen learning habits.  More recently, I have decided that I want to be much more serious about building Mission to Learn and I enrolled in Leo’s A-list Blogging Bootcamp. This gave me the incentive to finally pursue the Zen learning habits series. This post is based on Leo’s 15 Ways to Create an Hour a Day of Extra Time … for Solitude. For me, solitude and focused learning go hand-in-hand, so it seemed like a great starting point. I have kept nearly all of Leo’s original 15 points, though have consolidated some of them into single points and added two of my own - Use car time efficiently and Take a walk. I have also re-written all of them except for the four with stars. In other words, I haven’t completely lifted Leo’s writing - I’ve mostly just used it as inspiration. Look for other Zen learning habits soon as well as other changes on Mission to Learn. After recently restoring the site after a server crash, I’ll be getting a general face lift done and will also be revving the Learning Monitor newsletter and Radio Free Learning podcast back up. No related posts.

That’s what Copyblogger Brian Clark says, and I believe him. Both because it has been true in my own career and because I have been a member of his Teaching Sells program since it launched nearly two years ago. I am excited that the Teaching Sells program has re-opened today after being closed to new members for many months. I feel pretty certain there is a sizable segment of Mission to Learn readers who will want to consider enrolling. At a minimum, make sure you download some of the great free resources Brian offers. (He asks for your e-mail, but my experience is that he can definitely be trusted to only do what he says he will do with it - and you can unsubscribe at any time.) That’s all I’ll say here. I encourage you to read my further thoughts on Teaching Sells, if you are interested, or to find out more on the Teaching Sells site. Jeff No related posts.

It’s easy to think that the world’s writing is going to hell via short messages and tweets, but Clive Thompson has an interesting piece in Wired this month (recommended) - based on the work of Stanford professor Andrea Lunsford - suggesting that we may in fact be in the midst of a writing and literacy revolution driven by the Internet. Here are a few of the points from Lunsford’s work that Clive highlights, with a some added musings of my own: People are writing more Think about how much you write now if you engage in any form of social media at all - and, yes, you should include e-mail in that. Facebook, Twitter, short messaging on your phone. If you are doing any of these things, you are almost certainly writing a great deal more than your ancestors. Not that quantity and quality are the same, but writing more can certainly contribute to writing better. People are writing for an actual audience This is one of Lunsford’s most important points. In fact, she and her research team see writing as a sort of "performance." A new generation of writers is now coming up that is very attuned to the fact that writing does not happen in a void - other people are reading, and often responding instantly. Lunsford found that this made the students her team studied highly adept at "assessing their audience and adapting their tone technique to best get their points across." People are learning to be concise 140 characters or less. Need I say more? Well, given that Twitter is not as popular among the younger generations, it’s probably worth noting that brevity is a virtue in text messaging as well. And Lunsford maintains that this sort of text speak is not seeping into more "serious" writing," as cynics may suspect. People are writing more collaboratively Clive’s article just barely touches on this point, but all of the tweeting and texting back and forth amounts to a sort of informal writing collaborative, often compelling participants to refine their ideas - even about the most trivial topics - and express them more clearly. And of course, there is plenty of more formal collaboration going on now using tools like wikis. People have access to more knowledge as they write I just interviewed Curtis Bonk, author of The World is Open (podcast will be out tomorrow), and one of the concepts he discusses in the book is "fingertip knowledge" - the ability to access huge stores of digital information rapidly. It’s not a given that this kind of access improves writing, but it certainly can, if only by making it much easier to find appropriate examples or verify facts. The ability to access different views on a topic rapidly can also help us refine our own views. People place higher social value on writing An extension of writing more, writing for an audience, and writing more collaboratively is that writing starts to take on more social value. Just as education is moving rapidly away from the "sage on the stage" model, writing is moving away from the lone wolf reporter or the tortured genius with a bottle of bourbon in the desk drawer. We all write much more to communicate, and communicating effectively through writing will be ever more important to getting ahead in the world. People are blending writing with other media Successful writing on the Web is rarely just text. A writer may pull in a photo from Flickr, embed a YouTube video, or even do something more interactive like insert a poll. You can argue that this doesn’t make the writing better -and, indeed, could make it worse - but I think on the whole that the ability to blend more media can spark more creativity, cause us to reflect more on what text is actually good for, and ultimately allow us to communicate better. So what do you think? Is all of the above just the wishful thinking of a highly-biased, Web-addicted blogger (aka me), or is the Web really making us better writers? Jeff Related posts:15 Ways to Find an Hour a Day of Extra Time…for Focused Learning

Did you know that Mission to Learn offers more than just the Mission to Learn blog? Tomorrow I’ll be putting out a new episode of the Radio Free Learning podcast featuring Curtis Bonk talking about his great new book, The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education. Radio Free Learning has already featured interviews with people like virtual community pioneer Howard Rheingold and Flatworld Knowledge co-founder Eric Frank, and we’ve got some great new interviews line up for the coming months. Subscribe via the RSS feed Subscribe via iTunes Each month Mission to Learn also publishes the Learning Monitor newsletter. The Monitor features news and insights from the learning Web as well as the Learning Smorgasbord, an eclectic collection of free and low cost learning opportunities from across the Web. It’s a great complement to the regular flow of blog posts here on Mission to Learn. Subscribe to the Learning Monitor Whether or not you take advantage of these other great values, thanks so much for joining us here on the Mission to Learn blog! Jeff No related posts.

The World is Open The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education, a new book from Jossey Bass, offers one of the most comprehensive overviews I have seen to date of how open education and Web 2.0 technologies are transforming our world. Recently I had the opportunity to talk with the book’s author, Curtis Bonk, and capture some his insights about how things have changed and what the long term on impact on humanity is likely to be. This interview is a bit longer than earlier podcasts (around 30 minutes), but it is well worth the time. Here’s the MP3 file link (29:47) in case you do not see the audio player below (or click through to the original blog post). Subscribe to the Radio Free Learning podcast: Subscribe using RSS Subscribe using iTunes Note also that in the podcast we refer to a set "openers" defined in the book - the 10 major shifts that have opened up the world of education. In the book, Curt organizes these into a framework - WE-ALL-LEARN - that serves as a mnemonic device for remembering the openers. The ten openers are below. You can buy The World is Open on the Wiley/Jossey Bass Web site, among other places. I also encourage you to visit the Web site for the book, worldisopen.com to learn more about the openers and to access other resources - including a free eBook coming soon. Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN) 1. Web Searching in the World of e-Books 2. E-Learning and Blended Learning 3. Availability of Open Source and Free Software 4. Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare 5. Learning Object Repositories and Portals 6. Learner Participation in Open Information Communities 7. Electronic Collaboration 8. Alternate Reality Learning 9. Real-Time Mobility and Portability 10. Networks of Personalized Learning Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page. Related posts:Has Open Education Crossed the Chasm?Open Education Marches On At YaleThe Tragedy of Open Education? A Look at a New Blog

One great way to monitor free and low cost online learning opportunities is to join hundreds of other subscribers to Mission to Learn’s Learning Monitor. We’ve just published a new edition, and it will arrive in your inbox automatically if you subscribe today. So what’s the Monitor? It’s a great collection - a veritable Learning Smorgasboard - of links to great educational content that we put out eight times a year. We cover a wide range of topics for those with specific interests as well for those of you - you know who you are! - who are just fascinated with what the Web has made possible for lifelong learning and self education. We also throw in a dose of recent news and insights from the world of learning. You can take a look at the archives (posted at the end of every quarter) to get a feel for what’s offered. And below are a few highlights from this edition. We know you’ll love it, and hey, if you don’t, you can unsubscribe with a couple of clicks. Give it a try today - and please share the good word about the Monitor with any other passionate lifelong learners who you think may be interested! Highlights from the latest Learning Monitor The latest Monitor features more than 30 new learning resources - nearly all of them free. Here are just a few: Smarthistory A multimedia web-book about art and art history. This was a 2009 Webby award winner - and deservedly so. Well worth a visit. *** The Ultimate Self-Education Reading List A great list of books and blogs related to self-education from Jamie Littlefield at Self-Educated Scholar (a blog you need to add to your RSS Reader if you haven’t already). *** FolkSemantic A site for finding and recommending open educational resources via Downes *** Games Can Teach "GamesCanTeach is a non-commercial project of Web Courseworks. Our goal is to promote game-based learning by bridging the gap between academic research and practice, enabling game-based learning practitioners, academics, developers, teachers, trainers, and everyone else who cares about game-based learning to keep up on the best ideas being generated by the casual Flash game development community, engage with the insights of academic research into game-based learning, bring those two realms together in their work, and, have fun doing it." You’ll find a nice collection of casual games on the games page. *** 100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists From BestCollegeOnline.com: "Unless you’re enrolled at a top university or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists. But thanks to the Internet, and our list of 100 incredible lectures, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world."  via @openculture *** 15 Places to Learn Spanish for Free | Spanish Only A guest post from the ubiquitous Karin Schweitzer on the Spanish Only blog. "If you want to learn Spanish at your own pace or if  you just want to increase your knowledge outside of the classroom, there are plenty of resources online that can help. Here are 15 free sites, podcasts, Twitter feeds, online lessons, courses, and social networks for Spanish language learners. Most sites are for beginners, but sometimes even an intermediate learner can get something out of them." Enjoy! Jeff Related posts:7 Free, Focused Resources for Learning a Little Spanish Without Signing Up

Critical Thinking - It's Elementary! Given the range of financial swindles that have occurred over the past couple of years and the more recent rumblings about "death panels" and other supposedly evil aspects of Obama’s healthcare reform efforts, it seems like many of us could stand to bone up on our critical thinking skills a bit. And for the average Lifelong Learner 2.0, of course, good critical thinking skills are essential for cutting through the noise on the Web and getting to resources that are actually trustworthy and accurate. So here are ten resources I found valuable as I searched the Web for tools to help with sharpening my critical thinking skills. I hope you find them useful, too - and please comment with any others you think are valuable. I recommend starting things off with a quick quiz before heading into the other resources: Critical Thinking Quiz An interesting, 26-question online quiz provided by the College of Forestry at Oregon State University.  (It’s good to know that forestry graduates will have a grounding in critical thinking!) Take the time to think about them a bit - which, of course, is the point - and you will probably be able to answer most of these correctly. There are a few tough ones in there, though! Internet Detective "Sure, you use the Internet all the time, but you need to wise up to the web when you use it for your university or college work. Use this free Internet tutorial to learn to discern the good, the bad and the ugly for your online research."  This tutorial is intended to help college students hone their Internet research skills, but I think it is equal useful for their parents, friends, and siblings. Zeno’s Coffee House As the site explains, "Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher, was born about 490 B.C. His style of argument was to assume, provisionally, the position of the opponent, and then to derive impossible conclusions from it, thus establishing the absurdity of the assumption. In the spirit of this Reductio Ad Absurdum dialectical approach to critical thinking, our Coffeehouse activities will tackle from time to time so-called ‘common sense views,’ analyzed critically. The mental gymnastics will be good exercise!" The site won’t win any visual design awards, but it is a fascinating place to visit and engage. The Argument Clinic "We examine arguments. If you’ve got an argument you’d like us to look at, type it into the space below or e-mail a copy to the waiting room. We’ll get to it as soon as we can. Once we’re done, we’ll let you know the results of the exam. We may find that the argument is as sound as a dollar (or maybe even sounder than that!). On the other hand, it might limp along so badly that we’ll have to face facts and declare it an invalid, or perhaps more precisely, just plain old invalid. Of course there are intermediate possibilities too. But you get the idea." A very interesting concept! Critical Thinking Web OpenCourseWare on critical thinking, logic, and creativity. "This educational web site provides over 100 free online tutorials on critical thinking, logic, scientific reasoning, creativity, and other aspects of thinking skills." A nice coolection of resources from Hong Kong University. You might want to give the world’s most difficult logic puzzle a try!  This one is also available in traditional and simplified Chinese. Mission: Critical "The goal of Mission: Critical is to create a "virtual lab," capable of familiarizing users with the basic concepts of critical thinking in a self-paced, interactive environment." The interface on this one leaves something to be desired (at least on a Mac), but it provides a good overview of different types of reasoning, along with a lot of practice exercises. The Fallacy Files Blends a "collection of named fallacies—such as "ad hominem"—that is, types of bad reasoning which someone has thought distinctive and interesting enough to name and describe" and a "collection of fallacious, or otherwise bad, arguments…" This is a very good site for developing an understanding of "logical fallacies" - i.e., errors in reasoning. I particularly like the Fallacy Watch section. The Nizkor Project: Fallacies Another site focused on fallacies. This one features the complete text from Fallacy Tutorial Pro 3.0 organized as a menu of links. There is also an Italian version of this site. http://www.linux.it/~della/fallacies/index.html Argumentation and Critical Thinking Tutorial This tutorial from Humboldt State University provides a brief review of major critical thinking concepts and then a set of quizzes to test your understanding. Warning: Turn down your volume if you are using this in a public place. Answers are punctuated with Simpson- like sounds (which personally I find a bit annoying). BlueStorm: The Logic Course "BlueStorm is a mostly free introduction to critical thinking and elementary sentential logic. This is a huge collection of tutorials and quizzes on critical thinking divided into 14 topic areas." Recommended for readers who really want to dig in and get serious about mastering argumentation and reasoning. Bonus Section: The Skeptics Dictionary If you find you are a true skeptic after checking out the resources above, you may also want to visit the Skeptics Dictionary and the Skeptic Society. Finally, you can find other resources, some of which overlap with those above, at AusThink and EpistemeLinks.  The ones here represent the sites that I felt readers would find most immediately useful and accessible. *** Believe me, you can’t go wrong with these sites. (And if you are willing to believe me that easily, I’ve also got some great land in Florida I’d be willing to let you have for cheap…) Critically yours, Jeff P.S. If you like this post, I’d truly appreciate it if you would consider bookmarking it using one of the links below or another bookmarking service of your choice. Thanks so much for visiting Mission to Learn! Related posts:25+ Sites and Tools to Exercise Your BrainCustomer Education: 25 Sampler Sites

This is the second part of a two-part "learn about" series on memory improvement. The first part covers sleep, physical exercise, and stress management. In this part, I take a look at diet and memory techniques. Diet As suggested in Part I of this series, habits that keep your body functioning well tend also to help your mind - and by extension, your memory. Diet is no exception. As with so many things related to diet, there is plenty of blather out there about what works and what doesn’t - and a supplements industry happy to sell you anything you are willing to buy. Definitely apply your critical thinking skills before ingesting anything that is supposed to help your brain. One of the better sources I have found on diet and cognition is an article published in Nature in 2008 highlighting the research of Fernando Gomez-Pinilla. You can get the full text on Gomez-Pinilla’s Web site (scroll down). I highly recommend it, but here are a few highlights for the time challenged: Food is like a drug in many ways - it contains specific substances that can impact how the brain functions; Omega 3 fatty acids - found in fatty fish, like salmon, flax seed, and walnuts - appear to help the brain function properly and may even slow cognitive decline in the elderly; On the other hand, saturated fats - found in dairy products, meat, and still too often in oily snack foods - can have a negative impact. Flavenoids - found in cocoa, dark chocolate, green tea, citrus fruits, and wine - may also improve cognitive function, particularly in combination with regular exercise. With respect to memory, Gomez-Pinllia specifically mentions B vitamins as having positive impact on memory in women and choline - found in egg yolks, soy, beef, chicken, veal, turkey liverm and lettuce - as potentially reducing memory impairment caused by seizures. Gomez-Pinilla’s article features a great chart that summarizes the effects of different types of food on the brain. While doing research for this post, I also found that the Happy Healthy Long Life blog has included the chart in a great summary it offers of Gomez-Pinilla’s article. As the author notes, it’s worth printing out and putting on your fridge. Memory Techniques In the world of blogging, experts will always tell you that content comes first if you want to attract an audience. Techniques like search engine optimization are secondary - they don’t matter very much if you don’t have a solid base of good content. I think a similar logic applies to memory techniques and all of the brain training hype that is out there these days. They may help, but you should concentrate first on maintaining a healthy, well-rested brain by following the first four paths described in this series. So, assuming you’ve got a healthy, well-rested brain and are looking to turbo charge it, what are some techniques you can use? Here are three that seem to show up again and again: Rehearsal Back in the days of old when I taught Russian, we would always tell the students that "Repetition is the mother of learning." The old joke about how you get to Carnegie Hall (punchline: Practice!) is cut from similar logic. Simply going over something again and again - whether the something is a vocabulary list or Bethoven’s 9th - greatly increases the chances that you will retain it in memory. Naturally, this approach requires time and work, and as a result, often gets pushed aside for supposedly quicker fixes that are rarely as effective. Use of multiple senses If we hear something, we may remember it. If we hear it, see it (whether in reality or through use of our imagination), and write it down, our chances of remembering it jump dramatically. It’s well worth both taking notes and revisiting those notes both because this is a form of repetition (see above) and because these activities engage multiple senses. Even if you tend to never review your notes - or you always leave that shopping list sitting on the kitchen counter - the simple act of searching through the fridge and cabinets and then writing items down makes you more likely to remember them when you get to the store. Mnemonics When I took my first guitar lessons as a kid, I can remember that the teacher’s technique for helping students remember the six strings on the guitar didn’t go over all that well with Southern Baptists. I can also clearly remember his technique - and the strings - to this day: Easter Bunnies Get Drunk At Easter - E-B-G-D-A-E, from the bottom up. That’s a classic mnemonic device. The teacher used the notes associated with each string to create an acrostic that was much easier to remember than the letters by themselves. "Mnemonic  device" is simply another (and much more Greek) way of saying "memory aid." At the core of all mnemonic devices is the concept of associating one object or idea with another. Weaving vocabulary words into a simple rhyme, story, or song is one example. Visualizing a rose to help you remember the name of a woman named "Rose" is another. I won’t try to cover all of the possibilities for mnemonic devices here. A simple Google search turns up many great resources, and you may want to check out 9 Types of Mnemonics for Better Memory as well as Fiona McPherson’s writings about mnemonics at About Memory. Here, however, are a few classics American readers may recognize (I welcome examples from other countries in the comments!): "I" before "e" except after "c" or when sounding like "a" in neighbor and weigh In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Albania, Albania… Coach makes up a song to help he and Sam study in this classic Cheers episode. Conjunction Junction, what’s your … If you are of a certain age, you almost certainly know how to finish that sentence. Here’s the classic Schoolhouse Rock segment that taught so many of us about "hookin’ up words, and phrases, and clauses." This is a bit elaborate as far as mnemonics goes, but it was a fun one to dig up. ** That’s it for my little "learn about" venture into the world of memory. It is an area where I hope to continue building knowledge. And, of course, I hope to practice better what I preach with respect to improving my own memory. How about you? What have you found useful for maintaining and improving your memory? What are some resources other readers might appreciate knowing about? Please comment and share! Jeff P.S. - If you liked this post, please consider bookmarking it - and you might also enjoy 25+ Sites and Tools to Exercise Your Brain Related posts:5 Key Paths to Improving Memory, Part IAbout Memory, Part II - Podcast with Fiona McPhersonAbout Memory, Part I - Podcast with Fiona McPherson

With the economy still in the dumps, many of us are wondering how best to continue learning without spending a ton of money. Maybe we want to develop new skills that keep us employed or help us land that next job. Maybe we just want to stay sane and learn for the joy of learning. Either way, if you are like me, you probably don’t feel like you’ve got a lot of spare cash to lay out for expensive courses and conferences, or even things like books and DVDs. So, with frugality in mind, I sat down and gave myself fifteen minutes to come up with as many ideas as I could for ways to go about learning on the cheap. Some of these have to do with resources, some of them have to do with habits. And most of them don’t cost a dime. I know the list isn’t anywhere near exhaustive, so I hope you will chime in with your own ideas in the comments. Here goes, with no particular logic to the order: 1. Search for free webinars and webcasts: Free webinars and webcasts are everywhere these days. The quality can vary greatly from one to the next, but the dedicated learner can usually get something worthwhile even out of the worst of them. For starters, check out Free Webinar News or look for free classes on WizIQ. 2. Take advantage of open educational resources: The amount of free educational content now available from top notch universities is simply astounding. Visit the Open Courseware Consortium site to find universities that offer Open Courseware, or check out FolkSemantic to search for more than 110,000 open education resources. 3. Start a conversation: That’s right - whether on the Web or off, simply having a good conversation can be one of the best ways to learn. Find someone with experience in a topic or skill you care about, or who has simply led an interesting life. Practice asking and listening first, and then practice it again. 4. Check in on offerings at your local community center: The Century Center here in my own native Carrboro, for example, has all sorts of things going on. Anybody up for digital photography on Thursday? 5. Check for talks at local schools, colleges, and universities: It’s amazing who might show up and talk for free. I recently caught the Sound Opinions guys here at UNC-Chapel Hill. If I ever abandon Mission to Learn, it will be to create the second rock n’ roll talk show. 6. Enroll in a community college course. If you have a community college near you, or a university with a continuing education division, check out what they are offering. This is one of the few items on the list that will cost you some money, but in my experience, you can really find some high-value learning experiences. 7. Check on offerings from nonprofits and associations: From your local Red Cross chapter to your local Chamber of Commerce, nonprofits offer some great educational opportunities at little to no cost. And some have caught on to doing it online. Check out a couple of my online favorites: GCF LearnFree and Wildlife University. 8. Spend a night - okay, make that an afternoon - at the museum: If you think museums belong in a …well, museum…think again. I think they are one of the most amazing learning resources going. Not just for exhibits, but often for great speakers, music, and interactive Web resources. Dial in to the big ones, like the Smithsonian, but also make sure you check out local offerings. And if you want learn more about the world of "Museum 2.0," be sure to visit Nina Simon’s blog. 9. Check in, check out, check in at your local library: If you aren’t a card carrying member of your local library, get down there right now. Books, audio, programs - what’s not to love. And check out the massive digital collection at the Library of Congress site. 10. Watch a child: In the touchy-feely-no-I-wasn’t-at-Woodstock-but-boy-wouldn’t-that-have-been-something realm, just sit back and watch a kid for a bit. Especially one under the age of five. Witness the learning energy at work. You’ll learn something about human beings, and if you really pay attention, you might learn a thing or two about how to learn. 11. Tap into iTunes University: If you have an iPod, iTunes Univerity is really a great thing. For that matter, the general range of free learning content on iTunes, whether or not it is officially in the "university" is a great thing. Check out the podcast library at Open Culture for a wealth of direct links to iTunes podcasts and other podcast options. 12. Explore YouTube and other video sites: Not everyone has an iPod, but anyone with access to a computer and an Internet connection can get to YouTube. The possibilities there may not be endless, but they are moving rapidly in that direction. And don’t confine yourself to just YouTube. Check out sites like eHow, MindBites, Graspr, TeacherTube, Fora.tv, and TED. 13. Learn How to Learn: Before you get yourself lathered up into a frenzy of learning activity, you might want to spend a little time learning more about self-learning. Seems to me that’s one of surest way to make sure you get some bang for your (lack of) bucks. One good staring place is Jamie Littlefield’s Ultimate Self-Education Reading List. Or you may want to check out Study Hacks. It has a college focus, but also offers a lot that applies more broadly. 14. Subscribe to an eNewsletter: E-mail seems to have a bad rep these days, but there are any number of great free newsletters out there by people who want to teach you things. Maybe they want to sell you things, too, but as long as they aren’t pushy about it and provide some actual value in the newsletters, why not give it a shot. In nearly all instances, you can unsubscribe at any time. Naturally, I am a fan of Mission to Learn’s own Learning Monitor 15. Set up an RSS listening post: Even if you don’t use an RSS reader for anything else, this is a good reason to give it a try. You can set up a variety of searches and pull then into a single convenient "dashboard." See 10 Tools for Tracking a Topic or Issue for more on this 16. Take notes and review them: I’ve said my two cents about taking notes and revisiting them in previous posts, but this is a habit that bears highlighting again and again. It’s among the cheapest and most effective ways to ensure that your learning efforts are actually successful. For keeping up with notes online, you might want to have a look at Evernote. 17. Reflect: I’m working up a post on this one, but I have noted before that discipline is a trait we really need to develop as part of our learning efforts. One aspect of discipline, in my opinion, is consistently taking the time to reflect on our learning activities and the progress we are making. More on that soon, but in the meantime, Leo has some great thoughts on the power of reflection. 18. Start a book club: It’s been a while since I’ve been in a book club, but having been in good ones and bad ones, I know that if you can get the right group of people together to discuss a book, it can be a great learning experience. If you aren’t in a position to but together an in-the-flesh book club, try out a service like Library Thing. 19. Try out a social learning platform:  There are a range of platforms out there now that can connect you with experts, teachers and other learners for collaborative learning experiences. Some cost a bit of money, many are free. You might want to try BigThink or Sclipo, or check out 5 Free Web Tools for Learning a Language Collaboratively. 20. Maintain a healthy brain: If you want to learn well, you need to make sure the old central processing unit is in good shape. You might want to check out 5 Key Paths to Improving Memory as a starting point. 21. Start a monthly meeting of colleagues: I get together monthly with a small group of business colleagues in my area to discuss issues we are facing. The meetings are more or less formal, just depending on what has been planned for that month. They are always incredibly valuable. 22. Turn in a term paper in to yourself (and grade it!): Considering going old school and write something substantive, complete, and polished on a subject you really want to know more about. Then set the finished assignment aside for a week, come back to it, read it carefully, and give yourself a grade. 23. Start a blog: You don’t have to become the next TechCrunch, Mashable, or LifeHacker, but simply committing yourself to writing on a regular basis in a relatively focused way can be a tremendous way to learn. I advocate doing this publicly, as it helps add a degree of accountability, but you can also blog privately if you prefer. 24. Comment on blogs: Whether you write a blog yourself or not, taking time to comment meaningfully on other blogs can be a great way reach higher levels of learning. Of course, this means doing more than just "Great post! See my marginally related post at http://marginallyrelatedpost.com." 25. Sign up for some promos: Brian Clark over at Copyblogger has been pounding the drum for the past year or so about "teaching sells" as a concept. More and more businesses understand that idea and are giving away great educational materials in an effort to build relationships with businesses and prospects. Maybe you are interested in buying, maybe you aren’t, but it may well be worth trading your e-mail address for some free learning. 26. Volunteer to give a speech: This can be a radical move, depending on your comfort with public speaking, but if you really want to get on top of a topic, sign yourself up to speak about it in front of a group of people! Local civic organizations, for example, are always looking for speakers. And check out the folks over at Speak America who are on a mission to help 1 million people find their voice. 27. Volunteer to write an article: Like speaking about a topic, putting yourself on the line to write something meaningful can be an excellent way to rev up the learning engines. In my experience, many small nonprofits and associations are always looking for potential newsletter contributors. 28. Attend virtually: Don’t have the cash to attend that conference in Honolulu? Find out what sorts of digital options are being offered. Many conference now have a Twitter "hashtag" that serves almost like a news ticker for the conference. And many publish on blogs, YouTube, Slideshare, and UStream among other options. I could do a whole post on this one. Just find a conference and poke around to see what the options are. 29. Find a mentor: Having access to someone who has traveled the path before you can be invaluable. You might consider using a service like Find a Mentor to connect with the right person. But also don’t be afraid to contact people in your local community who you respect. Most people are honored by the idea of providing advice and guidance to others. And maybe you’ll get lucky and find something like Seth’s MBA program. 30. Make a list at 43 Things: Create a list of learning goals at 43 Things. You don’t necessarily need to come up with 43, and one of the great things about this service is that others who share your goals can find you, or you can even invite others to join you. And if you choose to try blogging, you can put your list on your blog and even publish to 43 Things from your blog. Bonus #31: Keep reading Mission to Learn: Didn’t really think I would leave that off the list, did you? So, that’s my list. It took quite a bit longer than 15 minutes to write up, but the ideas themselves came really quickly. So what are some ideas you have? Please comment and share them! Jeff P.S. - If you like this post, I’d truly appreciate it if you would bookmark it with on of the links below or another bookmarking service of your choice. Related posts:25 Free Online Resources and Web Apps for Lifelong LearnersFree Language Learning Resources - The Master List

If your life is anything like mine, your days often fly past in a complete blur. Up early in the morning, get the kids off to school, or the dog out, or head for the gym - or all of the above. Make the trek to work. Grind through the day’s meetings, e-mails, and phone calls. Then home for the evening routine, and before you know it, the alarm rings and you start again. Chances are, if you are here reading this blog, you make at least a semi-conscious effort somewhere in there to continue learning. Maybe you’ve got a book tucked away in your bag, or a couple of blogs you check in on, or a course you take in the evenings at the community college. But how often do you take the time to stop for a few minutes and reflect? I still have miles to go in developing this habit, but I can say that it is something I have truly gotten better at since I started blogging a couple of years ago. I don’t think it would even be possible to keep coming up with new things to write about for Mission to Learn if I didn’t take time daily to reflect on various aspects of my life. But more importantly, taking the time to reflect is, in my opinion, one of the surest ways to consolidate learning and continue to grow. If you don’t currently make reflection a daily habit, I strongly recommend you try it. Here are just a few of the ways reflection can impact your life and your learning: 1. It helps you learn from - and get past - your mistakes "I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work," Thomas Edison is often quoted (or perhaps misquoted) as having said. You can bet Edison spent time going back over his mistakes and failures, but he did it as a means of finding his way forward to future successes. 2. It helps you learn from - and celebrate - your successes. We can and should learn from our mistakes and failures, but there is also evidence that we may learn more from our successes.  In any case, there is not much joy in living and learning if we don’t take time to acknowledge the things we have done right - and build upon them. 3. It helps you make connections and generate new ideas. When you take time to think back through your experiences, you almost inevitably begin to see connections among them that were not obvious at first. One thing always leads to another when you are reflecting, and before you know it, you’ve got a great new idea - whether for a convenient, affordable way to provide light to the average household, like Edison, or…uh, a new blog post 4. It helps you to help others Ideally, those connections you see when you reflect include connections to others. No learner is an island. How can you share what you’ve learned and how you have learned it in a way that benefits others? I think that simple question tends to be the foundation for so many successful personal relationships as well as busineses and nonprofit initiatives. And it all starts with reflection. 5. It gives you perspective and helps you relax. So many of us, myself included, live lives that are overly busy and flooded by a continual stream of new information. We make mistakes, get overwhelmed, succumb to stress. Taking a few minutes daily to reflect, though, has an incredibly calming effect. It can help us put all of our efforts into perspective. Living and learning are not about some grand, ultimate goal. They are simply about learning and living. Relax. How to Make Reflection a Daily Habit If reflection isn’t something you feel you do enough, consider making it a habit. Here are some suggestions for doing that: 1.  Commit to it. Nothing becomes a habit if you are not willing to consciously commit to it, and I think a lack of commitment is one of the main reasons reflection doesn’t happen. We all know instinctively that it is a good idea, but it’s too easy to put it in the "Someday" bucket. Tell yourself clearly, consciously that you will make reflection part of your daily learning habit. 2. Figure out what works Reflection can take many forms. Take some time to find the one that is right for you.  Here are some suggestions: You may just want to sit quietly for several minutes, perhaps along with some simple breathing exercises. Or maybe start a one-sentence journal. This one comes from Leo  Babauta via Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project (a great blog). It’s just what it sounds like. Write one sentence (or thereabouts) a day. You’ll be amazed at what you have captured by the end of a year. Consider blending reflection with exercise. This doesn’t work for everyone, but runners in particular seem to be able to make it work. Personally, I need to slow down a bit and walk if I am going to reflect while exercising - which I often do. Write about it publicly. Where do you think this blog post came from? The decision to blog or post to some other place that people can see - like a forum - can help hold you accountable. More importantly for some people, it can lead to a network of others who connect with and engage in your reflections, which can lead to positive reinforcement. 3. Focus on doing it at the same time, every day. No exceptions. No matter which approach you choose, get into the reflection habit by taking just a few minutes at the same time each day to reflect. People tend to think of reflection as an end of day thing. Personally, I find it most helpful when I do it first thing in the morning, before everything else. That’s when my mind is clearest. Do what works for you, but however you go about it, it’s good if you have a trigger (such as, "right after I brush my teeth"). This will help establish the habit. If it helps, consider signing up for an online service that sends you a daily reminder at the same time each day. 4. Move from narrow to broad. I find it helps to focus in on small, recent things first. What’s happened the prior day (or earlier in the day, depending on your timing). What are the things that went well, or could have gone better. How? Move from there into your broader, day-to-day work and life. Finally, connect these smaller, more recent experiences into your life as a whole and any goals you have set for yourself.  Thinking through - and then moving beyond - the more narrow parts of your day-to-day experience and out into a broader vision really helps with developing a sense of perspective. How does reflection fit into your learning habit? What are some of the highlights for you? How do you use reflection in your daily life? Let us know in the comments. P.S. This post is part of of my "Zen Learning Habits" series and was inspired by Leo Babuta’s 5 Powerful Reasons to Make Reflection a Daily Habit, and How to Do It.  More about the series. Related posts:A Short Collection of Powerful But Under Appreciated Learning Strategies15 Ways to Find an Hour a Day of Extra Time…for Focused Learning

I have a specific learning need I am trying to address, and I suspect many others have a similar need. Namely, I need to learn a little Spanish. More accurately, I need to re-learn a little Spanish. I actually studied it as a kid, but well, that was quite a while ago. Now my own kid is starting to learn Spanish, and I’d like to able to keep up and help out. You may be in a similar situation. Or maybe you just recognize that there are now more than 43 million people in the U.S. who speak Spanish as a first language (that’s more than in Spain, folks), so learning a little might be a good idea. (And if you are reading from somewhere other than the U.S., there is a good chance the Spanish-speaking population is growing in your country, too.) Naturally, type "Learn Spanish" or some variation of it into Google and you will come up with more resources than you could ever really use. It’s overwhelming. And I don’t find long lists of sites for learning Spanish all that useful either. In this case, I just want a handful of good sites that meet my specific criteria, which are: The Spanish language resources are free I don’t have to sign-up - and hand over my e-mail - to access useful materials The learning is presented in a useful, manageable way Easier said than done, but with a little searching, I came up with the following sites. If you, like so many people, are out to learn a little Spanish or brush up on your Spanish and share the criteria above, I recommend checking these out. General Resources and Lessons Here are a few sites that offer a good range of general resources in the form of lessons, vocabulary lists, audio clips, etc. While you may have to sign up for certain features or to move to a higher level, a wealth of good basic material is available on each of these sites for free BBC Spanish The BBC offers good resources for learning a number of languages. A couple of things I like about this site is that it offers a "gauge" to help you determine your learning level and it also offers a 22-episode "drama" called Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life) that helps situation the language learning in the context of engaging, life-like situations. About.Com: Spanish Language About.com is usually a pretty good first stop for learning just about anything, and Spanish is no exception. One of the reasons I like this site is that the navigation clearly divided into Start Learning and Continue Learning, and there is also a separate Culture tab - a navigational approach that shows up less often that you would think it would on the vast quanitities of Spanish language sites out there. StudySpanish.com The free parts of this site are lighter weight than the other two - you have to pay to get to the real meat - but it’s Learning A Little Spanish section offers some nice quick tutorials for pronunciation and basic travel Spanish. Spanish Language Podcasts Naturally, hearing a language is an important part of learning a language, and the some of the best resources out there are free podcasts. Here are two worth checking out. CoffeeBreak Spanish The "Coffee Break" series for learning languages has been around for a while now. I tried out the French podcasts before a trip to France last year and found them to be very good. There are 80 podcasts, each 15-20 minutes in length, that cover Spanish from the most basic up to the intermediate level. There are also add-on materials available for extra cost. RollingRs This is a video podcast series accessible through LearnOutLoud. I am not as familiar with it as the CoffeeBreak series, but based on viewing a few lessons, it looks quite good - particularly if you prefer visual and audio content together when learning. (By the way, LearnOutLoud offers a great audio and video learning opportunities - some free, some paid - across a wide range of topics.) Spanish Language FlashCards Flashcards are a mainstay of language learning, and the Web now offers some great options accessing and creating flashcards. Here are two options for Spanish: SpanishDict You have to sign up to create your own flashcards on this site, but the featured sets of cards created bu others are accessible without handing over your e-mail. Topics include things like food, travel, sports, and numbers. Quizlet As with SpanishDict, you have to sign up to create cards here, but there are a wide range of pre-existing sets that you can access without registration. I particularly like the 501 Spanish Verbs set. *** So, that should be a good core set of resources to get me started - and you too, I hope. If you decide that you want to move on beyond these, register for more resources, and possibly spend some dinero, you might want to have a look at Visual Link Spanish for a complete, in-depth Spanish language curriculum. And consider Myngle for real-time Spanish lessons with a native speaker. Hasta luego, Jeff Related posts:Free Language Learning Resources - The Master List5 Free Web Tools for Learning a Language Collaboratively20 Language Links from the Free Learning Monitor

I don’t like to spend to much time blogging about the blog, but I made a big change to the look and feel of the Mission to Learn site earlier this week, and it seems worth pointing out - particularly to those of you who subscribe by RSS or e-mail and may not have dropped by in a while. I was already using the great Thesis WordPress theme developed by Chris Pearson, but had implemented it pretty quickly and haphazardly following the massive server crash and data lost at Mission to Learn’s former host, Bluehost. I use Thesis on two other sites and really can’t recommend it highly enough. To really make Thesis hum, I relied on the help of Daniel Stanojevic and his team at 1Serpent. They did the design and all of the customization work. I also worked with them on Tagoras and my personal site, and I recommend them highly. I welcome any thoughts you have on the new design, and I’d also like to ask one small favor of you. Part of the reason for investing in a new design here at Mission to Learn is that I have decided to greatly increase the time and effort I put into the site with the hope of growing it into all I think it can be over time. So… If you feel you enjoy and benefit from what you find here, I would sincerely appreciate it if you would tell someone else about Mission to Learn. Maybe e-mail them a link to a post you like. Or Tweet about it. Or mention it on your own blog. Whatever works for you. I hope you enjoy the new look, and thanks so much for reading Mission to Learn! Jeff Related posts:Mission to Learn Site Restoration

Time for another installment of linky learning with assorted Edutweets from Mission to Learn. There are some really great ones this time around. For readers who are new here, I periodically do a round-up of some of the items that have been going out over the Mission to Learn Twitter stream and try to package them up in some logical way to help make them easier to digest. I do this roughly every two weeks or so. Naturally, you can get all of this in real time if you follow Mission to Learn on Twitter! Human Mind 47 Ways to Fine Tune Your Brain: http://bit.ly/10nFQS See also: 5 Key Paths to Improving Memory: http://bit.ly/4lIWtR Media multi-taskers pay mental price http://bit.ly/16ko3N (via http://zenhabits.tumblr.com/ ) Memory improvement and learning skills. Pretty amazing site:http://www.happychild.org.uk/acc/tpr/mem/index.htm A Short Collection of Powerful But Under Appreciated Learning Strategies: http://bit.ly/3mKoa6 How Simplicity Can Help Creativity, Briefly: http://bit.ly/6jeYE Learning Trends & Insights Very interesting - rethinklearningnow http://rethinklearningnow.com/ via Downes http://bit.ly/asV5d On Zen Habits: Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head http://is.gd/2Ijnj RT @joshkaufman: Essays on the theme "school is prison": http://su.pr/6Cn8BP & http://su.pr/9TzHAp The Importance and Challenges of Universal Media Literacy Education: http://bit.ly/iQhpe What is the Future of Teaching? http://bit.ly/FM2GT Can a School Library Be Replaced by E-Readers? Apparently, it Can. http://bit.ly/rClky RT @live2learn: Being educated is more than a diploma or a degree. 12 Things Really Educated People Know http://bit.ly/1LjvEy 10 Wishes for True Student Success from @mayafrost - http://bit.ly/8IZTg 40 Things to Teach My Kids Before They Leave Home: http://bit.ly/RUTiR Learning Resources 16 Great Books to Change the World http://bit.ly/a9Iy7 (and 26 Games: http://bit.ly/jB97y ) Another winner from Zaid: The Best EDU Blogs on the Planet: http://bit.ly/FmJI8 RT @Larryferlazzo: The Best Places To Find New Educational Websiteshttp://bit.ly/u9XN1 RT @Larryferlazzo: Best Fun Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2008 http://tinyurl.com/5cxbh2 This year’s list is coming up this month! RT @Larryferlazzo: "Show Me" is a great site highlighting best games from British museums http://www.show.me.uk/games/games.html Are you missing out on these two great values? http://bit.ly/16SxqG RT @live2learn: Great learning resource! RT @dianadell Bet the Farm http://ow.ly/nC1N Make all key decisions as you run a farm for a year. 100 Inspirational blogs for after college life: http://bit.ly/CT1dm Nice, short video about the Big Bang: http://bit.ly/9u5zg 30 High-Value Tips and Resources for Learning on the Cheap: http://bit.ly/1DNJii Language 7 Free, Focused Resources for Learning a Little Spanish Without Signing Up - http://bit.ly/1xYdEL RT @AngelaMaiers: RT @englishraven Place to find very best English language teaching blogs and posts -http://3.ly/yhI RT @Larryferlazzo: 9,000 categorized links accessible to English Language Learners http://bit.ly/lNYC6 Educational Web Apps & Tech Tools 10 Awesome Tools To Get More Out of Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/rHqTT Not sure how I never came across this before: DailyLit: http://dailylit.com/ RT @AngelaMaiers: Every TED Talk Under the Sun from @openculture http://ow.ly/oAlQ THIS ROCKS!!! REALLY!!!! #learningmonitor Looks like a pretty cool little tool for managing (learning?) goals: http://www.joesgoals.com/ RT @mitzilewis: RT @JimMacMillan Back to School: 15 Essential Web Tools for Students http://su.pr/15oMdw Learning Habits & Skills 5 Powerful Reasons to Make Reflection a Daily Learning Habit, and How to Do It: http://bit.ly/w9vmy7:10 AM Sep 9th from Seesmic @edbatista Thanks for the tweet on 10 sites for sharpening critical thinking skills! http://bit.ly/4f3E9F RT @tferriss: How to Become an Early Riser: http://su.pr/2DgJtP (and create some extra time for learning: http://bit.ly/3xhzm7 ) RT @learninglater: DO YOU KNOW…Learning Later is a way to discover new talents and resurrect old ones? http://www.learninglater.com Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes: http://bit.ly/Bg6gb Learning via self experimentation: http://bit.ly/JnJnj RT @speakamerica: What is your curiosity quotient? http://bit.ly/13JzEt 15 Ways to Find an Hour a Day of Extra Time…for Focused Learning: http://bit.ly/wokHr 10 Bona Fide Best Sites for Sharpening your Critical Thinking Skills. Grateful for a bookmark if you like it: http://bit.ly/TwbzU 5 Key Paths to Improving Memory - Part II http://bit.ly/3xNSi8 Enjoy, and have a great weekend! Jeff P.S. - If you enjoy what you find here on Mission to Learn, I’d be truly grateful if you would subscribe by RSS feed or by e-mail. Related posts:Beef Up Your Brain and other Assorted EdutweetsSurprise! Assorted EdutweetsFree Learning Resources and other Edutweets

In this episode of the Radio Free Learning podcast, I talk with Dr. Fiona McPherson, author of The Memory Key and curator of the About Memory Web site. I came across Fiona’s work recently when I was writing 5 Key Paths to Improving Memory, and found her Web site to be one of the most thorough, well organized sites on memory out there. So, naturally, I contacted her to see if she would share some of her expertise with listeners here. Our conversation lasted long enough that I decided to break it into two episodes. In this first one, we find out a little about Fiona’s background and what sparked her deep interest in memory. We then talk about some of the keys to memory and why most memory courses don’t result in long-term memory improvement. In the second episode (out later this week) we discuss topics like the brain training craze and why effective note-taking (the topic of a recent book by Fiona) is so important. Here’s the MP3 file link (19:17 minutes long) in case you do not see the audio player below (or click through to the original blog post). Subscribe to the Radio Free Learning podcast: Subscribe using RSS Subscribe using iTunes I also encourage you to check out other posts on brain science and the human mind here on Mission to Learn. Jeff P.S. - Follow Mission to Learn on Twitter at http://twitter.com/missiontolearn Related posts:About Memory, Part II - Podcast with Fiona McPherson5 Key Paths to Improving Memory, Part II5 Key Paths to Improving Memory, Part I

Set Learning Goals to Avoid the Blues There is a part of me that resists the whole idea of setting goals for lifelong learning. With the world of tests and degrees behind me for the most part, I welcome the opportunity to be a dabbler, a dilettante, a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. Why should I add the stress of achieving goals to my learning mix? And then I pick up my guitar. You see, a guitar for me is symbol of all the joy that can come from learning, and at the same time, all the frustration. I play reasonably well, and I get a great deal of enjoyment out of doing it. And yet… And yet, I am nearly always conscious of the fact that I cannot express myself on the guitar in the way that I would really like to. I don’t have the knowledge. I don’t have the chops. I haven’t achieved what I would really like to with the guitar, and there is a very simple reason why: I never set clear goals for learning the guitar. Well, if you have been reading Mission to Learn lately, you know that I’ve been focused on reflection as a learning habit. So, I’ve decided to turn some of that mental energy toward the subject of learning goals and that’s led me to what I think of as a First Principle of Learning Success: You can’t separate your learning goals from your life goals With this principle in mind, you need to ask the same three essential questions about your learning goals that you would ask about your life goals: 1. What is important to me? For me, music is incredibly important, yet I’ve always tended to take it for granted and have not focused my time and efforts towards it in the way I might have. 2. What am I doing about it? I’ve taken guitar lessons on and off since I was a teenager, and I play at least a little bit on most days, but I’m not where I want to be. Partly this is because I have not consciously acknowledged how important playing a musical instrument is to me and committed myself to learning. 3. What can I get rid of? The other key reason I have not achieved what I would like to with the guitar is that I let any number of less important things distract me. What are some of the things I can’t remove from my life so that I can find more time for focused learning? Of course, these questions and the First Principle of Learning Success don’t apply only to your avocations, they also apply to your professional development, your spiritual development, and all other aspects of your life. Finally, none of this is to suggest that all learning needs to be goal-driven. Far from it. There is much to be gained from being a dabbler and dilettante at times. (The subject of a future post, I’m sure.) But I could do without the pangs I feel when I look at my guitar, and there are probably similar pangs you get from "symbols" in your life. Setting clear goals is the first step towards getting rid of them. How does goal setting factor into your lifelong learning? I welcome any tips you can share about how you set and achieve your goals. Jeff P.S. - For anyone is not familiar with it, the "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in the title is an allusion to the Beatles classic penned by George Harrison for The White Album. Here’s George playing it at The Concert for Bangledesh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7qpfGVUd8c. No related posts.

This is the second installment of a Radio Free Learning podcast with Dr. Fiona McPherson, author of The Memory Key and curator of the About Memory Web site. In the first installment we discussed some of the keys to memory and why most memory courses don’t result in long-term memory improvement. In this second episode we discuss the brain training craze, how the brain changes as we age, and why effective note-taking (the topic of a recent book by Fiona) is so important. Here’s the MP3 file link (17:29 minutes long) in case you do not see the audio player below (or click through to the original blog post). Subscribe to the Radio Free Learning podcast: Subscribe using RSS Subscribe using iTunes I also encourage you to check out other posts on brain science and the human mind here on Mission to Learn. Jeff P.S. - Follow Mission to Learn on Twitter at http://twitter.com/missiontolearn Related posts:About Memory, Part I - Podcast with Fiona McPherson5 Key Paths to Improving Memory, Part II5 Key Paths to Improving Memory, Part I