Recommended books, tools, etc.
Here is a list of our most highly recommended books on learning & other learning resources. (This is just a start--we'll be adding more here!)
General books on learning:
Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential, by Barbara Oakley. Most books on learning tell you to follow your passion. This book shows you how you can broaden your passions and learn and do things you never dreamed you could do. It's a book of inspiration, adventure, and scientific insight about learning, all wrapped into one. What can we say--Barb wrote the book!
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. This is one of the best books on learning we've ever read. It gets at the heart of what it takes to become better at what you are trying to learn, and it provides solid encouragement and examples whether you are an 80-year-old trying to learn martial arts, or an 8-year-old learning the guitar. Ericsson is the best researcher around in the field of expertise, and Robert Pool (who has a doctorate in mathematics), helps work wizardry to make the book not only an incisive, but a fascinating read. Don't miss this book. Incidentally, what Ericsson calls a "mental representation" is analogous to what we in Learning How to Learn call a "neural chunk."
The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, by Josh Waitzkin. This is a wonderful book that looks at learning from a very different perspective than that of an academic. Waitzkin was a chess prodigy--his father, Fred Waitzkin, wrote the book Searching for Bobby Fischer, about his son's exceptional talents. But Waitzkin is also a international martial arts champion. Waitzkin's insights into the commonalities of both conventionally "athletic" and "mental" forms of learning is fascinating. Much of the discussion is highly relevant to many of the key ideas we've laid out in Learning How to Learn, including chunking and focused versus diffuse modes of thinking. Interestingly, a good time to attack in martial arts is when your opponent blinks--that momentary dip into the diffuse mode... Highly recommended!
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by Peter Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark McDaniel. We've long been fans of Henry Roediger's world-class research. This book helps you understand why and how to use approaches like spaced repetition, self-testing, and introducing difficulties into your learning can be helpful. It also explains common "illusions of competence" in learning like rereading and underlining. This book will help reinforce, from a differing perspective, some of the ideas we describe in Learning How to Learn.
The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning, by James Zull. Although this is an older book, first published in 2002, it holds a rich way of looking at how the brain works that stands the test of time. Zull is a Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at Case Western University as well as being the Director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education, and Professor of a Human Learning and The Brain class. He gives a penetrating perspective on how learning takes place that can add insight to not only your own ability to learn, but to your teaching.
Learning Tools and Task Lists (and you thought we'd go all high tech on you!)
Research has shown that writing your notes by hand instead of typing them helps you learn better. We prefer Palomino Blackwing Pencils for note taking. These pencils have the most extraordinary feel of any pencil we've used. Once past the initial sharpening with a standard pencil sharpener, (vertical is best) we use cheap plastic Staedtler manual pencil sharpener, which we keep beside us whenever we are writing. We prefer quadrille ruled engineering pads for our lists and doodles.
Incidentally, when Barb goes to sleep, she uses her wonderful Blackwing pencil to write a brief list of the main things she'd like to accomplish the next day. Writing the “Day” task list the evening before helps her set it in mind to actually accomplish what she wants to accomplish. When Barb gets up in the morning, she looks over her Day list, and then sets out a little mini-list of three or four mini-tasks on a small Now list on a different part of the same page as the Day list. Using her wonderful pencil, she gets to cross off each of those smaller tasks as she does them. It feels great! As she gradually finishes the items on the bigger Day list, she crosses them off there, too. She usually don’t finish all the items on the Day list, but she makes a lot of progress this way. Barb usually tries to get at least one Pomodoro in early on her toughest task, to “eat her frogs first.”
Earmuffs
Low tech and cheap: Peltor Sport Ultimate 10 Hearing Protector. Who cares how you look if you can actually focus instead of hearing the neighbors pounding next door? Barb swears by these earmuffs, especially when her dear hubby Hero is snoring while she's reading late at night. (Yes, these earphones are the ones modeled by her older daughter in a week three video here).
Higher tech: Frankly, these Bose QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones aren't as good as the low tech Peltor earmuffs recommended above. But these slimmer earphones look less geeky when you are wearing them on planes, and can work well to help you focus in that noisy environment.
Best Books for Teachers
We're often asked the best books to help instructors teach effectively. The best book we're aware of is Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide, by Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent. Although this book is geared towards STEM, it's also a great resource for teaching well in any discipline. Barb thinks so highly of this book that she wrote the foreword for it--it's hard to get a better recommendation than that!