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  • 14 ways to learn faster

    14 ways to learn faster

    All of us want to get as much knowledge as possible in the shortest period of time feasible. However, we all know that life gets in the way. We have responsibilities at work, at home, and with our friends and family. We’re left with very little time to learn new things when we take into account all the other demands on our time. Even if it appears to be fine, learning has a number of advantages, including the ability to increase one’s degree of creativity and intelligence. Reduce your time spent studying by following these simple steps. Find out how to do this in the next paragraphs!

    The Value of Education

    What’s the use of learning if you don’t need it? Learning improves your intelligence, develops your creativity, and can help you acquire new abilities that will be useful in the workplace.

    To be successful, it’s important to keep learning new things. Those who are gifted in the arts tend to be lifelong learners by definition. In order to keep their brains busy and prevent boredom, creative people spend a lot of time learning about new things.

    Rainbow chalk on black. @ Unsplash

    14 Quick Tips for Increasing Your Learning Speed

    What’s the most efficient approach to learn? These five strategies can help you spend less time learning:

    First, take care of any pressing matters that need to be dealt with. If your supervisor is in a hurry, you should prioritize that task over everything else.

    2) Decide on the next step in your education. Determine what information is most essential to you and use it to your advantage! Go through all of the possibilities until you have just one left.

    3) Set aside an hour each day to study something new. How much time would it take you to learn 30 hours of new skills or information by spending an hour each day?

    4)When anything is unclear, seek clarification by asking questions. It’s common for people to give up too quickly when they don’t comprehend something and miss out on the opportunity to get a deeper knowledge.

    5)One of the best strategies to study more in less time is to narrow your focus. Make a list of the three to five issues that are most essential to you, and then focus on those three. As soon as this is done, set a daily learning goal for yourself. Make a choice between two topics and establish a target for how much information you want to obtain this week on the other topic. Then, sketch out or write out your knowledge objective so that you can see it clearly.

    6) Take advantage of any chance that presents itself, as well. Although it may be difficult at first, these changes become second nature after a few weeks or months of implementing them. Take advantage of every chance by reading an article on a topic you’re interested in instead of monitoring your social media for 10 minutes before work. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t spend your downtime effectively and prepare yourself ahead of time with relevant articles or videos!

    If we can’t find any more time, then we ought to spend the time we have more efficiently. We can substitute reading a book on your Kindle app for watching TV and utilize that time for homework instead (like doing research).

    As an alternative, we may use free internet resources like TED Talks or Khan Academy videos to get great knowledge while without incurring any expense.

    7 )Try to find a method to have fun while studying.

    The greatest way to learn anything is to have fun with it! As if you’re studying for an exam, it might be difficult to stay concentrated. Take some time out of your day to explore something new and exciting that piques your curiosity. Take up knitting, join a reading club, or look for an online instruction on how to utilize an app to get started.

    The interior of Stadsbiblioteket in Stockholm – Gunnar Asplunds library from 1928. The architecture is a transition between neoclassicism and functionalism. @ Unsplash

    8) You can learn in spurts, too.

    Every day, set aside 15-30 minutes of time to work on something different. As a result, you won’t have to spend a lot of time learning new things. When done regularly, even 10 minutes may make a difference.

    9) To keep yourself going, find a strategy to keep yourself inspired

    What works for one person may not work for another, so find what works for you and stick with it. Try out a few different approaches to find which one works best for you.

    10) Make a list of your objectives.

    What are your interests? Identify all of your passions and focus on only one of them at a time. It’s never too late to add new items!

    It’s all too easy to become stuck in a rut of squandering hours on end without seeing any results. When it comes to education, this is especially true, as we strive to learn more in less time. Setting objectives and making them reachable is the best method to deal with this.

    Determine how much time you have to devote to a certain project, and then create goals accordingly. Your daily reading goal might be as simple as reading 10 pages if you just have an hour to spare. Your daily page count would be 20 if you had two hours to spare each day. As a rule of thumb, don’t set yourself up for failure by setting unrealistic expectations for yourself.

    11) Enlist the assistance of a knowledgeable mentor.

    Finding a mentor or an expert in the subject can help you learn faster, whether your goal is to become an excellent public speaker or to improve your marketing strategy. What would it be like if you didn’t get scared when speaking in front of people? What about being able to speak confidently about your company’s most recent marketing campaign? What a difference it makes to work alongside someone who has more experience and expertise than you have!

    12) Videos are a great way to learn new things.

    Coursera.org and Udemy.com are good places to look for online courses that may be taken at your convenience. If you’re looking to improve your company website’s content, these sites provide lessons on a wide range of topics. And the greatest thing is that you may access these classes whenever you choose, day or night.

    13) Look for materials that are tailored to your individual need,.

    Learning becomes even more efficient with the correct materials! You should not go for general site design or marketing recommendations if you are looking for materials on WordPress development, for example. You may avoid wasting your time by narrowing down your search parameters to the most relevant results.

    14) Make efficient use of available technologies.

    So why not take advantage of everything that technology has to offer when it comes to saving time? Apps like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone or Mondly are excellent resources for learning a new language or other skills more quickly and effectively.

    Don’t stop learning, no matter how you’re doing.

  • How To Choose The Best Materials For Learning Something New: A Guide

    How To Choose The Best Materials For Learning Something New: A Guide

    Introduction:

    When you start learning something, you have a big problem. Not only you know nothing about the topic, but you don´t even know anything about the sources for learning. 

    How to choose the best sources for learning?

    When it comes to learning something new, one of the most important decisions you need to make is what material to use. There are many different materials out there, and it can be difficult to decide which is the best for you.

    1: Books

    2: Videos

    3: Articles

    4: Audio Files

    5: Online Courses

    6: Social Media

    7: Personal Tutors

    The best material for learning something new depends on your learning style and preferences. There are many different materials out there, so you should experiment until you find the one that works best for you.

    Anyway I would say that books are better for something that is purely mental, as are articles or audio files. If it is something having to do with computers or the internet you can use videos or online courses. If you want to learn a sport or something that depends heavily on the use of your body you should search a personal tutor, not one only but in real life. 

    love to learn pencil signage on wall near walking man

    How to find the best in each category

    The best way is to ask a friend that knows a lot about the subject that you are trying to learn. If you don’t know anyone that can help you, you can search on the internet for reviews of different learning materials or even better for a list of the best resources to learn about a topic. 

    Ok so let´s say that you want to choose books, which are the most traditional way to learn something. 

    How to choose the best books on a topic?

    There is no foolproof answer, but here are five general tips to help you choose the best books on a topic:

    1. Look for books that are well-reviewed.

    2. Look for books that are written by experts in the field.

    3. Look for books that are up-to-date.

    4. Look for books that are comprehensive.

    5. Look for books that are easy to  understand

    How to decide if a book is worth reading?

    There are a few things to consider when deciding if a book is worth reading. One, is the book interesting? Two, is the book well written? And three, is the book relevant to your interests? If the answer to all these questions is yes, then the book is most likely worth reading. However, if the answer to any of these questions is no, then the book may not be worth your time.

    Conclusion: 

    Choosing the best path for learning is not easy at all, but doing it right will pay off. You will save a lot of time and pain in the long run. So take your time. 

     

  • Why kids may learn better than adults

    Why kids may learn better than adults

    A new study found that youngsters learn better than adults because they explore more than adults.
    According to the study, when people try something new and have a negative experience, they are less inclined to try it again.
    “That may appear to be the most fundamental type of intelligence—even rats avoid a path that leads to a shock,” said Dr. Alison Gopnik, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, one of the study’s co-authors.
    “We will never learn that the world is more complicated than that,” she said, if adults reject new ideas immediately after experiencing a negative outcome.

    woman, kid, rain
    Photo by sasint on Pixabay

    According to the study, youngsters have a strong curiosity and drive to explore, which helps them to learn so many new things in such a short period of time.
    She collaborated with NYU cognitive scientist Emily Liquin on a study to examine if young children’s drive to explore more than adults affects the way they learn.
    They gave 64 young children (ages four and five) and 87 adults a game in which they placed different blocks on a machine with one rule: if the machine lights up, they receive a prize consisting of a star, but if it doesn’t, they lose twice as much.
    The goal of the game was to discover that all of the blocks worked except those with white spots (in other words, the ones with black spots were fine).
    The majority of the youngsters correctly identified the rule, although more than 70% of adults did not, but it came at a cost: The children were given fewer stars.
    She refers to it as a “learning trap” experiment, and it demonstrates that adults tend to leap to conclusions too fast, whereas children are more willing to research and absorb more information before making a judgment.
    According to the article, the study has a significant limitation in that it only compared four to seven-year-olds to adults in the United States. Because cultural differences may also influence how children learn, further research is needed to generalize it to a larger population and situation.
    “We adults are frequently so quick to exploit that we don’t explore, so afraid of losing stars that we miss out on learning something new,” Gopnik explains.
    “Children, on the other hand, are natural explorers willing to give up stars for the sake of knowledge. Both ways of thinking are necessary for life, but we adults could learn a thing or two from those insatiably curious kids “She went on.

  • spaced repetition

    spaced repetition

     

    what is spaced repetition?

    There is no skill more important that learning how to learn. That´s why you need to do it in the best way possible. 

    One of the best proven ways to learn something is through spaced repetition

    But what is spaced repetition?

    Spaced repetition means that if you have an information that you want to remember (for instance a poem) instead of using all your studying hours in the first day, you distribute those hours over a period of time. Instead of dedicating 4 hours the first day, you can dedicate one hour the first day, another two days later, another one week later, and one more in two weeks. 

    So it basically means studying a particular information in split sessions. 

    ​​

    why does spaced repetition works?

    Your brain is not  a computer

    You have probably heard that our brain is like a computer. Well, sorry… it is not. Memory does not work like a computer. You don´t store information in a place and retrieve it at will. 

    A “memory” doesn’t exist in any one place in the brain, but is an emergent feature of many different parts of the brain firing in a certain way. When we learn something, it isn’t stored in a single location, but is instantly scattered across many different regions of the brain.

    Neurons that fire together stick together has been said. Memories that are used stay. Memories that are not used fade away. 

    The forgetting curve

    In the end of the XIX century, a psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus systematically studied  memory by memorizing lists of nonsensical syllables and then recording how many times he studied each list, the time intervals between his study sessions, and how much he was able to remember. 

    The forgetting curve shows how the ability to remember information decays with time. 

    But that decay is not unstappable. You can prevent it by reviewing the information. That is precisely what spaced repetition tries to accomplish. 

    how to implement spaced repetition without software?

    We will see later how you can implement spaced repetition with software. But you can make it work in the offline work too. 

    One way to do it is the Leitner system

    You set a number of stages. Each stage is represented by a box. 

    Every card starts out in Box 1. When you get it right, you sent it to the next box. If you get a card wrong, it goes all the way back to Box 1 – no matter where it was. This is the way to be sure that you study the most challenging things. 
    The last box is the end. Cards that arrive there are considered learned. 

    how to implement spaced repetition with software?

    The most popular app for spaced repetition is Anki. Anki is free unless you use an iphone. In that case it costs 24.99. 

    Anki lets you create virtual cards with information. You can review them and every time you do it, decide whether you have answered correctly ( in which case it will be reviewed in a longer time) or you have not ( shortening the time tll the next review )

    Not only that, you can also add images and links to the cards to make them more easy to remember. 

    You can download Anki here: https://apps.ankiweb.net/

    Studies showing that spaced repetition works

    There are many studies showing that spaced repetition works. 

    Herbert J. Spitzer began investigating the influence of content and test spacing on recall and retention in 1939. Although his findings were promising, they were not addressed by others for more than a generation.

    Jumping ahead to 1989, in the Educational Psychology Survey, Frank N. Dempster presented a review of the scholarly literature. He examined almost 100 research. The weight of data showed that spaced repetition is a “highly effective way of enhancing learning [in] a range of situations and across many materials and procedures,” he said.

    1991: Spaced repetition works well with students of all ages.
    A study team at Villanova University in the United States conducted a two-part spaced learning experiment.

    Part I focused on young children (preschoolers, first graders, and third graders). They discovered that when the “spacing between repeats grew,” so did recollection. The impact, however, was unrelated to age. The spacing between repeats was more important than age.

    This team used college students in Part II of their study to conduct a spaced learning experiment. The outcomes were the same.

    What was their conclusion? “Spaced-repetition effects in recognition are created by fundamental memory processes that are active at a very young age and undergo little development.” In layperson’s terms, spaced repetition (or dispersed practice) improves recollection for people of all ages.

    Moving forward to 2016, distributed practice can help your business save money.
    Organizations, according to researcher Sean Kang (Dartmouth University, USA), should leverage on spaced repetition.

    According to Kang, spaced practice “may be a cost-effective method.” This is because more material is kept in the same length of time. As a consequence, learners spend less time relearning forgotten content, allowing them to devote more time to other productive learning tasks.

    Distributed practice, in general, “improves the efficacy (effectiveness) and efficiency of learning.”

    2017: Age and aim dependent effects of spaced repetition
    While dispersed practice works for everyone, the outcomes vary depending on the age of the person and the job being taught.

    Christopher D. Smith and Damian Scarf (University of Otago, New Zealand) discovered that spaced repetition is more efficient for teaching skills than language to adults. Having stated that, this instructional method enhances learning generalization for all ages.

    Brain Boost with Spaced Repetition

    2019: Discovering the Reasons Why Spaced Repetition Works
    A team of researchers from Beijing Normal University in China analyzed scalp EEG data to gain a picture of the biological foundation for spaced repetition’s efficacy.

    The researchers used spatiotemporal pattern similarity to evaluate the scalp EEG data (STPS). Spatiotemporal data analysis examines information in a specific place (spatio) during a certain time period (temporal). Large amounts of data may be examined in this way to uncover patterns using powerful computing units.

    According to the findings, “greater item-specific STPS in the right frontal electrodes at 543–727 ms following stimulus initiation was linked with improved memory performance.” More crucially, under the spaced-learning condition, this STPS was greater than under the massed-learning condition.

    In layman’s terms, electrical activity occurs in the brain during learning. The right frontal region of the brain showed substantial activity 543–727 milliseconds after the learning period began, according to this study. This exercise improved content retention, and spaced repetition raised the intensity of this activity.

    Data illustrating how successful spaced repetition may be by 2020
    The University of Leicester in the United Kingdom wants to look at the quantitative impact of dispersed practice.

    They created a one-of-a-kind online application. The software may tailor a physics study material repetition timetable for each learner. Students may choose between a spaced repetition timetable and a massed repetition timetable, or they could choose not to use the app at all.

    Here are the outcomes:

    Students who chose space repetition had an adjusted mean exam score of 70%.
    Those who favoured massed usage scored 64 percent on the adjusted mean exam.
    Students who did not utilize the app at all had a 61 percent adjusted mean exam score.
    According to the findings of the study, students who studied using spaced repetition performed the highest on tests.

    Overall…
    Spaced repetition (or dispersed practice) is a tried-and-true teaching technique backed up by more than 80 years of study.

    Distributed practice is a cost-effective alternative to massed practice since it enhances student retention in the same amount of study time.

    It is appropriate for students of all ages. It is more suited to skill training than language acquisition for adults.

    As researchers dig more into this instrument, they discover that it stimulates neurological (brain) activity, which improves learning.

  • Elaborative interrogation

    Elaborative interrogation

    Kids are constantly inquisitive about why things are the way they are, and they appear to be learning. Is this a viable strategy?

    This is referred to as elaborative interrogation.

    Detailed interrogation

    Elaborate questioning is a technique for improving memory. After reading or listening to the material, the learner produces questions. Then he attempts to come up with solutions that define the cause-and-effect relationship between the subject (sky) and predicate (blue). This engages students in an active learning process.

    The typical suspects are the main questions asked. why? who? when? what? and in what way?

    “Why do a tree’s leaves fall throughout the winter?” for example. or “What causes the leaves to fall throughout the winter?” The elaboration approach employed here assists in explaining the link that exists in the supplied information between the subject (leaves) and the predicate (fall during winter). As a result, the clarifying link seen is primarily based on recollection. However, it is unclear what specific prior information is necessary. Some researchers place a premium on topic expertise, while others place a premium on understanding the abstract aspects of the data.

    question mark, important, sign @ Pixabay

    Is elaborative interrogation effective?

    In a well-known 2013 research comparing the effectiveness of various study strategies, elaborative questioning was shown to be effective, although commonly used tactics such as highlighting and rereading fared better. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

    What makes elaborative interrogation effective?

    Elaborative interrogation works by building a link between the new information used to generate questions and the old knowledge used to generate replies.

    As you link new information to old, your mental structure becomes more solidified, making it more difficult to forget.

    Elaborative inquiry vs. self-explanation

    Self-explanation is another approach that has been frequently employed. Is self-explanation preferable to in-depth interrogation?

    One research (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) looked at the efficiency of two learning methods for remembering scientific facts: self-explanation and elaborative questioning. University students (N = 55) were given three options for learning knowledge about the cardiovascular system. Participants in the self-explanation task were asked to describe what the information meant to them and how they connected to their past knowledge. Participants in the in-depth interrogation explained “why” the facts made sense. Finally, the control group merely read out loud the information. On measures of cued recall and recognition, self-explanation individuals outperformed elaborative interrogation and repetition control participants considerably. Repeated interrogation was no more effective than detailed interrogation.

    Despite the fact that this study contradicts elaborative interrogation, it may also be taken to mean that it is the explanation, not the query, that causes learning to stick.

  • The world

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  • States of the United States

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  • Learning, but how

    During all our lifes we struggle to learn.

    Sometimes we do it because we are forced to, like in the school.

    Sometimes we do it out of necessity, like when your car does not start and you have to learn how to make it work.

    Some other times we do it because we want to.

    But we do not dedicate enough time to learn how to learn. And that is maybe the most important thing we need to learn in our life.

    That is what we want to do in this web: Show you how to learn, and how to make it as efficient as possible.

    Come with us. Learning is our passion.