 How Can I Become a Better
Learner?
- Your brain is a little bit like a muscle.
If you exercise it, it will grow and become more powerful. If you
don’t exercise your brain, then it will become limp and of little use.
- Why would I want to become a better learner?
- Quick learners who are flexible and adaptable in
their thinking and their ability to use information and their brains
for problem solving, are more successful people and often get to enjoy
more of the freedoms that success can allow. Look, there will
always be a need for someone to flip burgers, but flipping burgers at
minimum wage won’t allow you many of the opportunities and freedoms you
will want in life.
- It’s really a pretty simple concept:
Exercise your brain and get more out of life!
Are there Different
Kinds of Learners? (adapted from
MathPower.com http://www.mathpower.com/brain.htm)
- Yes! We all have different learning
styles. Our brain consists of two sides, that while connected,
usually function separately and differently. Just like some
people are right handed, and some left handed, learners can sometimes
be separated intol eft brain learners and right brain learners.
- An important factor in understanding learning
styles is understanding brain functioning. Both sides of the brain can
reason, but by different strategies. and one side may be dominant.
- Left Brain. The left brain is considered
analytic in approach while the right is described as holistic or
global. A successive processor (left brain) prefers to learn in a
step-by-step sequential format, beginning with details leading to a
conceptual understanding of a skill. Sometimes referred to as an
analytic learner.
- Right Brain. A simultaneous processor (right
brain) prefers to learn beginning with the general concept and then
going on to specifics. Sometimes referred to as a global or
holistic learner.
- People think and learn in different ways. In any
group there will always be evidence of different learning
characteristics, but different cultural groups may emphasize one
cognitive style over another. A. Hilliard describes "learning style" as
the sum of the patterns of how individuals develop habitual ways of
responding to experience and distinguishes learning styles by
considering the holistic vs. the analytic learner.
Which
type of Learner are you?
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LEFT
(Analytic)
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RIGHT
(Global)
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Successive
Hemispheric Style
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Simultaneous
Hemispheric Style
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1. Verbal
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1. Visual
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2. Responds to word
meaning
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2. Responds to tone of
voice
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3. Sequential
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3. Random
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4. Processes information
linearly
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4. Processes information
in varied order
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5. Responds to logic
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5. Responds to emotion
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6. Plans ahead
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6. Impulsive
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7. Recalls people's names
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7. Recalls people's faces
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8. Speaks with few
gestures
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8. Gestures when speaking
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9. Punctual
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9. Less punctual
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10. Prefers formal study
design
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10. Prefers sound/music
background while studying
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11. Prefers bright
lights while studying
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11. Prefers frequent
mobility while studying
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What are Study Skills?
- Study Skills are ways by which you can learn to
improve the manner, effieciency and effectiveness of your
learning. Below you will find an article that includes 17
techniques for faster learning.
- Additionally, in the Online Resources section at
the bottom of the pages are listed some excellent resources from
various universities that will help you better understand and improve
your learning abilities. The information contained in those links
is far too vast to include on this page - although I wish I could!
- If you take nothing else away from the
Kids-in-Crisis website, then PLEASE go to those links and work through
the VERY VALUABLE learning information contained there!!!
PLEASE! Also, we've included several links about our brain and
spinal cord. They are well worth looking over!
17 Techniques for Faster
Learning
- 1.
Read material that requires thinking – particularly biographies,
news magazines and newspapers. Read a non-fiction book for 20 minutes
each day. Carry reading material with you for when you can turn dead
time into learning time, even if only for a few minutes. Read the best
of the mystery novels and try to keep one step ahead of the detectives.
Get a quality dictionary and read the meaning of five new words a day,
for 10 days.
- 2. Write
– research has shown geniuses from history, such as Sir Isaac Newton,
Thomas Jefferson and Johann Sebastian Bach were compulsive scribblers.
They all recorded thoughts and feelings in diaries, poems, and letters
to friends and family, starting from an early age. Researchers have
observed this tendency not only in budding writers, but in generals,
statesmen, and scientists.
- 3. Learn
to love math – you don’t live in a vacuum, you actually function
in the real world and use math everyday. You use it in school, manage
to keep down a job, balance your bank account, use credit cards and pay
taxes. Yet you consider you’re hopeless at math. Be consoled by the
fact that a grasp of mathematics has less to do with your intelligence
than your eduction. If you don’t understand the basic principles of
math, you were probably badly taught somewhere along the way. The
problem with many people is that after they get past the age at which
they should have learned something, they become embarrassed if they
haven’t and therefore back away from anything and everything involved
with it. They feel that they’ve been left too far behind and that
catching up is too big a task. Familiarity with mathematics will expand
your power, make your intellect stronger, and be of immense help in
using logic, which is itself of immense help in life. Like language,
mathematics is something agreed upon in communication. If
you need help understanding any area of math, please do yourself a
favor and go to AAA Math which
provides free, online, interactive arithmetic exercises and problems
for grades K to 8. Additionally, you can find many other links by
searching for "basic math" on a Search Engine like Hotbot or Google.
- 4. Stop
watching TV – go and see a play, attend a concert or visit the
library. We’ve grown up, most of us, trained to the artificially fast
tempo of TV. Even the best of the children’s programming, the most
serious of the television documentaries, and the most professional news
programs cover far too much in far too short a time. Television is
ingrained in most of us, we’ve grown up with it. BUT if you are serious
about wanting to think better, and especially if you want to lengthen
and strengthen your attention span, at least do it with a little
control. Get out the TV guide, look through it like a menu and form a
conscious decision about what you’re going to put into your mind this
week. Then only turn on the TV for those programs. Debate a documentary
program, after watching it with your friend or partner. Or think
through the arguments and see f you can see other angles/perspectives.
Snacking on junk programs is as bad for your mind as chips are for your
body.
- 5. Play
games – like chess or Scrabble or other word board games. Any
game that requires you to use strategy, to project yourself into future
time, to think ahead several moves, and to try to outguess and
out-think your opponent.
- 6. Set
yourself goals – set a personal development goal of gaining
knowledge in a specific field on a particular topic. Tell your friends
and family so they can encourage you.
- 7. Learn
to mind map – a natural way to organize information, according
to the experts. The brainchild of Tony Buzan, a British brain expert,
mind mapping begins with the notion that the mind does not work in a
linear, straightforward fashion. It works in images, strings of
associations, in tangents, loops and strange juxtapositions. Buzan
claims that, almost unnoticed, mind mapping activates your entire brain
– including the 90 percent that most of us neglect. It is designed to
integrate the right brain’s creativity with the left brain’s sense of
order and attention to detail. Click on the link for more
information on Mind Mapping.
- 8. Be
creative – everyone has creativity inside them. Look at children
– they can sing, dance, play musical instruments and paint wonderful
pictures! It doesn’t matter that you’ll never appear at the Carnegie
Hall, Royal Albert Hall or exhibit at the Lourve – just enjoy it!
- 9. Find
out what’s going on in the world – make a conscious effort to
learn more about a country or people you know nothing about. Watch and
listen to current affairs programs on TV and radio. Read world
newspapers and newsmagazines, readily available in libraries and on the
Internet. Learn who the major statespeople are in countries around the
world and find out more about different political systems.
- 10. Go for a
walk – Fresh air has a wonderful invigorating effect on the mind
as well as the body!
- 11. Adopt the
attitude that learning is a life-long process – use it or lose
it. Sign up for a course at your local college, there are hundreds of
courses to chose from. There will probably be more than one you’ll want
to do. It can be purely for your own pleasure or for further
qualifications. Whatever age you are there’s always something for you.
The thrill of being with like-minded people is a joy in itself. Of
course you don’t have to join a college, there are lots of things you
can do at home.
- 12.
Improve your problem solving skills – start solving problems
your way, which means the one most comfortable to you and the way you
usually handle things. For example are you a verbal person? If you
approach problems with words, then get out your dictionary and
thesaurus and bolster your arguments with the most convincing and
appropriate words you can find. Do you have a tendency to call upon a
higher authority to bolster your claims? Look through your encyclopedia
and find the pertinent articles to back up your argument with facts.
Are you somebody who makes lists and writes things down? Then draw up
the neatest and most concise list of arguments in your favour. Make
sure you list them in descending order of importance. The next step is
to start solving the same problems in an unfamiliar and
uncharacteristic way to you.For example, if you’re comfortable writing
things down, take the verbal approach instead. If you’re somebody who
always cites authority, make a written list without consulting anybody
else, in books or otherwise. The purpose of these exercises is not only
to strengthen the insight mechanism you already have, but to give you
glimpses of other useful methods that might work for you.
- 13. Ask
questions – lots of them, take nothing at face value. Don’t be a
passenger in life. Don’t merely follow somebody else’s directions. The
directions may be excellent, but they’re not yours. At some point,
you’ve got to do it yourself, go off on your own and under your own
steam. When someone discusses something unfamiliar to you, ask him or
her to explain. The only silly question is the one you didn’t ask.
- 14. Yogic
breathing techniques – researchers at the University of
California, San Diego, have found that yogic breathing techniques can
actually improve the way our brains work. When you are working with
words and logic, your left brain tends to be more active; when you are
handling images or music, your right is more involved. In fact, we all
have a natural two-hour cycle of switching between the sides. However,
one of the ways to interrupt the cycle is to breathe through only one
nostril – the left makes your right brain dominant vice versa. So to
fine-tune your brain for a particular task, just close off the
appropriate nostril and breathe strongly through the
other.
- 15. Think
positive – recent research suggests that emotion and
intelligence are intimately linked. Most psychologists stress the
importance of having a positive outlook, but that depends on what you
want to do. The upside of being down is that you have a more realistic
view of yourself and what is likely to happen. For example, too much
realism may be a serious drawback when you are pushing through a tricky
new project; on the other hand, if you’ve got to read something
carefully and make detailed assessment, wearing rose-coloured
spectacles will make you fare more prone to mistakes.
- 16. Eat
clever food – oily fish (tuna, salmon, sardines). These contain
essential fatty acids which make up 70 per cent of the brain. Zinc
(fish, meat and seeds) are used in the metabolism of proteins.
Serotonin and tryptophan (turkeys, bananas, and tomatoes). These are
amino acids which transmit messages across the brain. Two cups of
coffee, surprisingly, makes people calmer and able to concentrate more
efficiently at tasks requiring hand-eye co-ordination. Among the not
very clever foods are food additives, fizzy drinks, and too much sugar.
These can cause hyperactivity, followed by a slump in blood sugar
levels, which leads to a loss of memory and a short attention span.
Alcohol, in excess, prevents the body absorbing vital nutrients. An
extract of the leaves of the Ginkgo Biloba tree increases the blood
flow to the brain and speeds up messages between nerve cells. Could it
boost your intelligence? Some researchers believe it will. The memory
and attention-span of people with Alzheimer’s has been greatly improved
by using a chemical called Acetyl-1-Carnitine, which is found in
several common foods, including milk. Other candidates include
hydergine, which comes from a fungus that grows on rye, and may
stimulate cell growth. Vassopressin is a hormone diabetics use and many
claim it has startling effect on memory and thinking. Choline is a form
of brain chemical that helps cells communicate, and some believe it
improves memory.
- 17.
Communicate better – which means giving up slang and cliche
ridden speech. Slang merely takes the place of more accurately
descriptive words, and if you don’t allow them into your everyday
speech, you’ve got to come up with the real words to say what you mean.
Cliches are tired shortcuts around good vocabulary, taking the place of
sharper, more original, more intelligent speech. Since words are the
building blocks of thought, avoiding cliches in speech will force you
to avoid them in thinking. Having a powerful vocabulary is using the
right word to get the desired result. Long, unfamiliar words only
confuse and frustrate receivers of your messages.
Are there limits to how
much we can learn?
- Each of us possess a thinking machine vastly
superior to our feeble conscious minds. There is no practical limit to
the amount of information you can put into your brain. You can take
advantage of its vast capacity to soak up knowledge by pursuing any
topic that interests you. You can learn anything you want. But what is
it that gets in our way?
- We are our own worst enemy sometimes. One of the
biggest drags on our intelligence and learning ability is what we
secretly believe about ourselves. We all have a little voice in our
head that says: “Don’t be too smart, no one will like you”. Or, “No one
in our family has ever been good at math.” One of the first steps to
improving your intelligence is to get rid of all those negative
thoughts implanted by parents, teachers and schoolmates.
Keeping up with the Mozarts,
the Einsteins and the da
Vincis. What have they got that we haven't?
- Despite all this awesome computing power in our
heads, most of us are hard put to multiply two-digit figures without
resorting to a calculator, while even fewer can manage the daily
crossword puzzle or remember what they had for dinner last Wednesday.
Only the Mozarts, the Einsteins and the da Vincis seem to use their
brainpower efficiently (and the evidence shows that even they employ
but a fraction of their intellect). So stupendous do their talents seem
to the rest of us that we look upon such geniuses much as the ancients
did – as divinely gifted beings endowed with what appear to be
supernatural powers.
- Well, put it this way, there’s hope for us yet.
Seldom do geniuses distinguish themselves early in life. Many are
labelled difficult, slow or even stupid. The mathematician Henri
Poincare did so poorly in an IQ test that he was judged an ‘imbecile’.
Thomas Edison, whose record 1,093 patents outstripped every inventor in
history and transformed human life, was notoriously slow in school.
“My
father thought I
was stupid,” Edison later recalled, “and I almost decided I must be a
dunce.”
As
a child, Albert
Einstein, too, appeared deficient to his elders, partly due to his
dyslexia, which caused him great difficulty in speech and reading. His
poor language skills provoked his Greek teacher to tell him, “You will
never amount to anything.” Einstein was later expelled from high school
and failed his college entrance exam. After finally completing his
bachelor’s degree, he failed to attain either an academic appointment
or a recommendation from his professors. Forced to accept a lowly job
in the Swiss patent office, Einstein in his mid-twenties seemed
destined for a life of mediocrity.
But
in his
twenty-sixth year – Eureka! Einstein published his Special Theory of
Relativity – which contained his famous formula, E = mc2 – in the
summer of 1905. Sixteen years later, he had won a Nobel prize and
become an international celebrity. Even today his bushy moustache and
shock of silver hair remain the quintessential image of “genius”.
- Einstein’s brain is missing
When
Einstein died in
1955, the pathologist removed and kept his brain, without permission
from Einstein’s family. For the next 40 years he studied it under
microscope and dispensed small chunks to other researchers upon
request. He wanted to uncover the secret of Einstein’s genius.
He
never did find
anything. But in the early 1980s, one of his colleagues, Marian Diamond
a neuroanatomist at the University of California, announced an amazing
discovery – one that was to revolutionize ideas about learning and
genius.
Most
people assume
that geniuses are born, not made. But Diamond has devoted her career to
creating genius in the laboratory. In one famous experiment, she placed
rats in a super-stimulating environment, complete with swings, ladders,
treadmills, and other toys. Other rats were confined to bare cages.
Those rats who lived in the high stimulus environment not only lived to
the age of three (the rate equivalent of 90 in a human), but their
brains increased in size, sprouting forests of new connections between
nerve cells in the form of dendrites and axons – spindly, branch-like
structures that transmit electrical signals from one nerve cell (or
neutron) to another. The rats who lived in bare cages stagnated and
died younger. Their brains had fewer cellular connections.
In
1911, Santiago
Ramon y Cajal, the father of neuroanatomy, had found that the number of
interconnections between neurons (called synapses) was the real measure
of genius, far more crucial in determining brainpower than the sheet
number of neurons. Diamond’s experiment showed that – at least in rats
– the physical mechanism of genius could be created through mental
exercise.
But
did this apply to
people? Diamond wanted to find out. She obtained sections of Einstein’s
brain and examined them. As she expected, she found an increased number
of glial cells in Einstein’s left parietal lobe – a kind of
neurological switching station that Diamond described as an
“association area for other association areas in the brain”. Glial
cells act as a glue holding the other nerve cells together, and also
help transfer electrochemical signals between neurons. Diamond expected
them because she had also found high concentrations of glial cells in
the brains of her enriched rates. Their presence in Einstein’s brain
suggested that a similar enrichment process was at work.
Use it or Lose it!
Unlike neurons – which do not reproduce after birth – glial cells,
axons, and dendrites can increase in number throughout life, depending
on how you use your brain. Diamond’s work suggested that the more we
learn, the more such connections are formed. Likewise, when we cease
learning and our minds stagnate, these connections shrivel and dwindle
away.
If
Einstein’s brain worked anything like the brains of Diamond’s rats, it
may be possible to create new Einsteins by providing sufficiently
stimulating mental exercise. Einstein believed that you could
stimulate ingenious thought
by allowing your imagination to float freely, unrestrained by
conventional inhibitions.
Motivation
is central
to this. Only those who are really motivated
apply themselves hard mentally. Motivation is part of cognitive
intelligence, and may determine the quality and quantity of mental
capacity. Studies show that adults
who use their intelligence actively do increase in intelligence.
Your memory – your
ability both to memorize new information and to
recall information you have already learned – has increased
dramatically. Your ability to think creatively, to solve problems, has
expanded. The speed with which your brain cells pass messages among
themselves has increased. In fact, many of your brain cells have
actually grown – a microscopic examination would show that the brain
cells have developed more dendrites (remember, the rats and
Einstein).
You are more intelligent than you were a half hour before.
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