Learning Effectively: Science, Insights and Techniques

Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the geni... See more

Epistemic actions are actions in the physical environment taken with the intent of gathering information or facilitating cognition.

A tradeoff occurs every time you get feedback. You become slightly more mainstream, slightly more aligned with the zeitgeist. You become marginally more of an exploiter than an explorer , standing on the shoulders of the giants who conceived the paradigm you’re striving to build upon. This is very effective when you want to align your work with oth... See more

One of the best ways I’ve found to organize one’s thoughts about a huge swath of intellectual and creative space, is to write a syllabus.

There is a lot of evidence suggesting that students learn best and more quickly through asset-based approaches. Meyer’s expertise is in math, but the same is true in writing and I am a dedicated practitioner of working from a base of what students already know and can do, the most notable skill being thinking . Everyone can think, but a huge propor... See more

An asset-based approach to teaching asks, “What ideas do these students have ?” rather than “What ideas do these students lack?”

Learning means being able to use new information. The basic process of learning consists of reflection and feedback. We learn facts and concepts through reflecting on experience—our own or others’. If you read something and you don’t make time to think about what you’ve read, you won’t be able to use any of the wisdom you’ve been exposed to.