1. Discover Your Learning Style
We all learn differently. There are four popular learning styles: visual, auditory and reading/writing (verbal), and kinesthetic. Observe yourself and your previous learning experiences to figure out your learning style. Alternatively, do a learning style assessment. We have uploaded one in the resources for Session 1.
2. Learning Via Your Style | DJ Cunningham | TEDxYouth@Toronto
Listen to the journey of DJ Cunningham through military training, where he learned how he learned. He discovered that he learns visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically, while schooling teaches primarily through sequential reading/writing. By discovering his learning style, he was able to overcome his challenges at school – due to his dyslexia – by using learning styles that worked for him.
3. Barbara Oakley, How Neuroscience Is Changing What We Know about Learning
The more we practice what we learn, the stronger and thicker are the neural links. In addition, good sleep aids strong neural links. Exercise further enables neurons to make these links. Learning takes time, just like muscular development in physical fitness. It needs active engagement to transfer new knowledge from working memory to the long term memory.
4. Paying Attention & Mindfulness | Sam Chase | TEDxNYU
Conscious attention is a precious resource that we must nurture. Our brain is bombarded with 11 million bits of information, while only 60 bits of information are what the conscious brain processes. The rest is processed by “parts of the brain that are operating largely unconsciously…” So we take this small sliver of 60 bits of conscious attention and then spread it out over several tasks, which makes the mind preoccupied with quick judgments and building stories around events and things.
Mindfulness is being “interested in what the present moment has to say for itself”, and “a little bit less caught up in what we have to say about it.” The practice of mindfulness builds conscious attention as well as greater compassion, more altruism, making us more open, available and socially connected.