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You Probably Believe Some Learning Myths: Take Our Quiz To Find Out
NPR: This blog post has some pretty useful information. So print it out; get out your highlighter and take off the cap. Ready? Now throw it away, because highlighters don't really help people learn. We all want for our kids to have optimal learning experiences and, for ourselves, to stay competitive with lifelong learning. But how well do you think you understand what good learning looks like? Ulrich Boser says, probably not very well. His new research on learning shows that the public is largely ignorant of, well, research on learning. Boser runs the science of learning initiative at the left-leaning thinktank the Center for American Progress.
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Reclaim Your Commute
Harvard Business Review: Every day, millions of people around the world face long commutes to work. In the United States alone, approximately 25 million workers spend more than 90 minutes each day getting to and from their jobs, and about 600,000 “mega-commuters” travel at least 90 minutes each way, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the United Kingdom, the average round-trip commute takes 54 minutes (up from 45 minutes in 2003), and in most of the world’s major cities, from Milan to Manila, it’s over an hour. And yet few people enjoy their commutes.
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Why You Shouldn’t Ask For an Opinion
The New York Times: Behavioral Scientist and “Pre-Suasion” Author Robert Cialdini shared at The New York Times’s New Work Summit the best way to get buy-in from potential collaborators. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Could Solving This One Problem Solve All the Others?
Freakonomics: Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Could Solving This One Problem Solve All the Others?” The biggest problem with humanity is humans themselves. Too often, we make choices — what we eat, how we spend our money and time — that undermine our well-being. An all-star team of academic researchers thinks it has the solution: perfecting the science of behavior change. Will it work? Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript. Read the whole story: Freakonomics
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A California Court for Young Adults Calls on Science
The New York Times: On a cloudy afternoon in the Bayview district, Shaquille, 21, was riding in his sister’s 1991 Acura when another car ran a stop sign, narrowly missing them. Both cars screeched to a halt, and Shaquille and the other driver got out. “I just wanted to talk,” he recalls. But the talk became an argument, and the argument ended when Shaquille sent the other driver to the pavement with a left hook. Later that day, he was arrested and charged with felony assault. He already had a misdemeanor assault conviction — for a fight in a laundromat when he was 19. This time he might land in prison. ...
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Beacons help Waze users navigate Pittsburgh’s tricky tunnel exits
Marketplace: Even before reliance on GPS, tunnel driving has been difficult for drivers. “As you go from light to dark, you have a momentary adjustment of the lighting in your eye, the responses of the photo-receptors in your eye,” said Roberta Klatzky, who teaches psychology and human computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. “Its like when you go into a dark theater, at first you don’t see anything, then you can see the people all around you in their seats.” Klatzky said our minds are trying to compute speed and choices — the more there are, the harder it is to choose one. And it’s more confusing when reliance on a faulty GPS enters the picture.
