Browsing the Online Education Database I came upon an article that grasped my attention immediately, “77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better”. At this point in time I think I would like nothing more than this, how about you? My favorites are:
1. Shake a leg. Lack of blood flow is a common reason for lack of concentration. If you’ve been sitting in one place for awhile, bounce one of your legs for a minute or two. It gets your blood flowing and sharpens both concentration and recall.
11. Do walking meditation. If you’re taking a hike (#25), go one step further and learn walking meditation as a way to tap into your inner resources and your strengthen your ability to focus. Just make sure you’re not walking inadvertently into traffic.
23. Map your task flow. Learning often requires gaining knowledge in a specific sequence. Organizing your thoughts on what needs to be done is a powerful way to prepare yourself to complete tasks or learn new topics.
26. Learn by osmosis. Got an iPod? Record a few of your own podcasts, upload them to your iPod and sleep on it. Literally. Put it under your pillow and playback language lessons or whatever.
35. Motivate yourself. Why do you want to learn something? What do want to achieve through learning? If you don’t know why you want to learn, then distractions will be far more enticing.
49. Think holistically. Holistic thinking might be the single most “advanced” learning technique that would help students. But it’s a mindset rather than a single technique.
56. Be engaging. Lectures are one-sided and often counter-productive. Information merely heard or witnessed (from a chalkboard for instance) is often forgotten. Teaching is not simply talking. Talking isn’t enough. Ask students questions, present scenarios, engage them.
The next one really hits home for me:
68. Write about it. An effective way to “teach” something is to create an FAQ or a wiki containing everything you know about a topic. Or blog about the topic. Doing so helps you to realize what you know and more importantly what you don’t. You don’t even have to spend money if you grab a freebie account with Typepad, WordPress, or Blogger.
These are some of my favorites but in reality the rest are just as good. Go read the article, Hacking knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better and see for yourself.
I have personally read many of these things in accelerated learning books, but this is a nice list to sum things up. Do not be overwhelmed by the large amount of information in this list, work through it chunk by chunk.