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Q&A with Dr. Barbara Oakley on teaching and learning tips

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Q&A with Dr. Barbara Oakley on teaching and learning tips

New course on Uncommon Sense Teaching from Dr. Oakley, the instructor from the blockbuster Learning How to Learn course

As digital transformation rapidly transforms the world, learning has become a fundamental skill — one McKinsey calls “a critical driver of long-term career success.” 

To help teachers equip the next generation of students with tools to learn better, Dr. Barbara Oakley launched a new course today, Uncommon Sense Teaching Part 2: Building Community and Habits of Learning.

The second course, which complements the first released last summer, provides neuroscience-backed tools and practical insights to help anyone — from seasoned educators and instructors to parents — draw out the best from learners. 

We caught up with Dr. Oakley to learn how her new course can help teachers solve classroom challenges.

What is one takeaway educators can learn in your new course? 
In increasingly diverse and often online learning environments, teachers are grappling with how to bring out the best in all their students, channel their abilities, and keep students engaged. 

I truly believe that teaching online can help match the outcomes possible in a traditional classroom, and indeed, even surpass it! Way back in 2014, I started creating online courses about learning because of my own experience. I wasn’t a natural at math or science, so I had to rewire my own brain as an adult to learn them! At that time, I remember wondering why had no one written a book or taught a course about learning effectively based on what we know from science on how the brain learns. Once I saw how many learners’ online courses could reach — over 3.8 million people have taken my course Learning How to Learn — I knew I needed to share similar tips on how teachers could instill these lessons in their students around the world.

This new course, taught alongside Dr. Terrence Sejnowski and Beth Rogowsky, is based on my latest book, which was recently named a top ten book for educators. The cognitive psychology and neuroscience-linked insights we teach will enhance your teaching skills and consequently, the way students learn. So every kind of learner develops the ability to master anything — be it math, science, dance, literature, or art.    

Can you share a few tips on how we can teach and learn more effectively?
There are some key elements to incorporate on a daily basis: 

  • Students can be faster (‘racecar’) or slower ( ‘hiker’) learners. So, structure the teaching. Give hikers smaller pieces of information. As slower learners, they learn more deeply and often, more creatively. Racers may learn faster but also jump to conclusions more quickly and find it tough to correct themselves when they make errors. 
  • Understand that the way we learn facts or information is very different from our knowledge of skills, like say, learning to ride a bicycle. The former (declarative pathway) is mostly conscious learning, the latter (procedural pathway) develops through practice and happens subconsciously. 
  • The more you retrieve what you’ve learnt, the more you remember, learn, and understand it. But don’t cram all the information at once. Space it out and try explaining it to someone else. 
  • Try the Pomodoro technique to learn most efficiently. Avoid all distractions (including your phone). Set a time limit to focus fully on the task at hand. Once time is up, relax for five minutes and, no scrolling Instagram Reels!

Does this course focus on in-person or online teaching?
Classrooms have changed drastically today and are often blended learning environments. So, you can utilize this course as a primer of sorts if you are new to teaching lessons online. Observe the personalized tone we use throughout. Or how visuals and simple animation convey complex ideas. Note how fun metaphors, puns, and analogies are great tools to keep learners engaged. Besides, every module has quizzes plus additional reading to broaden your knowledge and test your understanding.  

How have learners responded to the course?  
It has been wonderfully rewarding to know that many have found it tailor-made to hone their teaching and learning skills. As one learner remarked: “How can we teach, without knowing how learning works?” It’s heartening also to find that many have come away with inspiration, guidance, and hope in these uncertain times — when the teaching experience itself has changed so much. This very evolution in the way we teach has, in fact, led me to start working on another course. Teaching Online, the final course in this series, will launch soon!   

Complete Uncommon Sense Teaching: Part 1 before enrolling in Part  2: Building Community and Habits of Learning.

Want To Work In Climate Tech? Here’s How To Find A Job

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Want To Work In Climate Tech? Here’s How To Find A Job
Climatebase job board for climate tech careers

When you’re trying to get a job in tech that fits your particular niche, lurking on LinkedIn or wading through endless job boards can often feel futile.

Climatebase co-founder Evan Hynes experienced this firsthand when he was looking to transition from a job at a tech startup to something in the climate space. “As a climate job seeker, I wanted to know: What organizations are mission-focused on addressing climate change? And who’s hiring?” he says.

This was the impetus to create Climatebase, a job platform that focuses on tech jobs at companies that are dedicated to climate mitigation in some capacity, A.K.A. climate tech. “Climate tech” is an umbrella term for any technology that addresses climate change.

Though the tech world is a hotbed for climate innovation, lots of folks have a hard time seeing how their background can transfer to other fields, explains Justin Hardin, co-founder and chief technology officer of Climatebase.

For example, Justin was a software engineer at established tech companies like Slack and Gusto, but it never occurred to him to look in climate. “I trained to be a software engineer for many years before I even realized that my skills could be applied to the climate industry,” he says. “I didn’t even know that [software jobs] existed in this realm.”

Since launching in July 2020, Climatebase has helped people apply to over 30,000 jobs at over 3,000 climate tech companies and environmental nonprofits. (Climatebase carefully vets companies to ensure that they have demonstrable impact and aren’t greenwashing.)

Users can browse positions by the climate sector (think: energy or transportation), the type of job, the organization type (like nonprofit or government) and size, or the role. You can even filter based on specific climate change solutions that interest you (for example, coastal wetland restoration or hybrid cars).

In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, we spoke to Evan and Justin about how Climatebase was built, what you need to know if you’re pursuing a career in climate tech, and how to stand out to employers.

What inspired you to create a hiring platform for climate tech roles, specifically?

Evan: “I find that I do the best work when it’s something I care about, and I couldn’t think of anything more important than climate change. I was visiting my friend on his regenerative ranching project, sitting in his trailer on this beautiful piece of land, telling him, ‘How do I know what is and what isn’t climate?’ He handed me this book that he had been reading, called Project Drawdown.

Immediately as I was going through the book, I was like, I want to know every organization that’s working on this and I want to know who’s hiring. [My brother Jesse and I] basically started building out a list of organizations, primarily companies that were working on climate solutions. This list kept getting bigger and bigger — it got up to almost 1,000 companies.

We decided to host a climate career fair, because at this time, we were still job-seekers. We got 20 companies to commit to showing up in a building at General Assembly in downtown San Francisco and over 600 people came.

We teamed up with Justin, who was really interested in what we were doing, because this was not going to scale in-person. We want to take this online. Justin was working at Slack at the time, so he was mainly doing weekends and nights with us. About six months later, after carefully slowly building the thing out, we eventually launched Climatebase on Product Hunt, and we were the fifth most-upvoted product of the day.

So, what started off as my own job search, turned into a list of climate companies, which turned into the world’s first climate career fair, has then evolved into a platform that is far beyond just a climate jobs platform.”

What are the most in-demand positions or technical skills that climate tech employers are looking for?

Justin: “Senior full-stack engineer is our most popular developer position. Of course, having proficiency in JavaScript and any of the mainstream back-end languages is good. We see a lot of increase in Python on our platform, there’s a lot of Ruby jobs as well. I mostly recommend — even for new developers — to learn JavaScript, because we see it also proliferating on the back end, as well with Node.

But full-stack engineering is the job that I come across a lot, and it’s because a lot of these companies will require UI [user interface] components. Whether a job is in solar panels solutions or even utility companies, there’s UI attached to it.”

What advice do you have for breaking into climate tech without prior experience?

Evan: “If you want to find the right area of work within this very broad space we call climate, it does really help to understand that landscape of what’s happening in climate solutions, so that you can better navigate all the different opportunities and find the thing that you’re most excited about.

Employers are looking for mission-aligned candidates. If you’re a software engineer, one way of showing that is by writing a really nice cover letter. Another way is taking it upon yourself to do a project that highlights your commitment to this area.”

Justin: “One of the hardest things as a software engineer is coming up with portfolio projects to demonstrate your skills and attract employers in order to get a job. How do you just create something out of thin air? You can follow tutorials, create something that you care about, or even join a hackathon.

Something that I feel is extremely important, if you can, is to create something with a group of people, like a small open-source project. Employers would want to see that because it shows that you can collaborate. Or if you have a public GitHub, they can vet it. Especially within the climate space, there’s a lot of public data available for you to tap into those APIs and build small projects with. It just makes you stand out even more as a mission-aligned candidate.”

Catalog Home | Codecademy

If you’re not sure where to begin or what to learn next, this is a great place to start. Check out our top coding courses, Skill Paths, and Career Paths.

How Do You Come Together With Your Community?

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How Do You Come Together With Your Community?

As pandemic restrictions ease, have you been able to gather with your community for block parties, fairs or festivals? How has it felt to come together in those ways again?

In “A Big Texas Party,” Edgar Sandoval writes about Fiesta, a celebration with roots dating back to 1891 when Texas won its independence from Mexico. This San Antonio festival was downsized last year during the pandemic but is now back in full.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

  • What is your reaction to the article? What stood out to you about the events and meaning of Fiesta to San Antonians? Does it remind you of any events in your community?

  • Were you able to connect with your neighbors during the pandemic? How so?

  • How are you coming together now as a community, if at all? Do you participate in big celebrations, go to community events or do acts of service? Have you found smaller moments of connection, like a shared smile or a friendly conversation?

  • What is one way you wish you could celebrate or bond with the people where you live?

  • How important do you think it is for neighbors to come together in these ways? What does community mean to you?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition: Working With Alliteration, Anaphora and Epistrophe in Poetry

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Repetition, Repetition, Repetition: Working With Alliteration, Anaphora and Epistrophe in Poetry

Poets adore alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds in adjacent, nearby or connected words.

See how Carolina Ebeid grabs the reader’s attention by repeating the “b” sound in the first few lines of the poem “Albeit”:

Because I have wanted
to make you something

beautiful, I borrowed
a book on how to keep

a bee-hive made of glass.

And how Jane Wong emphasizes her conclusion with the repetition of the “w” sound in “Lessons on Lessening”:

I must return to my younger self. To wearing my life
like heavy wool, weaved in my own weight.

Kamilah Aisha Moon’s “Cataracts” contains many examples of alliteration. The poem begins:

When life scuffs & finally scars the eyes
they become turtles — withdraw inside themselves,

dive inside private marshes, dragging under
the once-girl they belong to, the dewy woman

(Notice in the second stanza how even though “dive,” “dragging” and “dewy” all start with “d,” only “dive” and “dewy” are considered alliterative. Why? Because alliteration is all about sound, and the “dr” in “dragging” makes a different sound than the “d” in “dive” and “dewy.”)

Students, read the rest of Moon’s poem. How many more instances of alliteration can you find?

Going Further

Where do you see alliteration in your everyday life? Try to collect at least two examples from any kind of written or spoken text. Here are some places you might look:

Then, consider the following questions:

Finally, you might try your hand at alliteration. Write a poem, lyrics to a song or a short passage that repeats the beginning sound of a word. What is it like to use this literary device? What does it add to your piece?

Yellow Creatures

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Yellow Creatures

Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by this photo — or, tell us about a memory from your own life that this image makes you think of.

Post it in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.

Want more Picture Prompts? Find them all in this column.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Word of the Day: illustrious

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Word of the Day: illustrious

The word illustrious has appeared in 92 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on March 2 in “Broadway’s Cort Theater Will Have a New Name: James Earl Jones” by Michael Paulson:

The organization said Wednesday that it would name the Cort Theater, a landmark 110-year-old house located on West 48th Street, after Jones, a two-time competitive Tony Award winner who, over six decades, has appeared in 21 Broadway shows.

“He’s an icon — he really is one of the greatest American actors, and this is just a perfect match,” said Robert E. Wankel, chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization.

… Jones, best known as the voice of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” films, has had a long and illustrious career on Broadway. He first worked there in 1957, as an understudy in a short-lived play called “The Egghead,” and then starting in 1958 he had a role in “Sunrise at Campobello,” which ran for 16 months at the Cort Theater.

Can you correctly use the word illustrious in a sentence?

Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.

Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.

If you want a better idea of how illustrious can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.

If you enjoy this daily challenge, try one of our monthly vocabulary challenges.

Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.

Film Club: ‘The Life of Jerry Givens, a State Executioner Turned Death-Row Abolitionist’

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Film Club: ‘The Life of Jerry Givens, a State Executioner Turned Death-Row Abolitionist’

[MUSIC PLAYING] Leviticus — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth I will repay, an often-quoted scripture that people use to justify the death penalty. But we never ask ourselves, what is the damage that’s being done to a person when they execute, when they kill another human being? Jerry was a perfect example of that. Jerry executed 62 people total. Jerry Givens — a loving husband, father, a devout Christian, and former executioner for the State of Virginia. And me? Well, I’ve spent my life working to abolish the death penalty. But we became friends. I met Jerry late in his life, after he came around to being a death- penalty abolitionist. Surprise. There was a lot of unusual matches that happen in this work. Jerry was a very Christian guy. I’m a Jewish person. You bond over things. We would seek out good barbecue. Jerry was a little pudgy. So am I. Jerry was my friend. “Thank you for coming up here, brother.” “Thank you.” Jerry was born in Virginia, a lifelong resident of Richmond. He lost his father to drugs. He wanted to be a football player. You know how that goes for people. You’re either in or you’re out. He wanted to be a police officer. But he ended up with a job as a corrections officer. And, of course, in 1972, the Supreme Court struck down all the death- penalty laws in the country. Any state that wanted to have executions had to write a new death-penalty law. Many did, including Virginia. When Virginia resumed executing people in the mid-1980s, Jerry was the person who was tapped for that job to head the execution team. You’re it. In this era, Virginia was No. 2, just behind Texas as the most executing of all the states. That meant he was the man that pushed the button, 25 electrocutions, and he pushed the syringe for 37 lethal injections. Jerry’s prayer always was God, don’t let me execute an innocent person. It turned out that there was an innocent person named Earl Washington. And they came within days of executing Earl Washington. That was especially troublesome for him. But it was not his job to sort those things out. Jerry executed 62 people total. That doesn’t not do damage to you. He wanted to protect his family from what he was absorbing. They did not know what his job was at the prison until they read about it in news coverage when he was on trial for some legal trouble he got into for allegedly money laundering. He ended up going to prison himself, which ended up ending his career in corrections. When you’re in prison, you get to spend a lot of time thinking. And I think Jerry came to understand the evil of the death penalty. “So I think this was a wake-up call from God. The system wasn’t right.” The burden we ask state workers to take on when we ask them to kill in our name is lifelong. Many internalize it and end up alcoholic or drug-addicted or committing suicide. But Jerry, he told his story. He spent the rest of his life trying to make amends and fix it. “I have to suffer through this, not the State of Virginia, not the governor, not the people that gave this man the death penalty, but me. I had to suffer through this.” When Jerry spoke, he was heard. His voice was undeniable. A part of his goal was to protect other prison workers, his comrades. He saw himself as on a mission to right some wrongs. That’s where his heart was. During the summer, I just happened to be looking at Facebook and noticing that somebody was liking specific pictures. And they were all pictures that Jerry was in. So I said, what’s up? And I went to look at Jerry’s Facebook page. And that’s where I saw — that’s how I found out that Jerry had died. When I finally got to have a conversation with Jerry’s family, they asked me to become a voice to share his story. There are no coincidences. We were meant to do this work together to change the world. And we did change the world. We’ve abolished the death penalty in a number of states — New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, Colorado. The courts have thrown it out in Washington State and Delaware and New York. Virginia, they’re actually, in their legislature, in a conversation about abolishing the death penalty. And Jerry would have been happy to know that this possibility exists in part with his testimony. It doesn’t matter that we were different religions or different races or different generations. What matters is what we came together about one thing — the preservation of life and the dignity of life. He recognized the damage that was done and did his best to fix it, make himself right with his God. [SOMBER MUSIC]

Vocabulary in Context: Mangrove Trees

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Vocabulary in Context: Mangrove Trees

“Our land and livelihoods have been battered many times over by raging cyclones and unpredictable, heavy rains,” said Ms. Dhara, 30, as she and the other women in the boat discussed where they needed to plant more trees. “The rhythm of our lives is dependent on the of the water around us, making the mangroves our lifelines.”

Lesson of the Day: ‘The Long Scourge of Lead Poisoning’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘The Long Scourge of Lead Poisoning’

Featured Article: “The Long Scourge of Lead Poisoning” by Ellen Gabler

The use of lead dates all the way back to ancient Rome. But despite the fact that the dangers of lead exposure are well known today, lead poisoning continues to be an epidemic in the United States.

In this lesson, you will learn about several key moments in the history of lead use. Then, you will study data to see how people in the United States are still affected by lead exposure.

What do you know about lead? Have you heard the word used in reference to paint, pencils or building materials? Lead is a toxic, metallic element. It is bluish-white when freshly cut but tarnishes quickly to dull gray.

Do you know about the dangers of lead exposure? Children, who are more vulnerable to lead poisoning than adults, often do not have symptoms, but lead can still cause delays in physical and mental development. High levels of lead can damage organs and nervous system.

Watch this four-minute video from UNICEF about the history of lead use. As you watch, respond to these two questions:

The featured article uses 11 key vocabulary words. Do you recognize any of the words on the list below? Could you use any of them in a sentence?

1. scourge
2. elevate
3. persist
4. vessel
5. durability
6. resistance
7. ban
8. stress
9. claim
10. appeal
11. hazard

To learn all of the meanings and practice using the words, use this list on Vocabulary.com.

Read the article below, or as a PDF, then answer the following questions:

1. How do lead exposure and poisoning affect young people today?

2. What were the causes of lead poisoning in Roman cities?

3. Why were artists like Rembrandt and Goya in danger?

4. When did people become more aware of the harms of lead paint? What actions were taken internationally?

5. How was lead paint addressed in the United States historically? What about in the present day?

In the full-length version of the piece you just read, “How 2 Industries Stymied Justice for Young Lead Paint Victims,” Ellen Gabler investigates how housing and insurance companies have avoided taking responsibility for exposing children to lead.

Look at the two graphs below, which are taken from the article. They show how much lead appears in the blood of American children. After looking closely at the title, summary and each graph of the article, respond to the questions below.

  • What is your reaction to the two graphs?

  • How do the graphs relate to the article you read?

  • What do the graphs make you wonder?

Now, learn about how this issue affects your community. Explore this resource from PolicyMap that allows you to look at the relative risk of exposure to lead across the United States between 2015 and 2019.

  • What do you notice about the risk of lead exposure in your town or city?

  • How does it compare with nearby towns or cities? What might account for the differences?

  • Compare the rate of risk in your state to another state or area. What do you notice? Why do you think there are similarities or differences between states or regions?

If you’re worried about lead in your community, you can learn about the common places that lead is found and what you can do about it in this guide from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here.

Should Phones Ever Be a Part of Family or Holiday Gatherings?

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Should Phones Ever Be a Part of Family or Holiday Gatherings?

Have you ever looked at your phone in the middle of an important family meal or other type of gathering?

If so, were you using it to further a conversation, deepen your understanding of a holiday you were celebrating or add to the experience in another way? Or were you just distracted?

Are phones and other electronics ever welcomed at family or holiday gatherings you are a part of? Do you think they should be?

Every year, the Lawrenceville School, a boarding and day school in New Jersey, has a large Passover Seder for students, family members, alumni and faculty. After doing the Seder remotely in 2020 and in a tent in 2021, they will be back inside this year.

When guests arrive, they will see a familiar scene of a room set with tables full of Seder plates, glasses of wine and boxes of matzo. But this Friday, when Passover begins, there will be one more item on the table that may feel new, at least in this setting: QR codes.

The QR — or “quick response” — code is how guests will have access to the Haggadah, the text read during the Passover Seder and which tells the story of how the Jewish people escaped slavery. Once they pull it up on their phones, they will use their devices for the rest of the evening, to take turns reading stories and to follow along to songs and prayers.

Lauren Levy, a rabbi and teacher at the school who leads the Seder, came up with the solution last year when some of the guests were joining the Seder virtually and didn’t have Haggadot (the plural of Haggadah) at home. “I got the idea when I was at a restaurant,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘This is actually going to be way more inclusive and accessible.’”

While using a QR code was an answer to a practical problem, she also likes what it symbolizes. “Passover tells the story of us leaving slavery behind and heading the heck out of Egypt to move to freedom. We were leaving the old school place behind and moving forward,” she said. “I think the QR code Haggadah integrates this idea. It’s cool to me that we are taking the next technological step for Passover.”

It can already feel like QR codes are everywhere. You scan them at restaurants to get menus; at events to register; at stores to pay; at museums to get more information about the work on display. And now they are even part of the Seder, an ancient Jewish tradition.

Jewish leaders are using QR codes as an easy way to get people the material they need to participate in the Seder or to enrich their experience with supplemental materials.

And while some Seder-goers like them, others feel that phones should play no role in this tradition, where the focus has always been on in-person sharing and discussion. (Many at Seders will not even use their phones, so a QR code Haggadah is not an option.)

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

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