1. Intelligent Life – LAZY LANGUAGE, LAZY THOUGHT

[Language should evolve.  But not through simplification or confusion.  You may have heard a lot of the examples before, but they’re worth revisiting once in a while.  And I love what Virginia Woolf had to say about the English language.]

2. Officeronline.co.uk (NUS) – The Great NUS Feedback Amnesty

[What quality of assessment feedback do you receive from your tutors?  Do you agree that it’s failing in areas, or are you satisfied with what you’ve been given?  Do your lecturers greet you with open arms, or hide behind a locked door?]

3. Open Culture:

• Free Online Courses from Great Universities
• University & College Podcasts – Free Educational Podcasts

[Yet more free courses and lectures on a wide variety of subjects.  A good selection compiled by Open Culture.]

4. New Scientist – Five great auditory illusions

[From this week’s special ‘Music’ edition of New Scientist.  My local newsagents had sold out of it.  Sniff!  Time to read via the uni’s subscriptions online.  Yay!]

5. StudentHacks.org – How to Write Abstracts

[Not all students need worry about abstracts.  When it’s required, however, it’s best to do it well, and the process isn’t as easy as it looks.  But it will feel a lot easier if you follow the advice on StudentHacks.]

6. MakeUseOf.com – 30+ Online Resources to Expand your English Vocabulary

[I may use some of these sites to continue making ‘small steps‘.]

What do you think about the following statement?

“If it’s not worth making a big splash with something, it’s not worth doing at all.”

If you tend to agree with that sentence, your potential for greater learning and productivity may be lacking more than it should be.

In our daily lives, we rarely enjoy undertaking assignments that may take a long time to complete.  If we can’t get it out of the way quickly, the only thing that arrives with speed is a sense of burden. And even if we used to enjoy something, there’s a tendency to grow bored or complacent.  Over time, what used to be interesting has become the norm.

In an age of instant gratification, no wonder many of us don’t like to spend a prolonged amount of time working toward a result.  Because of this, we regularly put false time limits on tasks that don’t need such restrictions. Other times, we don’t give any time limit, which leaves the task in the back of our head, gathering dust, or feeling unimportant after an initial enthusiasm.

It’s time to change all that.

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1a. Microsoft Dreamspark

1b. UK Higher Education Blog – Dreamspark: Free software for your students

1c. TechCrunch – Microsoft To Give Students Dev Software For Free

[Woo!  Free development software for students.  Visual Studio, Expression, Windows Server, lots of free stuff for you.]

2. Genius Types – The Key to Entrepreneurial Success is Balancing Business and Creativity

[The left and right sides of the brain deal with different aspects of your life.  It’s said that people are dominant in one side or the other.  This article puts the left and right brains in the context of entrepreneurial thought and bahaviour.  You’ve got it in you, but it’s time to work out what ‘it’ really means for you as an individual.]

3. EduCause – Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 [PDF File]

[Learning is changing.  Gone are the restrictions and limits that have held us back in the past.  In most things, if we want to do it, we can do it however it suits us, wherever we want, and whenever we like.  Through enormous resources on the web, greater connectivity, and contact with all sorts of helpful souls, we can work together and function positively for the future.]

4. Dustin Wax – Best Practice for Students: Ideas vs Formatting in Essays

[Dustin Wax, writer on Lifehack.org, has written a piece on his own blog that all students should read.  I’d never thought much about this myself, but upon reading it, I’m pretty sure Dustin is spot on.  We need to stop worrying about how well an essay is presented and start thinking about the best possible ideas for the grades.]

5. Guardian – A little blog abuse is worth it for a lot of discourse

[Not that long ago, we used to surf the net.  Now we’re engineering the waves…]

6. Daily Mail – Universities urged: Ban the freshers’ week booze ups

[There are other ways to consume alcohol.  It’s not just going to be down the student union…!]

7. Complete Your Dissertation – Reading, Writing and Rest Days:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

[While it’s not how I did it, I can see how the method of reading, writing, and resting on different days will work for some students.  As usual, there’s no answer, just whatever works best for you.]

8. The iPod Hacker – 100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better

[Podcasts and lectures and notes.  Oh my!]

I absolutely love this quote from A Plethora of Technology:

“Psychologists tell us that a student learns only when the task is a little too hard for that student. When a student can do work with little effort, and virtually independently, that student is NOT learning, but rather REHEARSING THE KNOWN. When a student finds a task beyond his or her reach, FRUSTRATION, not learning, is the result. Only when a task is a bit beyond the student’s comfort level, and the student finds a SUPPORT SYSTEM to bridge the gap, does learning occur.”

– Based on the work of Tomlinson, C.A. (2003)

I think there’s a great deal in that:

• Finding a task easy isn’t always a reason to celebrate. It may actually waste your time.
• Finding a task difficult can often be overcome with a bit of a push and the right help.
• Finding a task overly frustrating even begin can often end in no learning at all. Just as much of a waste as the simple task.

That’s why people can be productive when they face a challenge.

Let’s look at the three possibilities in more detail:

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