2011 September | The Brainscape Blog: Learn How to Learn Faster

Remembering the inspirations: The Museum of Obsolete Objects

By Amanda Moritz, 9/29/2011 at 7:43 am

I love the iPhone. Brainscape loves the iPhone (obviously, we’re all users of our 30+ educational apps). I can do pretty much everything with it: email, rent a car, learn Spanish, superimpose cats onto my pictures; more often than not, I find myself reading the news on my NYTimes app rather than with a paper in my hands. It means that I no longer need a Spanish book, or scissors and glue, or even my computer (I rarely touch my computer on weekends).

I found a nice youtube channel that appreciates exactly those objects which we love but replaced with our phones: the Museum of Obsolete Objects: ”Sadly, as our daily lives become more and more digital some things fall by the way side as they are replaced by newer, «better» devices.

Let us not forget those fallen appliances, tools and gadgets and relive those bygone times by taking a visit to The Museum of Obsolete Objects. Step inside to step back in time!”

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Andrew Cohen Speaks at NYT Schools for Tomorrow

By Amanda Moritz, 9/28/2011 at 7:12 am

Brainscape founder and CEO, Andrew Cohen, had the honor of speaking at the NYT Schools for Tomorrow conference last Thursday, September 22. The panel he sat on discussed the educational tools in college. You can read more about the other panels on the agenda.

“The Tools – College Stream” panel Andrew sat on discussed integration of technology, balance of old (lectures, for example) and new tools, synchronous learning, and expectations and establishing infrastructure. The livestream archived video is below. If you watch it and have any thoughts, share them in the comments or on twitter to @brainscape and @a_s_cohen.

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Foreign-Tongue Twisters by Brainscape

By Amanda Moritz, 9/27/2011 at 8:23 am

Ah, tongue twisters. Those gnarly, little phrases that trip up even native speakers of a language. Imagine how tricky they are for the non-native speakers! Karina, Sruthi, and I decided to find tongue twisters in English, French, Spanish and German and to then have everyone at Brainscape try a few while we recoreded them.

Some of us did not have much trouble with e the tongue twisters. Some of us got progressively worse the more times we repeated them. Some of us would put on strange accents and voice inflections to make it through. The hardest for me, by far, were the german twisters, which had me sounding like a choking seal pup at times (watch the video of Karina saying them properly below).

We acquired too much good footage to put all of it on YouTube, so we decided to cut it up into little snippits for you to enjoy. Enjoy! (more…)

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On Screen with Nihal Parthasarathi, Co-Founder of CourseHorse

By Andrew Cohen, 9/26/2011 at 8:26 am

Finding a one-off course in your city can be a huge pain in the butt. For all memorable history, if you have ever been interested in learning to cook, program in Ruby on Rails, dance salsa, or do improv monologues in foreign accents, the only comprehensive search option has been to seek every business and college’s course catalogue and/or pray that google will deliver the right class for your keywords. This is hardly an efficient solution for someone who deeply wants to learn a subject.

Enter Nihal Parthasarathi and Katie Kapler, the founders of CourseHorse. After a few frustrating years of trying to find great classes to quench their young adult thirst for knowledge, the pair has created an ecosystem that finally makes it easier for you to find and enroll in the best classes in your city. The service is really taking off in New York and will be continuing to expand in terms of both geography and functionality as the company grows.

I sat down with Nihal today to hear more about how CourseHorse works and where it’s going. Check out our video interview below, and be sure to tell Nihal what you think! (more…)

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What? Using Brainscape’s website costs money now?

By Andrew Cohen, 9/22/2011 at 8:27 am

You may have recently noticed that many subjects on Brainscape website now have a price on them. If you had already subscribed to the subjects you need, back when the subjects were free, then don’t worry: We won’t make you pay for them. Thanks for being an early adopter!

For everyone else, we had to begin charging for premium subjects on our website, since we are now beginning to offer content & study progress synchronicity between our website and iPhone apps (which have always been paid). If we had kept the website free, then people would just be able to freeload and simply sync our premium subjects for free to their iPhone. We need to stay in business somehow!

The good news is that Brainscape will continue to provide increasing value for our premium content by partnering with only the best subject-matter experts and developing a more robust, social, and fun network for studying efficiently. We look forward to continuing to work with you.

Andrew Cohen
Founder & CEO
Brainscape

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Neuroeconomics: the science of decision making

By Amanda Moritz, 9/21/2011 at 7:59 am

Science is our attempt to discover truth. We experiment and observe; we hold variables constant and record outcomes; we compile and do statistics–all to understand the truth. We know our bodies to act according to the laws of physics. We can discover new pathways and new mechanisms that makes sense within the given framework and they help us uncover new truths and new cures.

But what happens when we start to seek truth through science in areas where there are no “rules”; where our variables do not uphold the laws of physics and rationality falls to the winds? I’m talking about human behavior; particularly, the science of the decisions we make. That’s what the field of neuroeconomics explores.

Cell chooses a different topic every month to “spotlight,” where they provide seminal papers in the field for us to read for free! This month the spotlight is on Neuroeconomics. Take a look and let us know what you think of it.

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Spanish Teacher? Using Spanish Sentence Builder?

By Amanda Moritz, 9/20/2011 at 6:00 pm

Are you a Spanish teacher or tutor using Brainscape’s Spanish Sentence Builder? Are you interested in speaking with Brainscape Founder and CEO, Andrew Cohen, about your experience with Brainscape? We’d love to talk!

We are looking for Spanish teachers and tutors who or would like to use, or would like to use Brainscape with their students. Teachers using Spanish Sentence Builder can communicate and work directly with Andrew to set up Brainscape Spanish with their students and help us better improve Brainscape for all students and teachers.

If you would like to get to Brainscape’s founder and find out more about Brainscape Spanish Sentence Builder, please send an email to community manager, Amanda Moritz: amoritz [at] brain-scape.com with School name and grade that you teach.

Brainscape is looking forward to working with you!

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What is the best vocab builder technique? (a complete analysis)

By Andrew Cohen, at 8:14 am

In a world where sounding articulate is one of the strongest predictors of one’s intelligence, products and pundits offering vocabulary-building solutions have proliferated faster than you can say “verbose.” Experts proudly tout all sorts of new and traditional lexicon augmentation techniques, while often ignoring the question of how efficiently those techniques actually work. Below is my attempt to rate the effectiveness of the Top 10 methods used by today’s vocab enthusiasts. (NOTE: The winner is at the end of the list.) (more…)

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SAT Reading Scores at All Time Low in 2010

By Amanda Moritz, 9/19/2011 at 8:41 am

It seems that most American high school students could do with a good vocabulary lesson these days. Critical reading scores on the SAT taken last year fell to a record low as reported by the Associate Press last week. While it is true that there are more students taking the SAT than ever, and the more that take it the more the average slips down and down, it doesn’t have to be this way.

If there are more students taking the SAT than ever, then more students should be preparing for the verbal section by simply learning more words. This is where drill and practice proves its usefulness once again. Take a look at our vocab learning tips and download our SAT vocab app (or study online) to make sure you can be more than a statistic.

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Top 10 Tips for Remembering

By Amanda Moritz, 9/15/2011 at 7:57 am

We’ve all had those (many) moments, while in class or studying in the library, when we can’t seem to remember whatever it was we were just trying to learn! It is frustrating when we can’t remember what we want to, but don’t worry! You can do a lot to improve your memory so that next time you need to learn something and retain it, you’ll be able to remember.