【推荐1】How to Become a Lifelong Learner

There are no age limits when it comes to education. Being a lifelong learner is all about maintaining your curiosity and love for learning.     1    

Identify your learning style. Everyone has a preferred way to approach information. Determine your own favorite learning style.     2     Make use of them as much as practical, such as viewing online tutorials on websites if you’re more of a visual learner.

Read every single day.     3    Reading is an entrance to the minds of your fellow human beings. Through reading you will be amazed by the incredible creativity, intelligence of the human species. And reading will help you to learn the discoveries and mistakes of others who have gone ahead of you.

Create something. Flexing your creative muscles can help you learn about yourself.     4    In fact, some powerful learning happens when you are creating something for yourself. Creation, like intelligence, can be artistic or scientific; physical or intellectual.

Teach others. Teaching is a wonderful way to learn a subject better and improve your own understanding of it. Conveying the information you absorb will help you process better.     5    In teaching others how to learn things, you will find that you learn even more than the students.

As a saying goes, it is never too late to learn, so we should persist in lifelong learning.

【推荐1】The late, great producer Phil Ramone worked with many famous popular singers. However, one of his albums is a little different. It’s classical music, made for children.

“He actually started as a child violinist,” said Marc Neikrug, a famous classical composer who worked together with Ramone on the album, “Sunken Cathedrals,” after being introduced by Rock Positano, a doctor with a special interest in music’s value to medicine. “The three of us all want to promote classical music to children.”

In the digital age when children develop surrounded by constant distractions, however, Neikrug sees a very particular value in classical music. “I’m concerned about a world in which there is an almost aggressive move to lower people’s attention spans,” he said. “‘That’s terrifying. How do you even absorb and learn things? How do you expect kids to do well in school?”

“I think it’s really important to let kids build some kind of ability to focus,” Neikrug said. “Great music can do that, because you’re drawn into what you’re listening to.” A two-or three-minute music may not seem so long to concentrate on, but it’s a good attention span for kids,” he said. “We picked the pieces very deliberately to be not too long.”

All of the pieces on the two-part album are unadapted, complete works of classical music. “Phil, Dr. Rock and I were all completely convinced that we need little, short; beautiful pieces for kids. They happen to be really good for adults too,” he pointed out, though the words “Classics for Kids” on the cover might scare some grown people off. This doesn’t mean you should throw all of your popular music albums away or trash all the screen devices in your home. “I’m not an advocate for disregarding the reality of living in this world,” Neikrug said. “I would say someone who grows up able to focus for an hour and equally able to use the smartphone with one hand, is fine.”

【推荐2】Smartphones, tablets and other digital devices can be addictive. They affect sleep. They draw kids into an alternate universe, often distracting（使分心）them from more productive-and healthier-real-world activities. And they are often linked to anxiety and depression, learning disabilities and obesity（肥胖）. Yet for many teenagers, cellphones and social media are also absolutely necessary tools for planning their social lives, keeping up with schoolwork and staying in touch with out-of-town friends and relatives.

How can parents make the most of the constructive uses of screen-based technology while minimizing its harmful effects？

The key is helping kids use technology as a tool, not a toy, “where there’s some purpose other than the medication of boredom,” says Jim Taylor, a psychologist and author of the book Raising Generation Tech：Preparing Your Children for a Media-fueled World. Taylor, like many other medical and mental health professionals, advises parents to set limits and stick to them. They should restrict the amount of time their kids spend on devices, create tech-free zones-no cellphones in their bedrooms, for example-and tech-free times, such as at the dinner table, in restaurants and on family outings.

Perhaps the best thing you can do is serve as a good role model by exhibiting the same online behavior you expect of your children, says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist. “If parents are breaking their own rules,” Aboujaoude says, “kids cannot be expected to behave differently.”

Chad Landgraf, 44, of Oklahoma, told me he was worried about how addicted his 12-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter became when they were on their devices. So, hoping to set an example, he switched from e-books to old-fashioned print. “When I had my Kindle or ipad open, they. didn’t know if I was reading or surfing the net,” Landgraf says. “But at least if I have a paper copy of a book, they know I am reading. Modeling seems like the easiest way.”