I woke up from a refreshing power nap the other day and wondered: Gee, now that "power" is firmly established as a prefix--power lunch, power tie--how about power learning? Could there be some little-known techniques--ancient secrets kept from the public since Egyptian times, perhaps--for turning average learners into super learners?

I poked around a bit and found that yes, according to the experts, there are!

Two approaches
Okay, so they're not all experts. Some who tout power learning are self-appointed learning gurus or entrepreneurs with seminars to sell. Others, however, are revered educational theorists, respected neuroscientists, and the like. In fact, it turns out that lots of people think they know of ways to supercharge a person's learning engines.

For me, these power-thinking proponents fall into two categories, because they approach the problem from two directions.

The first group looks at thinking as a skill in itself, a subject to be learned like reading, math, or golf. They analyze thinking into its smallest components, and offer instructions for mastering each of these distinct parts, much as a ballroom dancing manual gives diagrams of foot patterns, or a golf manual gives pictures of right and wrong stances.

The other approach looks at ways to strengthen and develop the biological instruments of learning, which are, of course, the senses (the information intake ports) and the brain (the processing and storage device).

Let's take a closer look at the two approaches to the quest for souped-up learning.