 Another important concept to take into consideration is that we tend to divide learning into formal and informal constructs. Your brain doesn't do this, your brain just thinks it's learning, but we do have situations in which we go to school, for example, in a formal context, versus when we learn things informally. For example, when we go to a summer camp and we learn some new soccer moves, or when you go into the kitchen and you learn a new recipe with your parents there cooking, or if you visit a museum, those are informal learning contexts, and your brain's treating that all the same as if you were studying within a classroom structure. The difference has to do with the whys of things. In general, you know, why do we learn anything or why do we hope that people learn things in society? It's basically that we hope that they have an acquisition of different knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, beliefs that help people function within society. What's interesting though, in a formal context, we're always thinking about the teacher student relationship, whereas informally it's really what society can help the individual understand about his or her own place within the context of the community. And finally, what we do in formalized settings is that we tend to use a curriculum structure or we divide things by math class and English class and science, for example. And most recently, schools have taken on the role of guiding social-emotional skills as well. But the what that happens in informal context is an individual's personal interests and formation or it's to extend what they might have already learned within the formal context of schools. Within the formal structure of schools, the how also differs. Within schools, we have pedagogy and instruction and formal teaching structures. And within informal structures, it's basically experiential based. How do you learn about the world through the experiences that you might have? When does this occur? We formally decide that learning occurs within schools, pretty much kindergarten until you finish high school or you go to college. So perhaps 3, 4, 5, 6 years of age all the way until you're 18, maybe 24, 25 years old. But within the context of informal structures, it's really for the moment you are conceived until you die, informal learning occurs throughout the lifespan. And where learning occurs now has also become very, very much flexible. Schools used to be in formal school houses, so we had face-to-face instruction and that was it. We now have blended instruction as well as online formats in which people can learn. But in informal settings, this is extended even beyond that and it can include things like virtual writing groups or online museums or book clubs that you might have with your neighbors. So all of this is just to say that your brain isn't making any distinction between informal versus informal learning except perhaps in the motivation it has to do things. As many of you might guess, informal learning contexts tend to be a bit more self-motivated and a little bit more energetic than the things that happen within the formal school structures. And this leads us to the academic competencies that are achieved within school settings. All of this is to say that academic competencies are important, very important for school success, society's success, but it's only one type of learning. And we define academic competencies as being the sum of the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed in order to meet with that academic success. And we define knowledge itself as being those dates, facts, formulas, concepts, names, categories. Anything that's basically Google-able is a knowledge-based competency. We also have skills, however, because it's not enough to know that information. You have to be able to use and apply that information. So being able to do something with the knowledge that you've learned is also very important within school contexts. And finally, we have attitudinal information, the values, the personal importance we attribute to the information that's learned. Very key and important ideas, studies coming out now show that there's a big debate now on whether or not it's very important to have this aptitude versus your attitude. There's a couple of very important recent studies that show that your decision, for example, your choice to make the most of things, to buckle down, to self-regulate, to focus yourself. This ability to self-regulate accounts for almost twice as much as innate intelligence in terms of student learning outcomes. So it's very important to take into consideration this attitudinal aspect of academic competencies.