By Patrick Driessen "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival!" - W. Edwards Deming
As I've written before in a previous blog post: Lifelong Learning: Your Key to Employability! Besides increasing success in your career, lifelong learning offers you much more benefits: you can increase your happiness, you can become more successful in every area of your life and.... richer, because knowledge makes you rich (being rich is not about having loads of money....it's about a feeling!).
We're all busy and attending training courses/conferences/seminars is most often a challenge to combine with your business and private life.... So why not teach yourself using an easy and more flexible way? e-Learning!
Learning new skills and expanding your knowledge doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. There are loads of free resources on the Internet that can help you to find compelling instructional videos, tutorials and classes to learn a wide variety of skills from improving your leadership skills, fixing basic computer problems to speaking another language. With many sites to choose from, you’re bound to find something here that will help you learn just about anything you could want. Success guaranteed!
General Learning Sources:
- Wikiversity: With over 10,000 free learning resources, you’ll find tons of great instructional materials here.
- LearnThat.com: With categories like business, finance, home repair, and computers and tech, this site has plenty to offer for learners.
- I Can Learn Anything: Pay this site a visit to get access to a wide range of social learning resources.
- Expert Village: One of the biggest how-to sites on the Web, this site is home to hundreds of thousands of videos on an infinitely broad spectrum of topics.
- TrickLife: Want to make your life better? This site is home to numerous tutorials to help improve your home, your body and your personal well-being.
- Koonji: With tutorials that are extremely easy to follow, this site will make it simple to learn just about anything.
- VideoJug: With great videos on topics as diverse as doing well on the SAT and knitting a scarf, you’ll be able to find just what you’re looking for here.
- ReadyMade: This site can help you learn to build things you never knew you could do on your own.
- DoItYourself.com: Whether you’re trying to sell your home or manage your finances, you’ll find some helpful guidance here.
Business, Management & Leadership Learning Sources:
- Passion for Business Learning: Learn more about business skills from management to finance on this site.
- Business Balls: While the name might be silly, the site offers some serious advice and information on improving management and business skills.
- ComputerWeekly: Those in the IT field should take advantage of this site’s free weekly webinars to stay up-to-date on the latest information and developments.
- TechOnline: Designed with electronics professionals in mind, this site has dozens of great tech-focused tutorials.
- Change Management: Here you’ll find instructional materials to improve your skills in leadership and management.
- KnowThis?: Boost your marketing skills by taking one of the tutorials offered through this site.
- Leadership Training Tutorials: Like the name suggests, these free tutorials are all about helping you bring out your leadership skills.
- Laynetworks: Those who want to learn more about great management skills can find tutorials galore here.
- Website 101: If you’re an entrepreneur who doesn’t know much about running a business online, this site is home to loads of tutorials that can help you understand what it takes to establish a great web presence.
- Business Tutorials: Whether you want to start your own business or need a little guidance once you have, this site will provide all kinds of helpful tutorials.
- BBC Languages: With numerous languages to choose from, this site offers visitors some really valuable free language learning materials.
Online educational empowerment: Binshan Lin and John Vassar at the Louisiana State University, suggest that online learning communities have many benefits because they offer learners social networks to effectively and easily acquire and share knowledge among themselves. However, key to success, they have found is individual self-governance! Self-governance, or personal empowerment, can be measured in terms of self-efficacy, perceived behavioral control and personal outcome expectations regarding the interactions between learners and the online technology.
Online communities, and the internet more broadly speaking, extend the notion of personal empowerment that has emerged in health, welfare and now education. This paradigm shift in access to information means that today learners can, for example, educate themselves with minimal interaction from a higher power or traditional teacher. "In accepting this philosophy, an instructor may become the 'guide on the side' rather than the 'sage on the stage'," the researchers say. Source: International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2009, 5, 340-350
"We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn." - Peter Drucker
Online communities, and the internet more broadly speaking, extend the notion of personal empowerment that has emerged in health, welfare and now education. This paradigm shift in access to information means that today learners can, for example, educate themselves with minimal interaction from a higher power or traditional teacher. "In accepting this philosophy, an instructor may become the 'guide on the side' rather than the 'sage on the stage'," the researchers say. Source: International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2009, 5, 340-350
"We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn." - Peter Drucker
Make this a Positive & Fruitful day....unless you have other plans!
Warm regards & success,
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