For the Rest of Us
Everyone loves to talk about children. Children are the future (so buy this product). Invest in your children (so accept this school budget). Children must be prepared for tomorrow (so give me another term).
What about the rest of us? We are the currently employed, the ones who are busy creating the future today, the ones who are paying for the educations of tomorrow.
Self-help books are old hat. Self-help sites are in. There are three veins of modern digital learning that are available at low or no-cost for adults.
Choose Your Own Adventure (Course)
When I decided to go to the University of Southern California, it was after begrudging acknowledgement, aided by a very good high school teacher, that places like MIT and CalTech were not for my type of personality.
Luckily, it was the year after I arrived in Los Angeles, in 2002, that I heard about MIT’s OpenCourseWare. Since the value of a strong university experience goes far beyond the actual course material, MIT decided to open all of its course material to the Internet.
Do you want to learn about astrophysics? How about digital publishing? Or advanced economics? It’s all there.
Even better for the rest of us, they opened the doors to the information that was once closely guarded by those who love the Ivory Tower of academia, and they did it for the good of humanity.
For a great directory of traditional courses from which you can learn right now, visit OpenContent.org and Open.edu.
Learn to Do
I learn more reliably by doing, the brutal world of trial-and-error, learning The Hard Way.
Method learning is like method acting: jump in and explore every facet as if you’re already the expert. The best example I’ve started using is Method of Action, which freely teaches aesthetic design principles to logical thinkers.
Method learning guides you along the theory with short exercises repeated with feedback. Even better, you end up with tangible results, like a professionally aesthetic business card, stationery, and logo that you designed. The creator gets a cut when you order those designs in the real-world through their site.
Flashcards are effective, which is why every med school student I know still uses them, but paper is dead (dead trees, at least) and I’d rather have positive feedback. Anki is a program for Mac and PC that makes those flashcards interactive, giving you instant feedback and allowing you to set the pace of learning.
This is how I’m learning Srbski (Serbian), for example. Ne brini, ti mogu naučiti!
Train the Brain
One of the most exciting and cutting-edge areas is brain enhancement. It’s been promised for thousands of years, with potions and pills and drinks and diets. Only now is it becoming measurably effective.
Lumosity incorporates the latest brain research into activities that promote the development of specific whole-brain skills, like the ability to multitask, think creatively, or think faster, for example. I use this almost every day, along with the nearly 15 million users since it first launched in 2006.
Learning is inherently multi-modal…we learn from our daily experiences, from others, from our own thoughts and reflection, and from formal training.
The digital revolution is making it easier to be smarter, which means that our precious short time on this planet can be spent more wisely each and every day.
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