In an environment where everybody is being increasingly distant on a daily basis, it is important to constantly monitor the progress and growth. You will never avoid studying, which is why it is more important than ever to have the right opportunities for learning and to stay on track.
If you are an undergraduate or a specialist seeking further schooling, the year 2023 has proven to be a metaphorical wrench in the spokes of your education. You discovered that you were physically cut off from your tribes and from your learning environments. Once again, technology came to the rescue, and several organizations released innovative new technologies for learning the addressed precisely that difference.
Certain resources were already accessible, but their use skyrocketed in recent years. You can take away from this that these techniques are not just a lifesaver in emergency situations; they can also be included in the daily learning routine to increase performance.
Though there are several facets of studying, I decided to concentrate on four key fields that are important when it comes to distance learning or self-study in this context:
Reading – A Source of Knowledge
The overwhelming majority of learning occurs by reading, and books also serve as sources of motivation for our skills. You will have difficulty identifying the books you can read, and sometimes, you invest in a book just to discover halfway through that you dislike the design or that it really does not address your needs.
That is why I agree that two apps in particular would prove extremely useful in assisting you in determining what to read whilst also picking up a few nuggets along the way.
Additionally, these applications are useful when attempting to learn something different, maybe something completely outside of your comfort zone. They can assist you in sorting through the plethora of books available and easily determining what piques your attention.
1. Blankest
I’m an enthusiastic reader, and my greatest challenge since reading the important books on a certain subject is discovering new material to learn about. Particularly after self-publishing became popular, it’s become increasingly difficult to search through all the available choices and choose one that will both support and delight you.
I never looked back until discovering Blankest, and as a result, I must have read at least fifty separate novels. Blankest selects books and outlines them into a sequence of brief audio clips dubbed blinks. Typically, it takes about 15 minutes to listen to a Blankest entry (or read, if you prefer).
The app features a comprehensive labelling scheme that enables you to quickly find the books you’re looking for depending on their genre or similarity to those you’ve already read. This software will assist you in locating new books to read and learn about. Additionally, it would save you time by determining which books are not worth your time.
2. Headway
Headway is comparable to Blankest, but it is a more recent entrant to the industry. Their software is easy to use, with an elegant user interface.
The platform is good at recognizing your reading habits and making recommendations based on your past reading. Although their collection is not as vast as Blanket’s at the moment, they make an attempt to create summaries for newly released books as well as several of the more well-known non-fiction titles.
Advance Your Career: Courses – Digging Deeper
Another sector that has flourished in recent years is the online course segment. There are courses available for any subject and skill level. Teachers come from all walks of life and share their specialized skills through these handy learning resources.
I must have taken a dozen courses over the last year and found them to be extremely simple to ingest and absorb, as well as highly efficient. These apps may be installed on your phone or tablet and used when walking, exercising, or before bedtime.
Since the courses are graded, you can start with a beginner course to see if it is a good fit for you. You may later progress to higher levels and continue learning about the topic. Combining a book you’ve found with a course accessible on one of these apps in the same genre is especially useful.
3. Udemy
Udemy is a website and mobile application that offers online education via video courses. The material is diverse and oriented toward personal and professional growth.
The web is easy to use, and finding what you’re looking for is simple. Since the app has thousands of consumers, you learn from several feedback and testimonials for each course.
The one disadvantage to Udemy is that they do not have a membership model, which means that if you wish to take several courses, you would pay for each one separately. However, the app also offers large incentives in an attempt to draw more students.
I adore this site, and it’s one of my go-to destinations while I’m looking to learn something different.
4. Coursera
Coursera is another excellent resource for education, especially if you want to obtain a credential and use it to apply for jobs. Unlike Udemy, Coursera is more academically oriented, and for a price, you can obtain a certificate attesting to the completion of the course.
It’s unsurprising that Coursera gives such accreditation, given that the site was established by two Stanford University professors. Currently, the platform expects to have supported 550 million students by 2023, a figure that represents a 70% year-over-year growth rate.
What I appreciate about Coursera is that they have a membership platform that includes full access to all classes and qualifications. Naturally, both classes are self-paced, making them ideal for successful learning at home or on the go.
5. The Great Courses
Though Coursera focuses on technical skills, The Great Courses provides a wider selection of classes covering nearly any hobby imaginable. The Great Courses also introduces an enhancement package named The Great Courses Plus, which is a subscription-based model that provides unrestricted access to their extensive library of courses.
One of the best features of The Great Courses is their professionally crafted video courses taught by some of the world’s best professors and teachers of their respective fields. The Great Courses blends seamlessly with Roku TV and is also accessible on Amazon Kindle.
Information Retention – Long-Term Learning
Knowledge retention is a key component of learning. Although taking thousands of classes and reading hundreds of books is beneficial, it would be in vain if you cannot remember the majority of what you learn.
Bear in mind that keeping information would not require you to memorize anything you learn or hear. It entails organizing the critical components of your education in a manner that allows them simple to find and use when you need them.
That is why it is critical to have a structure in place that is always accessible and enables you to collect and build your personal learning archive. This educational resources can organize, store, and logically link all of the components of your schooling. You’ll be able to retrieve and use the details later.
6. Enki
Enki is a memory aid that can assist you with remembering what you’ve learned and retaining memories more precisely and over a prolonged period of time. It’s a research technique similar to that of paper flashcards, but its designers developed it to be more effective than most conventional methods of studying.
The fundamental concept is that the device adapts to your present proficiency level and changes your learning appropriately. As an example, suppose you are studying a foreign language and are working your way through a series of flashcards. The software stores your knowledge of the responses, and you will not get such question cards again for two weeks. Those you are unfamiliar with will reappear tomorrow.
Through relying on the power of repetition and avoiding topics you are already familiar with, you can effectively learn and maintain knowledge.
One of the strongest features of Enki ? It is completely free. What is the next best thing? It is used as a download for Windows and Mac, as well as mobile devices.
Enki is a fantastic learning aid that can help you develop your recall and save you a lot of time.
7. Quizlet
Quizlet is another tool that helps to aid in knowledge retention. It’s a research help that intelligently transforms a simple flashcard scheme into a full-fledged learning system.
Quizlet is an ideal platform for self-paced learning at home. The app’s AI capabilities allow it to change your learning path over time by focusing on places where you fail and minimizing the recycling of knowledge you already understand well.
At first glance, it will seem as if this app is only available to K-12 pupils. Nonetheless, it is ideal for experienced learners, such as graduate students and practitioners seeking to further their expertise and skills.
Archiving and Keeping The Knowledge Base Up-to-Date
Regardless on how strong your memory is, you cannot depend entirely on it, perhaps more so when your aim is to maximize your productivity. That is why you must incorporate a comprehensive infrastructure into your learning method that enables you to store information and easily access it when you need to.
The objective here is to get your course notes, book highlights, photographs, and audio files properly sorted, tagged, and labelled so that you can quickly retrieve them.
8. Diego
Diego is an excellent addition to the toolkit for studying. The more time you spend online, the more often you can come across fascinating stuff.
There are chances to learn everywhere, however they often pass you by due to the sheer volume and velocity of information. however, not if you use a platform such as Diego.
Diego is a personal identity management and organizing framework that enables you to bookmark, highlight or outline, tag, and archive any web content. You collect data when you’re out and about and save it in your learning queue for later use.
9. Evernote
Evernote is a stalwart in the note-taking world. It began in the early 2000s and was one of the first businesses to support smartphone connectivity and cross-device synchronization fully.
Although Diego and Evernote have several parallels, the primary distinction being that Diego is based on content collection, whereas Evernote often encourages users to generate content.
You may create notes using their intuitive WYSIWYG editor and then exchange and arrange them in files, by tag, or in notebooks.
In general, I think Evernote is a critical tool to use if you want to improve your learning performance. Their apps allow you to capture images, transform them to PDFs, and archive them. If the scan is capable of being translated to text, it is also indexed for fast searching.
10. Notion
Notion is something more than a simple note-taking application. It’s a complete structure that you can use to create your own personal learning center. At its core, Notion is a folder that you can customize to organize your notes intuitively and have quick access to them.
Due to its compatibility with all media types, you can save video webinars, audio lessons, or whole books or PDFs. There is almost nothing the Notion cannot achieve, which seems almost too amazing to be real.
Naturally, there is a catch. Notion has a slight learning curve, and most people struggle to get started. However, with some experience and time, I believe it would do wonders for your studying, and you will quickly abandon all other methods of information acquisition.
Bonus: Brain Training – Maintaining your Sharpness
I’d like to include one more group as a bonus. Maintaining a healthy and active mind is important regardless of the stage of existence. Your brain is similar to a muscle, and consistency over strength is important when it comes to learning.
Over time, small pulses of brain stimulation can boost your creativity and make your brain more efficient at learning. As a result, I consider these applications to be an important part of your toolkit for learning.
Since we’re aiming to increase the productivity, these techniques are ideal since they include brief lessons and drills that can be completed at any moment and in a short amount of time. You can catch yourself opening these applications while standing in a long line at the grocery store or at the doctor’s office.
They offer a simple and efficient method of sharpening the intellect, which improves your capacity to remember and maintain knowledge over time.
Three outstanding brain conditioning apps to help you improve your mental capacity.
- Elevate (Website | Apple iOS | Android)
- Peak (Apple iOS | Android)
- Lumosity (Apple iOS | Android)
Final Remarks
Learning is a duty, not an obligation. The notion that you finish your education in school and then go on to life is antiquated, and we ought to permanently alter the mentality.
Only by intentionally scheduling time for studying and waking up each day would you be able to develop, change, and live a more happy and fulfilling life.
When you train alone at home, the risk is that you can succumb to procrastination or a sense of guidance. That is why it is important to have the appropriate resources for learning at your hand. They will increase your productivity, inspire you, and assist you in tracking your success by the use of a classroom simulation.
However, these educational instruments are just the beginning. I implore you to never quit challenging the status quo and telling yourself, “what more will I learn?” Where else will I get knowledge that is easily digestible and beneficial to me and my life?” Enjoy Learning.