In my previous article called Learning to Learn, I talked about the importance of prioritising the heaps of information that we are exposed to in our day-to-day lives, managing them with certain methods, and their effects on the learning process. Today, I want to touch upon the subject of Personal Learning Network, which will help us bring together information in a meaningful way and facilitate us to benefit from them as effectively as possible.
Almost everyone has heard this phrase from the elderly people in their lives: "We didn't have the means that you have today to learn. If I had been given the chance, I would achieve great things..." What prevented them from learning and studying in their time may really be the "impossibility" to have the means. They did not have enough schools, teachers, books, or resources. So, with all the "means" that we have today, why does the learning process seem much more difficult?
We are exposed to new information and developments every day at school, work, at any place to be honest. We are introduced to new applications before we even get the chance to make time for the application that we just learned. Even the data of a report that we wrote 2 days ago may change at the time of its presentation.
In our age, the rapid change and development of technology, and its destructive effect that comes with it by removing whatever is old and replacing them with the more up-to-date versions make it difficult for people with old learning habits to access current information. The time that we spend acting on new information that we learn is very different from how we used to do it before. The advancing technology creates the need for continuous access to up-to-date information. While it provides us with a comfort zone in which we have abundant resources and ease of access to information, technology can also tire us by leading to a hunger for information within us.
The nature of information, and subsequently science has been changing. And we need to try new learning methods, instead of the ones that we already have to keep up with this change. Learning from others is among these new methods.
And we need a solid learning network in order to have a solid foundation for this process of learning from others.
Our Personal Learning Network is actually the environment in which we can interact and contact the people that have the same interests as us, and we can do it by following scientific publications and social media. We can create our own personal learning network by interacting with experts in the fields we want to develop ourselves, together with people that have common interests with us.
In order to follow the posts about your business, for example, you can find good examples from the world, not only about the people you are in the same circle with but also about the topics you are interested in. We need to learn to actively use social media and create a worldwide learning network for ourselves.
But social media cannot be enough on its own for our learning network. By following the publications of experts on the subjects we are interested in and by subscribing to the publications of the websites, we can further expand our network.
I would like to make a couple of more suggestions on this topic.
- We can use content collecting tools.
There is a lot of complicated information on the Internet, and it is constantly updated. So, you can use tools that compile and report content according to your interests.
- You can follow blogs that make publications in the areas of your interest.
https://medium.com/,etc.
- You can follow the social media accounts of experts.
- You can attend free webinars or trainings.
- You can subscribe to websites that share research or news according to your interests and start digital subscriptions.
"Your destiny is directly affected by what you know. Know, and make better choices..."
Are you really alive that you are afraid of disappearing? / Al-Farabi
Mahmut Atabay
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