Posted March 28th, 2018
By Kris Powers
Lifelong learning, research shows, can make you richer, healthier, and happier. But finding time to fit that learning into our schedules can be difficult. Fear not! Busy professionals, parents of young children and anyone with full-to-the-brim schedules can work lifelong learning and personal development into their lives with the following suggestions. The following companies offer learning opportunities in “bite sized” chunks, to allow you to more easily fit learning into your day.
1. Blinklist. "Blinklist offers nonfiction books that are packed into 15-minute lessons." Subscribers can choose to either read or listen to the content via an app. They offer a free trial, and a free daily version, but there is a yearly subscription fee to access the 2,000 titles.
2. Duolingo. "Learn a new language for free. Forever." Duolingo makes the process of learning a new language fun! Improve your speaking, reading, and writing skills in the following languages: English, Arabic, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesia, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
3. Hardbound turns bestselling nonfiction books into illustrated stories that you can finish in 5 minutes. New titles are released every week.
4. iTunes U is an app that gives you access to over a million free lectures, books, videos, and other resources. For no cost, you can get access to courses taught at prestigious Universities like Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Oxford.
5. Khan Academy's motto is “You can learn anything,” and with instructional videos, practice exercises and a personalized learning dashboard they give learners the opportunity to do just that! Whether you are interested in science and engineering, math, or arts and humanities, Khan Academy has something for you.
6. Nerdify Bot is a chatbot designed to answer specific questions that you may have. Nerdify can help you solve equations, look up definitions, plot graphs and more!
7. Created by Google, Primer is a fast, easy, way to learn new business and digital marketing skills. You can take the interactive lessons whenever you have 5 minutes free. After you finish each lesson, you will receive personalized next steps and a helpful recap to help you retain and recall what you've learned.
8. TED promotes “ideas worth spreading” and offers short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less), TED Books (“short books to feed your craving for ideas”), Ideas Blog (“daily coverage of today’s ideas) and an inspirational Newsletter. Browse and watch an ever-expanding library of more than 2,700 fascinating Ted Talks “to stir your curiosity”.
9. wikiHow gives you access to more than 190,000 how-to guides. Guide topics range from things like “How to Become Tech Savvy” to “How to Find More Time in Your Workday.” You can even select “Random Article” from the Explore tab and learn something new that you may never have thought of!
10. Ed4Career offers hundreds of courses in 4 distinct areas of online education: 1) Career Vocational Training (Not-for-credit), 2) Personal Enrichment, 3) For Credit College Classes, and 4) Professional Development Training. We understand the way adults want to learn and how they learn best! Our courses are designed by top-level curriculum designers and are available 365 days a year. Visit us today to learn more about the Ed4Career difference!
Lifelong learning doesn’t have to be difficult. The above websites and apps make the pursuit of lifelong learning easy! If you have a favorite app or website that you use in your pursuit of knowledge, I’d love to hear about it! Email me at Kris.powers@Ed4Career.com. I’m always interested in learning what people are doing!
