I find random learning a lot of fun. I love it when I’m presented with something to learn that I might not have otherwise sought out on my own. If you don’t engage in any conscious random learning, I encourage you to do so.

There are two ways I engage in random learning on a regular basis.

The first is Stumbleupon. This is a service that helps you discover and share great websites. You click their Stumble! icon and they deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of millions of other websurfers with interests similar to you. I also get periodic emails from Stumbleupon alerting me to web pages targeted at my own interests. It’s amazing how often I’ve found their recommendations incredibly well focused on what I enjoy learning about.

Another great random learning mechanism I use is Wikipedia’s Random Article feature. Visit Wikipedia’s Main Page and click on Random Article among the left hand navigation links. You’ll be presented with a random article from Wikipedia’s vast repository of knowledge articles.

Do you have any other ways you engage in random learning? I’d love to hear about them.

I read this post on TechCrunch today about OpenStudy. OpenStudy is a new startup virtual study group for students studying mathematics, writing and English, history and much more. From what I can tell, they combine the elements social media, online gaming and learning in a way I find quite clever.

Check it out. And if you know anyone studying those subjects who might want some support and interaction with other students, let them know about it.

Today I was scanning TechCrunch (great site to keep up with current technology news and trends) and I read an interesting post, McGraw Hill Gets In On the Mobile Education Market. The post mentioned two items of interest.

First, within the context of the United States’ lackluster performance in science education lately, the author pointed out Scitable, Nature Publishing Group’s free online science library. If you have an interest in science, this appears to be a great learning resource.

Second, the post mentioned McGraw Hill’s entry into the mobile education market. The author appears somewhat skeptical of mobile learning, but I consider it an important part of the world’s learning future. Why not learn on the go? Learning can take place anywhere and be facilitated through many venues. So mobile learning on a phone, tablet or laptop makes sense to me. Over time I believe self-educators will be provided with many mobile learning delivery options that can enhance one’s self-education efforts.

Another related post on TechCrunch today, Scitable.com Goes Mobile, describes a just released mobile-friendly version of the Scitable site. When Scitable announced their new mobile version, they mentioned that their “…mission is to democratize access to science education” and I think that’s a great mission.

Check out the posts and let me know your thoughts.

I am lucky that I live in a city, San Francisco, that has a great selection of world-class museums that offer wonderful exhibitions and learning experiences spanning history, science, art, nature and culture. Visiting my local museums, and museums in other cities when I travel, are among my favorite self education experiences.

When I visit a museum I always seem to enter into a mental state of intellectual intoxication. I mean that in a good way. I lose myself in the experience and always walk out a few hours later a better and more worldly person. And yes, better educated.

Here is a great article that eloquently explains the deep and meaningful learning opportunities that museums and similar environments offer each of us. Museums can be an integral part of our lifelong learning.

I encourage everyone to take advantage of the learning opportunities their local museums present. When you’re visiting another city, consider making a visit to a museum part of your itinerary. You’ll be happy you did.

I’m very proud of my city. Here’s a nice listing of San Francisco Bay Area museums I encourage you to visit when in San Francisco.

As I’ve previously mentioned in my Run, Do Not Walk, to TED post, TED is my favorite website. You’ll never feel you’ve wasted a moment of your time by viewing any of the short speeches the site hosts by a wide range of fascinating and interesting people. Incredibly educational.

The nice folks running TED have been kind enough to group together their many presentations by theme, and one of their themes is How We Learn. This theme fits nicely with the focus of this blog and I encourage you to visit the TED How We Learn theme page and view anything that strikes you as interesting. I’ve only watched a few of the videos and I’m already blown away by the brilliance of these people. Enjoy and learn.

I’m not sure why I haven’t stumbled upon this post before, but take a look Emily Thomas’ great blog post titled 100 Best Self-Education Sites for Switching Careers. What a tremendous self education resource. And she kindly added this blog to her list (thank you, Emily).

I’m adding it my Resources page right now!

Today I want to encourage every self educator to visit Self Made Scholar. Jamie Littlefield’s great blog and accompanying learning resources make Self Made Scholar a site worthy of bookmarking and visiting repeatedly.

There aren’t currently a lot of recent blog posts, but that doesn’t diminish the tremendous usefulness of the site or the relevancy of the blog entries that are posted.

Pay particular attention to the many links that Jamie provides. This site is one of those online starting points for self educators as they browse for information to improve their self education experience.

Do you have a favorite online learning resource? If so, please contact me or add a comment to this post.

When I first read James Geary’s The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. Language has always fascinated me and the types of quotes and aphorisms highlighted in Mr. Geary’s book are particularly fascinating. Amidst such golden language resides the metaphor. Lots of them. Metaphors aren’t just an option in our language; they liberally populate the written and spoken word in every aspect of our daily lives.

No one can be considered truly educated without a good understanding of the metaphor. In this talk at TED, James Geary explains the pervasive, influential and vital nature of the metaphor. Enjoy.

Anytime I run across another avenue for self education, I get excited. Today, on cnn.com, I ran across this article that once again got me excited.

Universities are increasingly making lectures and other instructional audio and video podcasts available through iTunes, YouTube and other online venues. Much of the time this content is free. Admittedly, much of what I’m running across is focused on business and management skills, but the breadth of topics and subjects areas is broadening quickly and is starting to encompass the entire range of interests any student might have.

This trend continues the march toward a society that pulls education from various sources rather than waiting for it to be pushed to them through more traditional (classroom) educational approaches. Empowerment of the student is the result.

I encourage you to poke around iTunes and YouTube. Search for subjects in which you have an interest. This is another way to build the virtual library I encourage all self educators to create for themselves.

Sometimes there’s a question that’s not easily answered by the usual reference sources. When that happens, it’s often best to find someone who has the information to answer your question. But how do you do that?

A new site, Fluther.com (rhymes with “mother”), can help. The focus of the site is to provide you a place where you can ask questions to a large collective of people who frequent the site. Fluther.com takes your question and directs it to the people who can best answer that question. A simple, but very powerful concept.

When you join Fluther.com, you can create a profile listing your areas of expertise, your hobbies, places you’ve lived and a short bio. This assists the site in directing questions to appropriate people in the Fluther.com network.

Go ahead and give it a try.

Good self educators use a dictionary. No one can possibly know every word they run across in their educational pursuits, not even the most educated among us. If you include technical and scientific terms, there are an estimated 1,000,000 words in the English language. How can anyone know them all? They can’t.

I’m grateful that when I read ebooks on my Kindle (my preferred way to read these days), it has an excellent built-in dictionary that easily looks up words as I’m reading. It’s yet another reason I so highly recommend the Kindle.

Of course, I don’t read everything on my Kindle and when I run across a word I don’t know I typically turn to my favorite online dictionary – onelook.com. Onelook.com has over 1,000 online dictionaries indexed and when you search on a word it searches across all of them simultaneously to produce definitions.

I suggest you bookmark onelook.com and use it often. And if you have another online dictionary you prefer, I’d love to hear about it.

Blogs are quickly becoming one of the primary communication (and learning) mediums and they contain a lot of great information, insight and dialogue. What is a blog? The best definition I’ve heard is that a blog is simply a website with very regular postings as opposed to static information. Most blogs are written by a single individual, but some are collections of blogs from multiple authors. There are some general blogs, but most focus on a specific niche subject area.

You should definitely add technorati.com to your self education toolkit. The site collects, highlights and distributes the online global blog conversation. It is the leading blog search engine with the largest repository of information about blogs. There are blogs catalogued on a wide variety of subjects.

Take a tour of technorati.com and explore the various categories of blogs. Poke around and investigate what people are saying on the topics that you find of interest.

Oh, and if you like this blog and want to let others know about it, click the Add This Blog To My Technorati Favorites button to the right.

Race Bannon’s Technorati Profile