Book Review – Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar

May 7, 2010

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success By James Marcus Bach Published by Scribner I just finished reading this book and it was a joy. Bach employs the “buccaneer” analogy to describe his personal quest for a self-directed and personally meaningful education. Bach never [...]

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TED’s How We Learn Series

April 29, 2010

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 [...]

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Keeping the “Informal” in Workplace Informal Learning

April 26, 2010

Informal learning is a concept that is quickly taking hold in companies and organizations everywhere. No surprise. Such learning often produces as good or better results than more formal training programs and at a fraction of the cost. But as with all trends adopted within large organizations, there can be a tendency to over-complicate matters. [...]

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Proving Your Education – Documentation of Learning

April 18, 2010

This post thread started with my book review of Proving Your Qualified. In previous posts I discussed some of the elements of an education portfolio – résumés, letters of recommendation, testimonials, and work samples. Although what elements go into the making of a good education portfolio varies by individual and job target, a good one [...]

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100 Self Education Sites

April 1, 2010

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!

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Capturing Your Learning

March 30, 2010

One of the challenges self educators, indeed all learners, have is capturing their learning in some manner so that they can easily reference it later. Let’s face it, we can’t possibly remember everything we learn, at least not in detail. You might want to remember key ideas you’ve learned, refer to a quote you recall [...]

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SelfMadeScholar.com

March 25, 2010

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 [...]

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Texas State Board of Education Travesty

March 13, 2010

On March 5, 2010, a great travesty occurred in the State of Texas. A radical, right-wing faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded in replacing fact with fiction in the state’s official curriculum that dictates how the children of that state will be taught. The new curriculum directives touch upon a wide array [...]

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The Self Education Checklist

February 9, 2010

I’m currently reading a great book by Atul Gawande titled The Checklist Manifesto, which was recently picked as an Amazon.com book of the month selection. The message of the book is that in today’s deluge of information and processes that many of us are required to utilize in our daily lives, and in our professional [...]

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Social Learning

January 10, 2010

These days a popular term has emerged in learning circles – social learning. It’s not an entirely new term. Discussion about social learning has roots going back as early as the late 1800’s. In recent times it has become somewhat synonymous with social media learning. While learning theorists will rightfully disagree that the two terms [...]

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Metaphorically Speaking

December 31, 2009

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. [...]

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Test Outs – A Concept Whose Time Has Come

December 30, 2009

People who work in the instructional design or training field know of the concept of test outs. A test out is a test someone takes to determine if they have the prerequisite knowledge or skill necessary to take a particular course or module of training. In other words, the test out determines if the person [...]

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