Self-education is the ultimate form of personal-development because at its essence, personal development is about the intake of information that has the power to positively alter your behavior and way of thinking.

The best part about self-education is that you are in control.

  • You pick the topic.
  • You choose your own pace of learning.
  • You set your own goals.
  • You take a break when you want to.
  • You structure sessions the way you like.

You! It’s about you.


Photo courtesy of BohPhoto

A personal learning environment (PLE) is a system of free web-based services that helps learners manage and take control of their own learning. It includes support for managing content and communicating with others learning the same thing you are. A PLE can put the process of self-education on steroids. It makes it fun and increases productivity.

One important thing to keep in mind is that PLE’s are not e-learning systems. E-learning systems are neither controlled nor managed by you. They are instruments teachers use to exercise their control over you and decide what and how you should learn.

Big difference!

The following are 7 steps you can implement to create your own informal and personal learning environment for FREE.

1. Base Your Effort on Passion

Creating and maintaining a PLE takes some decent effort so don’t do it just for the sake of doing it. Base the effort on passion and aim to learn something you have passion for. Or at least, if you’re not passionate about the topic but for some reason need to gain knowledge in it then relate it to something you are passionate about. The following is a simplified example.

Let’s say you’re passionate about psychology but for some reason you’re obliged to learn about finance, a topic you don’t like. You can approach learning finance in this manner:

Psychology > psychology in marketing > planning marketing budgets > finance

You get the idea. Passion is important.

2. Pick Your Topic

Lately you’ve been having some questions on your mind and you’re wondering about some ideas so you decide to do a little exploring. Where do you go? Normally, I head to Wikipedia. It’s not the best or most accurate encyclopedia but it’s good enough if you just want to get the basic gist of a certain topic. Plus, the options of articles available are vast.

Look around, delve deeper and pick your topic.

3. Find a Blog-Community

After you’ve picked a topic, the next step is to find people more knowledgeable about it than you are and then socialize with them. Blog-communities provide the perfect context for this activity.

Blogs are a highly social medium. Interaction and knowledge exchange take place in blog communities with great ease. They also get bonus points since our understanding of knowledge is socially constructed.

The question now is how can you find a blog community discussing the topic you’re interested in? Well, here’s how:

Technorati: Type in the word of the topic you want, for example “learning”, “history”, “atheism”, “education” or whatever you want and you’ll get a list of recent blog posts tagged with those words. Explore and find a few good blogs focused on your topic.

From there, it should be easy. Look at their blogrolls and visit the blogs listed there, then again, look at the blogrolls of those blogs and do the same thing. Eventually, depending on the popularity of the topic, and the specificity you want, you’re bound to discover anywhere from 30 blogs to even hundreds.

SocialRank: SocialRank is a service still in its infancy (and one I’ve worked on). The algorithm (called SocialRank) monitors the activity and social interactions taking place real-time within numerous blog communities and serves you the top 15 blog posts receiving most attention. Each niche site also comes with a community page listing many blogs on a particular topic. Use the service and find the like-minded bloggers you’re looking for.


Photo courtesy of Charles Chan

4. Launch Your Own Blog

This step is crucial. Your blog is the center of your personal learning environment. It’s the backbone! Starting a blog enables you to record your thoughts and “archive” your brain overtime. You can even go back and see how your perspectives evolved. It provides context for what you learn and actually helps you learn more about yourself. More importantly, you’ll need a blog if you wish to socialize with others in a blog-community effectively (which will be discussed in the next step). Two free blogging services you may sign up on are:

Blogger: It’s owned by Google and it’s very easy to use (especially if you’re still new to blogging). Commenting and the low flexibility are annoying though.

Wordpress: Great flexibility and more features.

Personally, I recommend Wordpress.

5. Socialize Within a Blog-Community

Alright so now you have your blog and you’ve identified the like-minded blog community you seek. Start socializing and mingling! The rules of The Real World pretty much apply online. Remember why you’re there in the first place - to learn. Have an open-mind and don’t be afraid to ask questions if you’re unsure of something.

Be Yourself

Just be yourself. Most will be happy to help you. Of course don’t just flood the place with questions. Participate, contribute and become part of the community. Before you know it, you’ll be shocked by the amount of information and new things you learned.

Subscribe to RSS Feeds of Your Favorite Blogs

The majority of bloggers blog about a certain topic because it interests them and they enjoy it. In doing so, they go through a lot of information, process it and then filter it according to their perspectives. Therefore, their blogs are essentially information filters.

At one point you might find yourself reading too many of them. Increase your productivity by keeping track of them through their RSS feeds. Pick your favorites and filter the filters!

Share Your Opinions

Write your opinions on your own blog too, link to other bloggers’ posts and comment on them. Add to the conversation.

6. Leverage the Power of Social-Bookmarking

You need to realize that there are many people out there who share your interests and spend a lot of time online looking for the same things you’re looking for. Leverage their effort. Social-Bookmarking applications are amazing tools that incredibly boost search productivity. Personally, I use:

Search for your favorite topics (like “learning” and “psychology“) and enjoy quality search results, at times even better than Google’s!

7. Leverage the Power of Social-Networking

After a period of time you’ll make some friends from the blog communities you’ve been socializing in. Get to know them better. Add them in your Facebook and Myspace networks. Find out which of them live in your city and meet them.

Socializing online is limiting. Face-to-face is unbeatable and by conversing for just an hour, you’d accomplish the same amount of knowledge sharing that would normally take a few hours online to fulfill.

And there you have it…

That’s basically it! Take your time and apply those steps to create the personal learning environment you desire. Embrace this powerful system of free web-based services, immerse yourself and like a sponge, absorb all you can. You may also compliment your diet of blogs posts and articles with other forms of media such as podcasts and videos. Last but not least act on what you’ve learned..

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