"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
If you are reading this post, you probably have the goal of increasing your knowledge, but you are not willing to put any work into it. How can you bridge the gap between your goal and the outcome when you are missing the fundamental ingredient of motivation? The simple answer is to use the creativity and productivity of the intellectuals behind the modern technologies of the iPad and the Amazon Kindle.
You spend many hours doing boring tasks, such as going to the gym, doing laundry, tanning, driving in traffic, washing dishes, or waiting at the airport. You can use that time to educate yourself.
What you need: Amazon Kindle, iPad, and an attention span.
1. Amazon Kindle: The Amazon Kindle store sells a wide assortment of books that have a text-to-speech feature. The feature is only a part of Kindle and not available on Kindle for iPad or Kindle PC software. Text-to-speech turns almost every book into an audiobook that you can read/listen. Most old classic literature is free. Amazon has a special sale of 100 Kindle books for $3.99 or less every month. Every month a new selection of 100 books is presented. There is also Kindle Daily Deal which is one novel on sale for about $1 every day. You can be notified of the Kindle Daily Deal by e-mail.
2. News radio: You can listen to news radio applications on your iPad. Examples: BBC News Service, NPR, C-Span.
3. Podcasts: Podcasts are an easy was to educate yourself on a topic of interest, without going in-depth. A recommended source of podcasts is the free Stitcher Radio app for the iPad. Stitcher radio is a searchable aggregation of podcasts, which is also classified according to interest category. Another source of information and podcasts is the iTunes store. The iTunes store offers university lectures for free. Look under iTunes university.
4. Live news TV: You can watch live news TV on your iPad for free (as long as you have a wifi connection). Examples: Al Jazeera Live, LiveStation, WSJ Live, Bloomberg TV, France 24, CNN.
5. Conferences: The idea is the same as podcasts. Examples: TED talks and Fora.tv app for the iPad.
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| Learning on the run |
6. The Economist Audio Edition: The Economist magazine is an informative weekly publication about world news and economics. The magazine has a bias for economic liberalism. If you are a student, you can subscribe to The Economist on Student Mags for $77/year. The subscription gives you access to both the print and audio editions.
7. Binaural brain wave application: This tip may sound a little pseudo-scientific, but binaural brain wave iPad/iPod applications can help you focus on your work and learn. You listen to two sounds. One sound is at a specific frequency and the second sound is the background. Your brain waves are affected by the sound frequency, so you can control your mental focus by changing the binaural beats. Even if you want to attribute it to the placebo effect, it is worth a try.
8. Facebook: You can actually use Facebook to connect with meaningful pages. By changing the settings, you can choose to exclude the posts of the friend who only posts pictures of his cat or undeserving food from appearing in your news feed. On the other hand, you can subscribe to respectable news sources and their posts will appear in your news feed. So your Facebook addiction can become a way of keeping up with current events.
9. Aggregate news sources: All media has a bias, but the extent and type of bias varies. It is therefore important to get news from multiple sources. Aggregate news sources are the lazy way to do that. Examples: iPad apps News360, Google News, Flud News.
10. InstaPaper: InstaPaper is an iPad application and website that helps you save webpages to read later. Instapaper then neatly formats your saved pages into a neat format like a newspaper for the iPad. Bonus: a subscription delivers up to 50 of your saved articles daily to your Kindle. You can then listen-read to the web content using the text-to-speech feature.
The most important mental power is the ability to know what you don't know. The recognition of a fault is the first step to improvement. Don't hide a lack of knowledge. To crush arrogance and embrace humility is the mark of true wisdom.
If you are not fortunate enough to own an iPad or a Kindle, there are alternative ways of gaining knowledge. You can find a variety of podcasts and conferences online. Many of the applications I listed have internet websites with the same features. The final way to gain knowledge is the old-fashioned way. You can read a book.
How about an android device? It can be cheaper than an iPad, and provide you with similar accessibility. You can access the Kindle store on it and also the Google Bookstore and have books shared in the cloud. Both the kindle and tablets have their advantages and disadvantages but in the end there is nothing like holding a book in your hands as you fall asleep. The thing I am really gratefull to my parents for is the set of Childcraft encylopedia that they got me along with the World Book set when I was a kid and reading those at night inspired my curiousity and shaped me in to who I am today.
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