Top 15 Resources For Self-Development
by Amanda Johnson, Employee Motivation Consultant for ClickHelp.com — professional technical writing tool
If you want to succeed in life you should self-develop. It’s not only about working on your skills, it’s about growing and getting new experience.
Nowadays there are so many self-development platforms, that you may feel confused. Today I’ve compiled a list of useful resources and accompanied each of them with a description, so that you’ll know which ones will suit you best.
Their mission is “Making you smarter every day.” It’s not a futurology website. It’s a guide to how to live more intelligently in a fast-changing world. A home for the insatiably curious ones.
2.TED
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science and business to global issues — in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events allow to share ideas in communities around the world.
3.iTunes U
With iTunes U, you can build lessons with apps and your own materials, collect and grade assignments from students, start class discussions or talk with students one-on-one to answer questions and provide feedback.
4.Cerego
A service that creates an training program based on your interests, strengths and weaknesses. Cerego can help you acquire, retain, and demonstrate the knowledge you need, so you can excel at the things you enjoy and be the person you want to be.
This platform is about creativity where you may find videos, podcast on different topics. Founders of the project believe that each of us has a spark of creativity. From the moment we struck fire, we met our challenges with creative tools. We make dreams come true, problem-solve, and express ourselves through creativity. It shapes our identity and ties us together. Creativity gives us hope and allows us to innovate and imagine. It’s how we change the world.
6.Coursera
Every course on Coursera is taught by top instructors from the world’s best universities and educational institutions. Courses include recorded video lectures, auto-graded and peer-reviewed assignments, and community discussion forums. When you complete a course, you’ll receive a shareable electronic Course Certificate.
7.Quora
Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge. A vast amount of the knowledge that would be valuable to many people is currently only available to a few — either locked in people’s heads, or only accessible to select groups. Quora connects people who have knowledge to those who need it, to bring together people with different perspectives so they can understand each other better, and to empower everyone to share their knowledge for the benefit of the rest of the world.
Digital Photography School — one of the most popular and longest running blogs on the web about photography. Founder Darren Rowse is a digital photography enthusiast who created the site to share tips for photographers who want to get the most out of their cameras.
This ‘School’ is not a formal one by any means. There are no classes, no teachers, no exams — rather it’s a challenging and enjoyable learning environment where popular photographers share tips and techniques to help you improve all aspects of your photography. Also, unlike most schools, it is completely free.
Founded in 2006 as a weekly email that went out to seven friends and eventually brought online, the site was included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive in 2012.
Brain Pickings — which remains ad-free and supported by readers — is a cross-disciplinary LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces spanning art, science, psychology, design, philosophy, history, politics, anthropology, and more; pieces that enrich our mental pool of resources and empower combinatorial ideas that are stronger, smarter, richer, deeper and more impactful. Above all, it’s about how these different disciplines illuminate one another to glean some insight, directly or indirectly, into that grand question of how to live, and how to live well.
“The idea is simple: to publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone.” -Dick K.P. Yue, Professor, MIT School of Engineering
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
Through OCW, educators improve courses and curricula, making their schools more effective; students find additional resources to help them succeed. Independent learners enrich their lives and use the content to tackle some of our world’s most difficult challenges, including sustainable development, climate change, and cancer eradication.
11.Investopedia
Investopedia is the world’s leading source of financial content on the web, with more than 30 million unique visitors and 90 million page views each month.
Powered by a team of data scientists and financial experts, Investopedia offers timely, trusted and actionable financial information for every investor, from early investors to financial advisors to high net worth individuals. Investopedia is operated by IAC Publishing, a collection of some of the web’s largest and most trusted digital media brands.
12.Udacity
The mission of the resource is to democratize education through the offering of world-class higher education opportunities that are accessible, flexible, and economical. Virtually anyone on the planet with an internet connection and a commitment to self-empowerment through learning can come to Udacity, master a suite of job-ready skills, and pursue rewarding employment.
13.Future Learn
Future Learn offers a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world. These are delivered one step at a time, and are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, so you can fit learning around your life.
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.
15. Platzi
It’s the platform with online courses. What do you need to take the courses? Just internet connection and your laptop, tablet, smartphone or any other modern mobile device. If you can watch a YouTube video in 480p then you’ll be able to see the videos of the classes fluently. As Platzi works online you won’t need to install anything. If you miss the live streaming of a certain class, you may watch the videos of the classes whenever you want.
That’s it for today. What platforms do you use? What resources for self-development can you recommend?
