News Details

Hello World! Here comes LearnerOn.Net

Dear fellow Lifelong Learners!

Our site dedicated to Lifelong Learning aficionados passed its version alpha, and we are launching it to the outer world today. A moment to say Hello, World!

What is our mission? Simple: we are ourselves lifelong learners, finding new exciting horizons in the landscape of knowledge, skills & understanding. We know damn too well how uneasy it sometimes is to find the right learning path - such which would bring us safely to the ultimate learning objective, despite our temptations to give up early, divert our focus to other exciting matters of life or simply surrender to laziness or procrastination. Such which would be affordable given our budgetary and timing constraints. Such which would be commensurate to our starting level of knowledge and experience. SUCH WHICH PEOPLE LIKE US HAVE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED WHILE ENJOYING IT ON THE WAY.

And this is all on the mission of LearnerOn.Net. To help you to navigate and find your learning path, satisfying all the above at once, to the extent possible.

How do we want to achieve it? We believe in two powers: the first being the wisdom of Lifelong Learners themselves. Sure there was someone in need to learn the same subject as I do, knowing at the beginning the same little or much about it, having similar allocated time and budget. And, likely, someone also having same learning talents or not, similar context and motivation, similar body of experience. I... just need to find the person in the dark and get her advice on things to do, and things not to. And for this comes LearnerOn.Net as the learners community homespace, allowing to ask and answer structured learning path questions, get the fellow learner's community response, allowing for votes and comments - and the more we ask and answer, the more useful the space will be. This functionality is available on the site since its beginning.

The second power: science. You for sure have heard how Data Science & Engineering changed the world of web searching. The world of shopping. The world of entertainment. The world of traveling. The world of... learning...? Wait! Not yet. The Data Science and Science of Learning are just tipping their toes into the deep and yet uncharted waters, through the likes of MOOCs and early adaptive, individualized learning attempts, but this is just a beginning. And we will strive to bring you some of the fruits of Data and Learning Sciences to help even more in setting you for the learning paths to your success; this is the functionality to come - first perhaps in a simple form, and then to start evolving - just watch these News & Views columns, where we shall inform you on developments.

At this point you may ask why did we choose lifelong learning and learning paths as the field to elaborate on.Frankly, we spent years doing different things: math, physics, data science, finance...We watched with awe the world and society changing and gradually we got to believe that learning, knowing and understanding more, rather than less, is universally good thing. Not only it leads to an immediate better individual well being through improved skills and job prospects; it also makes the world better as a whole. It fuels progress. This is why. We summarized a bit more on the why in the About Us section of the site.

Enough of philosophy: in this launching News & Views, we also wanted to bring you some practical dos and don'ts, for easier navigation across the site and comfort of using it. Please therefore note:

• The introductory video on the homepage is by far the quickest and smoothest pathway to absorb the site functionality
• You can Sign Up either with your email, or with your existing social networks logins - it is easy, just try! Mind the Settings and profile parts of the User's area - filling in more will lead to the site being more useful for you.
• In order to get the most of useful guiding from the community Q&A efforts, we designed the site the way, that your learning path questions are to be asked in certain structured way, as are the answers to be provided. If unsure, you can learn how to place a question or answer either by looking at the examples in Browse All Questions, or by seeing the FAQs part of the site.
• Last but not least: your privacy. Without your input and using the information you bring to the site or generate through interacting with it, there would be much less to bring you back as a value. Asking and answering questions, including those on learning, is essentially about information exchange, and providing personalized experience. We use your information cautiously and crafted the Privacy section to inform you about it. Please check.

And this is almost all for today. Before wishing you an inspiring learning, just perhaps a hint where to turn to in case you are lost, or spot a bug (well... we alpha-tested the site, but not impossible!), or wanted to share a comment with the site team: you either can drop a note through Contact Us, or write us an email to administrator@learneron.net.

Now this is all.

Wishing you an inspiring learning!