Spiro Veneti

Life Long Learners and eLearning Keywords: eLearning, lifelong learning, lifelong learner. 1. Life Long learning definition. Can a person, stop learning in his lifetime? Is learning a consistent and infinite process? How does one, understand that he or she is learning? "The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety." — Josh Waitzkin Learning is the process, in which the people change. They change how they behave with each other, how they understand themselves, how they make decisions, how they choose and on and on. To put it simply, learning is a process which aims a change. If there is no change, there is no result, therefore there is no successful learning process. Not all people want to learn. Learning is an unconditional part of life, which can’t be avoided. But those who want, are called lifelong learners. All people learn through their life, but lifelong learners do it on purpose, that is what they aim for and we all can be lifelong learners. J. Waitzkin states that “growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety”. Meaning that to learn, people should accept change. To change they should accept sacrificing their comfort in order to grow. Lifelong learning is a voluntary process, in which a person throws himself in constant desire to grow and learn more. To achieve personal accomplishment, people tend to learn their whole life. Learning can be done through school, books, home, to summarize it, in formal and informal ways. For a person who is a lifelong learner there are no limits, therefore he tends to search and find every source accessible for him to reach more information. 2. ELearning for Lifelong learning people. One day, has 24 hours. In twenty four hours, a person can go to work by car, bike, or skateboard. He or she can cook, play a musical instrument or paint. In twenty four hours, the number of activates that one can do is uncountable. All these activities are skills, which require learning. A person has to learn to drive a car, ride a bike, paint, play an instrument or even cook a new dish. This is a learning process which, never stops and always changes, by bringing new skills and knowledge. How to acquire this skills from learning? Well, there have always been books, as the most credible source of knowledge and nowadays there is internet. Internet is not credible, but eLearning sources are. Today a person can acquire a new skill, by just opening his table, smartphone, laptop or desktop and start learning on how to do something. In twenty four hours there is plenty of time to learn and to use eLearning as the source of the new skills that someone can strongly desire, every day, over and over again. Lifelong learning is voluntary, that is why it needs self-motivation and also self-initiation. There is so much knowledge just in front of each one of you, just look out for it and learn a new skill. Initiate the process of learning by desire not necessity. Usually people will learn something new every other day. Talking with someone about something, surfing the web, watching the news etc, etc. However, there are those for whom learning is important. Can be for family, career or any other personal reasons. When learning something new out of curiosity or necessity, there are a couple of steps which everyone has to know in order to organize his or her learning process. a. Knowing the goal. No one can start learning on something new without knowing the reason why. Make a list of goals or just write down that one goal, to help you on the search for you next course on eLearning. b. List the skills you want to acquire. Everything is easier when is written down. You can remember it and it is easier to follow it. By listing the skills you want to learn, now you have an achievable list of acquirable skills. c. Commitment. Everyone can express their desire to learn, or write down their desired skills. But no one can learn French unless they sit down every day, for a couple of months and commit to learning it. Commitment is everything and the most important part of your eLearning process. People learn consistently all their life. From the smallest things, like how to ride the bicycle, or a kid learns how to run, to the skills which make a difference between you and other people. As long as there is life, there will always be learning, but learning is easier with eLearning possibilities. Why limit yourself in what you know, when you are one click from making a difference in your work, school debate or family. As long as knowledge is accessible through eLearning, commitment is all everyone needs.