New Year, New Challenges!

The IT Assistant asleep on the job
again!

Jobs for today's learner have not been thought of … yet!

Christmas over and done with, New Year fast approaching!  What will be new year resolutions?  Hopefully, somewhere in this seeming unattainable wish list will be something to do with career development,  Life Long Learning and work-life balance.  End of year holiday always  a good time to review and revisit career or income aspirations in this austerity governed period of history!

This year has seen a lot of changes in Technology.  This in my opinion will go down as the year of the phablet and tablet.  Increasingly work and learning is moving to the flexible media of the digital economy.  The cost of joining this rapidly expanding knowledge economy is becoming so cheap that it is starting to become commonplace in all walks of life.  Large businesses are no longer building the must have technology on an empty playing field.  There is legitimate competition.  The promise of the  Silicon Age has definitiely arrived in the developed economies.  The catch up needs to place with developing world.  

The developing world will I believe have a greater input as they do have to contend with pre-existing infrastructure such as copper telephone networks.  The temptation to use pre-exiting technologies rather than starting from new because of the need to recoup previous investment has probably slowed the roll out of Superfast Broadband in the UK.  Only now are we seeing places like Suffolk in England obtaining the services they deserve for growth to happen or rather the contracts being signed.  Businesses and individuals in rural Suffolk still have a wait as the scheme will not be fully completed until 2015.

New years resolutions written with digital economy in mind how might you go about in a rural area to join the  change (yet to say revolution) in work-life balance choices.  I say rural area because this equally applies to   The training choice is between traditional classroom based approaches, a blended approach (combining one to one or group tutoring with online teaching) or a fully online experience.  There are many colleges and universities offering courses that come along with certification.  FutureLearn   the UK offering comparable to edX  and Coursera has been agreed and will happen in 2013.    

Non-formal free learning is a one of my personal likes.  A model for which can be found at Haverhill Online Learning Community .  Get in contact with +Philip Spalding and help expand the network of local Online Learning Communities (ukonlinelearningcommunties.org).  

While I have a bit of time from the "day job" I will also be adding articles linked to my other interest of Teleworking!  Hope this gives at least one person the interest explore the digital economy!