Self Learning

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About

Sharing accessible resources for structured learning, any topics allowed, more information here.

founded 1 month ago
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alb@reddthat.com
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Meta thread (reddthat.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by alb@reddthat.com to c/autodidacticism@reddthat.com
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A more detailed rundown on the community.

What is meant by accessible resources for structured learning?

Accessible: The idea here is to share resources that would benefit the largest group of people, regardless of knowledge background or financial background.
This doesn't mean we're not allowed to share more specialized topics, or resources that require payment, but try to also provide alternatives that are free (or cheaper), or alternatives that might be suitable to cover the requirements of the more specialized course. This isn't a rule, just a general guide, be free to share any good quality resources.

Resources: These can be of any format, a book, a tutorial in the form of a video series, or a course on coursera or khan academy, anything really.

What do I mean by structured? The internet is a blessing and it contains a wealth of knowledge, however, that knowledge in a lot of cases is unorganized, and as such not ideal for learning.
So we need some form of an organized learning curve that leads us step by step into building the requisite knowledge for the material we want to learn.
Thankfully, the internet is also filled with such resources, but sadly, they might be obscure or unpopular, and they might not show up readily when making quick searches online.
This doesn't mean all shared resources must follow a course/tutorial structure, Anything that can be helpful to studying is welcome, even if they're considered secondary resources, for example, cheat sheets, or online documentation which might be helpful are also welcome.
So the goal is to have a nice community effort where people can share good quality resources, and in time maybe even organize them in a wiki or pastebin to have a curated list organized by specialty/genre.

The topics can cover anything:
The internet is filled with people from diverse backgrounds with different interests, hobbies, or university majors, so everyone might have something to share:

  • It can be a guide or a video series on fitness that might help others get started with exercise routines, or improve their current exercise habits.
  • It can be a good interactive guide to help someone learn a certain programming language.
  • It can be a good resource that teaches people how to bake.
  • It can be anything, so long as they're useful or desirable skills.

So the end goal is resources that help us improve in various ways, whether it's specialized knowledge, or developing skills.

Happy learning.

If anyone knows of any communities that might have a similar topic, then I'd be happy to add them to the sidebar.

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A short interactive tutorial for markdown (www.markdowntutorial.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by alb@reddthat.com to c/autodidacticism@reddthat.com
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A lot of us layfolk have probably used or have been exposed to markdown without knowing, it's used on lemmy for example but is offered with a nice UI toolbar that functions with simple mouse clicks. You may have used some basics of it on discord or other chat applications.

This tutorial teaches you the syntax used to do basic text formatting, lists, quoting, etc.
It's roughly 20-30 minutes to get through, very simple and straight forward, so check it out if you're interested.

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MFA at Home: The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (lemmy.zip)
submitted 1 month ago by myth@lemmy.zip to c/autodidacticism@reddthat.com
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I've been studying the The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics for a few months and have yet to finish the second page. The contents of this particular encyclopedia are dense in cited sources. Each citation is a paper or a book, which references to other papers or books. Eventually what you think is just a definition for a general term becomes a pile of books grappling with a definition such as absorption. How can one measure how a poem makes someone feel? This is tackled in a meaningful way studying one hypnotic poem by Coleridge.

Does it make someone a genius to read this material? I think not. But what I find is a trove of information that I can't stop digging. Are all symbols pointing to something or are images themselves? Such philosophical questions are indeed taken seriously, and in reading about the psychology of interpretation -- did I realize that most of my problems in literary meaning is just that rules cannot apply in the sense that certain experts think they appear.

For example, take an English teacher's adage that a literary device always points to a literal meaning that cannot be expressed (usually because of censorship). Consider that maybe, seriously, that isn't the case all the time (and not just for postmodernism) and maybe not even most of the time. Sometimes layers of expressionless, sonorous verse is just that -- a romantic image but without a real connection to rational language.

What I learned the most from my studies is how research in literature scales vertically. I think it's often easy to assume that literature is either generic or complete: yet there are many questions to be explored and plenty of meaning to unravel in spaces yet discovered.

What makes this collection cool is that it's fairly accessible, available in many libraries, etc. But it's also quite affordable. Whereas other encyclopedias start at $90, this one is nearly half that.