An individual’s personal skills are based on their determination to develop and learn new information. The close connection between the amount of knowledge and the way it is used brings about positive results.
There are several work habits that must be adapted and they relate to the personality type someone has. The technology has made it possible to learn from a distance. A person can familiarize themselves with a culture, people or economy of a country being in a different place altogether.
If it is a structured way of learning and someone is taking courses in a different country while staying in their native nation, they must develop a schedule and routine that will allow for effective learning.
Any distractions must be set aside and the learning time must be treated as a classroom where all the focus is directed towards the course. As people often work in groups and teams, an individual might have to adjust and organize themselves according to the individuality of others. They must pay close attention to the learning style and interests that other people have.
A key to being successful in a group is to be understanding of others and be ready to offer a helping hand in a way of explanation, cooperation and participation. The internet skills are connected to learning and especially, distance learning. The search for information is available and easy to conduct, but the filtering of the needed information will take time.
There are many websites that contain false or inexact information and so, credible sources are the key to a well informed information search. Social networks have made communication through internet much easier, but ethics and moral codes must be the guidelines in the said communication, being free of disrespectful and hurtful behavior.
University of Phoenix and other online libraries are a great resource for academic articles and books. The collection of all the needed scholarly articles and journals in one place make the information search practical and quick. When using online sources the copying of information must be extremely controlled (Davey, 2008).
Often, it is very tempting to use someone else’s work as your own and people will change the wording or structure of the information in the hope to pass it as their own. This must be avoided as it does not provide an individual with any knowledge and becomes impractical in the long run. Educational institutions have a strict policy towards plagiarism and suspension is not uncommon.
The vast amount of information in the libraries, online and books purchased outside of educational institutions create a helpful tool to determine the future career choices and goals of an individual. It is much easier to focus and structurize the work and information load when short term goals are specific and immediate. It is better to start with something that is attainable, so that the result can be seen almost immediately.
This will encourage the person to continue work as the success can be seen right away. When setting long term goals a plan of action must be outlined. Sometimes, it is difficult to foresee the circumstances that will lead to the future personality and skills development but a general outline and plan will be helpful. A schedule and the return to the original plan will determine the progression of work.
The recording of information and setting up a framework of practical usages will help guide an individual through the achievement of long term goals (Davey, 2008). Time management is one of the most important aspects of both short term and long term educational and career plans. As soon as a task is received a person must familiarize themselves with it.
The longer someone has to think over the tast, the better prepared they will be and the more thoughts they can develop. If everything is left to the last moment, the comprehension of concepts will be limited and the person will not be able to see the overall picture.
The perspective and conceptual thinking can only develop with the passage of time and so, any information that can be known about the task must be learned before the serious work begins. Plan of action and an outline of the future work will also help structurize the work and distribute the work load, so that there is no hasty and low quality work that in the end becomes unproductive or ineffective.
When familiarizing yourself with the information, a person has to sometimes go through a large amount of information. Often, the information presented is unrelated to the matter that is being studied or must be grasped in a short amount of time.
A scanning reading technique where a person can go through great amount of reading in a shortest period of time must be used. The search for key words and focus on the first sentences of a paragraph can prove helpful, since the most important points are focus of the primary information search and the details are learned later (Hasserbroek, 2009).
One of the most interesting discoveries about learning was through communication between brain cells, axons, through their synapses. It was thought that there is a physical connection between each axon that was needed for the transfer of information. In reality, there is a gap between the end of the axon, its tip and the dendrites of the next axon. Chemicals are being released by one axon and they float to the receptors of the next axon.
All the chemicals that are produced, neurotransmitters, are a sort of boats that carry their own information. Those chemicals that were not absorbed by the receiving axon, return to the source, the sending axon and are recycled. The amount of repetitions of the chemicals being sent, determines the strength of the signal.
If a person wants something in a minor way, the signal is sent once or twice and the receiving axon does not respond in a major way. But, in case the signal is repeated constantly, the axon is bombarded with chemicals, thus causing a conscious response from a person. This is what determines the cognition of a person. It is still unclear how a person’s mind or brain can hold so much information.
It has been supposed that a person has unlimited potential. An amazing fact is that such a small entity as a cell can hold so much information and have significant energy to send impulses that affect the whole body.
All the systems and different parts of the brain are connected and studies have shown that trauma to a certain area will compensate the lost part. There are also cases when the loss of a connection between the brain divisions has led to loss of speech, cognition, memory and senses.
Reference List
Davey, G 2008, The International Student’s Survival Guide, SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Hasserbroek, C 2009, Communication Sciences Student Survival Guide, Cengage Learning, Clifton Park, NY.