A crucial part to a constantly-progressing career is the drive to constantly expand your education. The most successful people in the world got to where they are by making the effort to never stop learning. One of the best ways to do this is passive learning using today’s plethora of apps and services.
If you want to be successful, it’s important to take this attitude to heart. And luckily, taking your education into your own hands is a breeze in the age of modern technology. Here are five of the best apps to help you learn something new every day.
Duolingo
Duolingo provides you with a new, gamified way to learn a language. The app serves up a language skill tree and rewards you with experience for successfully completed lessons and skills. The experience allows you to level up your language knowledge, from level 1 to 25. The app also reminds you to practice every day, giving you bonuses and streaks for continuous study.
Most importantly, Duolingo is scientifically proven in its effectiveness. An independent study by university researchers showed that a person with no knowledge of the Spanish language could learn the equivalent of a semester of college-level study with just 34 hours of effort on Duolingo.
So take advantage of this free tool. It’s available on the web and on all mobile devices, allowing you to learn any major language wherever the mood may strike you.
QuizUp
If you want to keep your skills sharp while at the same time learning new things about your field (or your favorite hobbies!), QuizUp is a great app to try. It’s a competitive trivia and quiz app that allows you to test your knowledge of any one of over 700 topics. Topics range from the entertaining, like sports and video games, to the serious, like nursing and marketing.
QuizUp drives you to learn and test your knowledge of a topic by putting you in a competition against another person, whether it’s a friend you challenged or someone you don’t know. The person with the most points at the end of a round wins and receives a points reward.
The app is an addictive way to challenge yourself to learn more. The better you do, the better the rewards, and it just plain feels great to be able to beat others with your knowledge. The questions are written by experts in the respective field, so you know that you’ll be getting some smart, tough, and educational challenges.
Codecademy
If you’ve always wanted to learn how to code, it’s now easier than ever to get started. Codecademy is a free web app that allows you to learn any one of several coding languages through interactive tutorials. The app explains the logic and reasoning behind how code is written and teaches you to write your own code through fun projects and challenges.
Codecademy is a great way to get the basics of software programming down, so that you can move on to more intricate projects. It helps you learn all the fundamentals in a motivational, achievement-driven environment. It’s a starter to a more serious dive into programming.
Coursera
Coursera is a provider of free online courses on hundreds of topics. They partner with top universities and organizations to provide their users access to high quality education and classes at no cost. So, if you’ve ever wanted to learn about a topic, chances are you can find a free course on Coursera.
You’re not only going to find thousands of courses from thousands of Coursera partners, but you can be sure they’re taught by some of the world’s greatest university professors and lecturers. The courses don’t just relate to hard and soft skills useful in the workplace, but include other topics you might’ve had your eye on in college but never gotten around to (like philosophy and history).
Quora
Ever have a deep, burning question that you just can’t figure out on your own? Tried Googling it and came up with nothing? Well, Quora should be the first place you go to get the answer. Whether asking about the history of a certain company or incident, how something works in science, finance, or venture capital, salary negotiation, or even for relationship advice, Quora spans a wide number of topics with a Q&A style format.
Quora is a social community that allows members to answer each other’s questions and vote on the best answer. The community is full of experts on any topic you can imagine, many of them coming from top leadership positions in their field. Any time you want the answer to a burning question quickly and with some authority behind said answer, search for it on Quora, or ask the question yourself!