monablog

Hello, welcome to the first post of my monablog!

It took about 7 hours to setup from start to finish, which is surprisingly longer than I anticipated, but so far I enjoy the design. I've worked on this for three or four days now. I've setup the landing page, and the blog. The plans and the about me page should be a cakewalk, but only until after I've organized much of the mess I made creating this blog.

But you don't want to hear about development. Instead you'll want to hear about my upcoming project, Monalect.

What is Monalect?

Monalect is a self-learning management system. It's not a definition I enjoy, but it's the closest thing to what I have in mind. I don't enjoy calling it that because it ties it in with normal learning management systems, which are often constructed for institutional and enterprise education. Apart from Moodle, they tend to be proprietary and very restrictive, as well as having courses being pre-defined.

Monalect as an idea did not come from that place. Instead, it came from a personal one, one where I struggled with self-teaching in a rigurous way that could match my learning in school. With all the information in the world at my fingertips for free, there was no excuse for me not to study and pursue my passions. However, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to sit down and read a textbook from start to finish.

I came to the personal conclusion that the environment I was given (which was largely solitary) was not conducive for rigurous self-education. There weren't people around me who I could feel some sort of obligation to study, or discuss what I was studying with to have what I learned feel "real" and interactive.

And I came to notice the significance of social motivators in others as well. School, university, and college. These are incredibly effective ways of learning because they provide a framework where one could go through. No matter what you studied in college, you always knew exactly what you must do, and felt an obligation to do it. You have a calendar telling you what dates certain assignments are due. What information you must study for that'll be on the exam. Incrementally, you learn and know what to learn.

I couldn't find a tool that tried to emulate that aspect of it for what I wanted to learn. A tool that could allow me to review, or allow me to see how much I know, and what I should know. A tool to allow me to feel "complete" whenever I study something, without the loss of control I have over what I learn. It will work to enhance productivity, and augment my thinking.

I also wanted a tool that would connect me with others learning the same thing, so we could motivate each other and discuss what we were studying in a live setting. A social network for learning.

That is what I wanted. Something entirely user-led, with the learning management system designed to be invisible. Simply a tool to allow the user to learn what they want in an encapsulated environment containing their imported learning materials.

Now I'm building it. It'll come out soon. Before I used to feel iffy about it, but now I'm certain it will be out. The technical experience I needed is here and it's being used, it'll just take time to create.

So look forward to Monalect coming out by the end of May. I'll have a mailing list up soon to allow people to be notified when it eventually does happen. But for now, bye, and thanks for reading.