Personal Knowledge Mastery — Top Tools, Resources & Practices
Table of Contents
What do your modern professional learner and designer’s toolkit, resources, activities, and communities look like? From time to time, I find it worthwhile to update and turn it into resources to use and iterate while experimenting and doing projects. To me, resources can vary from:
- Actionable insights and contents
- Communities – online and offline
- Interesting networks/people
- Tools – digital and analogue
Of course, they complement the context and what needs to be done.
You may find interesting to dive into the yearly top tools for learning brought by Jane Hart.
Below, here are the latest tools and resources I use.
WordPress
A reliable tool to clarify and share my learning and work in the flow of life. Deep thoughts. Achievements. Work in progress. Research. Owning my data. I have also added lately my archive page of all the posts I published, produced and curated. I also use a Creative Commons license on my website and blog to share my craft.
Clickup
It is a responsive and easy tool to be productive and keep track of my learning flows/workflows. Also, to stay focused and manage projects. It is also my go-to tool for writing and researching Clickup documents/ links/emails that can easily be searchable, archivable, downloadable, shareable and retrievable.
Books & Kindle
I manage my bookshelf through reads, laters, and readings, and I use highlights for upcoming book annotated readings I share in blog posts. I manage my library per topic. I also use Goodreads to share my bookshelf.
I still read paperbacks.
Social networks
Learning and engaging one conversation at a time, asynced, over tweets, content people shared, and events they host or participate in. Follow-up. Caring about the conversation and energy with people and getting to know weak ties and strong ties.
I have retrieved bookmarks and used search to use Linkedin/Mastodon posts to turn into tasks or curated blog posts.
Google Workspace
Google Docs, Sheet, Slides, Jamboard, Sites, Keep to produce, search, manage, review and refine content productions. To get feedback from trusted people in my network and visualise and analyse data for better decision-making. Creating customised personal brand assets with Google Slides tailored templates.
I’ve been using Jamboard to share feedback on business model canvas produced by cohorts of apprentices one workshop’s session at a time. As the tool won’t be able from October 2024 I intend to use more Figma to do so.
Whimsical
Produce flowcharts and mindmaps that I can share with my network and embed in blog posts.
Microsoft 365
I have also used Microsoft 365 intensively with my clients: Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, SharePoint, OneDrive, Stream.
Microsoft Teams is also easy to search and retrieve anything. However, I have not yet learned how to export curated and created content.
Managing documents I made or uploaded through One Drive and the Office Apps is handy. It is also the tool I learned for personal productivity, collaboration in projects with clients. I have used it to have exploration calls or catch-up calls with people in my network and to get things done with clients and partners.
Zoom
Reliable to use for community calls, meetings, and live events such as meetups, conferences or webinars. I am using the recording for replay and checking out the saved text chat to dig links, thoughts, questions and answers, and notes the host and participants shared after the conversation.
In addition, I used OBS studio as a virtual camera to manage my digital live presence and create transmedia content with pressie, audio, and video for talks I give, the presentations I’ve done, and web meetings I join or host.
Google Meet is also a third video conference tool I find handy with Google Chat.
Moodle
Integrate content and activities for courses and workshops I host remotely, in person or both ways with my cohort of apprentices. I also evaluate faster with a grid the deliverables they produce individually and collectively.
Last but not least, it is also a go-to resource. I enrich one session at a time to feed the learning-hungry minds of my cohorts. With a fellow learning designer and teacher, we do use it to co-host and evaluate common cohorts on topics going from digital marketing to innovation, project management and e-commerce.
Canva
I am creating bingos, posters, covers, infographics, social posts, collages, presentations, and visual synthesis.
OneTab
Chrome extension to manage and access quickly to daily bookmarks I use. Pocket is also my go-to read laters app, whether it is for articles or videos I have bookmarked. The extraction of quotes and highlights then go to Slack per channel/topic so that I can retrieve them later with references and hyperlinks in a future conversation or blog posts I’ll write.
Analogue
I use paper books, printed newspapers, posters, radio, exhibits, paintings, pen and Moleskine, biking and walking to nurture my creativity, reflection and serendipity.
Slack
I use Slack to capture insights and thoughts on what I seek for my personal knowledge mastery quest. It is also an online community valuable platform for networking, environmental scanning and learning with an online community I belong to: PBCC.
Another usage I had with clients: collaborating with my team and clients.
Feedly
I read blogs, newsletters and news from my favourite and diverse sources and people. New themes emerged: personal mastery, Asia, writing, self-publishing, automation. In addition, I have paid attention to workplace learning, management, and futures thinking, cities futures.
When I read, hear or view content, I often extract the insights or resources to archive in a Slack channel to retrieve when timely in a project, conversation or blog post.
Sports
I am staying fit and healthy through three activities: walking, biking and swimming.
Courses, Workshops & Communities
To go deep in disciplines through online courses and workshops such as the Personal Knowledge Mastery guided by Harold Jarche.
Another significant way to go deep and at large is through global communities.
Podcasts
I am listening to podcasts on the go to share actionable insights from deep conversations. I hear downloads of episodes when I am offline and on the go.
Youtube
Building my playlists to dive deep into topics from subject matter experts. Catching with replays from webinars, talks, meetups, and live Q&As, I could not attend in communities I engage. Digging craft from creatives from around the world in arts. Learning from how-tos.
DeepL
Translating any content using machine learning and my human skills. Especially in English-French. Sometimes, my network members share in their own local language. So I use the tool to translate documents or extracts from blog posts to understand and mull over them.
Update: exploring DeepL Write, too, to improve my writings in English.
Rotana Ty’s Top Tools for Learning & Working
2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 / 2024 | |
1 | Google Sites | Blogger | WordPress | WordPress | WordPress | WordPress | WordPress | WordPress |
2 | Skype | Skype | Meet | Meet | Zoom | Zoom | Zoom | Zoom |
3 | LinkedIn Mastodon |
|||||||
4 | Podio | Podio | Clickup | Trello Google Sheet |
Clickup | Clickup | Clickup | Clickup |
5 | Google Reader | Google Reader | Feedly | Feedly | Feedly | Feedly | Feedly Google Alerts |
Feedly Google Alerts & Sites |
6 | Instapaper | Instapaper | Instapaper | Wakelet | Google Keep | Word | ||
7 | Slideshare | Slideshare | Google Slides CamScanner Sketchnoting |
Google Slides | Google Slides | Google Slides Doodling CamScanner |
Whimsical Drawing on paper |
PowerPoint Google Workspace DeepL |
8 | Flickr | Flickr | Flickr | Flickr | Google Photos | Google Photos | Google Photos | None |
9 | Slack | Slack | Slack | Mighty Networks | Slack | Outlook Slack / Google Chat Moodle |
||
10 | Delicious | Diigo | Diigo | Pinboard | OneTab | OneTab | OneTab | OneTab |
Personal Knowledge Mastery’s Practices
“I suggest that all professionals look at their seeking knowledge, sense-making, and sharing practices and see what they can improve. This is the focus of the PKM in 40 Days online workshop.” — Harold Jarche
Here is what came up after I examined mine.
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