Monthly Challenge for February 2024:
Month of Learning!
It's time for learning new things!
The Challenge
During this month, we'll work on learning new dev-related things. You might deep-dive into one topic, focus on a new topic every week, or do a little bit of everything.
If you're inspired by what you learn and want to share more, we encourage you to give a Lunch & Learn or get ready for our Lightning Talks in April!
Goals
We aim to learn something new, share what we've learned, and gather recommendations and resources to share with the community.
How It Works
Create Your Plan and Set Your Goals
In the first week of February, you should draft your learning plan.
- Define: What's the topic you'll be learning about?
- Reference: What resources will you use?
- Cohort type: How do you want to learn?
- With people: If you need accountability and have people around to support you, join our Accountabilibuddies sessions. Check out the
#announcementsand#vc-eventschannels in Slack for the schedule. - Async cohort: If you want to learn async with other people, head over to our
#learning-togetherchannel on Slack and ask if anyone wants to learn about one particular topic together with you and create an async cohort. You can read these tips for starting your own cohort. - Independent: You want to learn alone but needs something to hold you accountable? You can use this learning journal template to record your progress.
- Live: Do you want to do a live stream while learning? Drop the time of your stream and the link to your Twitch (or any other platform you use) in the
#external-eventschannel on Slack so the community can attend and learn together!
- With people: If you need accountability and have people around to support you, join our Accountabilibuddies sessions. Check out the
- Before you start, set a goal for yourself. Set weekly goals and/or goals for the month. For example, you may want to learn accessibility for 1 hour/week, 10 hours/week, or complete one lesson/day. Maybe your goal involves creation. You may want to write an article, a lightning talk, or a conference talk based on your learning. The sky is the limit!
Make Progress
We'll be doing learning check-ins in the #monthly-challenge channel in Slack. Each Monday, set your goal for the week. On Friday, give your progress update.
Each week, you'll choose something you want to learn and the resources you'll use to learn about it, then dive into learning. You can continue learning about one topic throughout the month or use the month to explore a new topic every week.
At the end of the month, we'll collect recommendations of the best tools, guides, and resources we found as we explored our topics for this month's challenge and share them with the whole community.
Learning Ideas
Not sure what you want to learn about? Here are a couple of non-traditional ideas to help you get started:
- Host a watch party and discussion. Is there an online conference, YouTube video, or live stream that you can watch with others and then discuss?
- Check out the
#articles-and-resourceschannel in Slack. Read a new one every day. - Listen to a podcast every morning that covers a new tech topic.
Quick References
- Learning journal template
- Learning resource 2024
- Learning resources 2022
- How to create a cohort for Month of Learning
And as usual we're always here if you need help or clarification ❤️