With summer fully upon us (unless of course you live in the southern hemisphere) everyone's secretly thinking, or at least wishing, of taking a vacation.  Whether you're planning to get away for a few weeks or just spend a few quiet days at home, now's a great time to include a distance learning course in your holiday plans. 

Wait What?  WORK on my holiday?

We don't say work, we say learning and learning something new and life changing can be one of the most satisfying experiences of one's life.  And while the sights and sounds of wherever you choose to go will be first on your agenda, you'd be mad not to consider the opportunity an online course provides nowadays to study wherever you might be.  Here's a few of our best reasons why you should make sure there's space for an online study programme in your luggage.

You Can Take The Whole Thing On Your Keyring!

Amazon suggests that the average size for an ebook is 2 kilobytes (kb) per page for its kindle software.  Let's say there is on average 400 words on a standard book page.  Now, let's take that old sea-side literary favourite novel War and Peace that most people won't find the time to read at any other time, which weighs in at 561 093 words in its UK English Oxford version.  That comes in at about 2805kb or nearly 3 Megabytes. 

Now consider that typical storage devices, like USB keys or SD cards, are nowadays rated in Gigabytes (gb), of which 1 is equal to 1000 megabytes. That means you could fit War and Peace onto a typical 4gb USB drive (available from any good office supply store) over 1205 times!  Or a goat rearing course instead…

There's ALWAYS Going to be a Bad Day

It always happens.  The day that the car breaks down or the tour gets called off.  Or the rain, the harsh unrelenting rain that forces you to cower inside your tent/caravan/hotel room for fear of being swept down the street in the horrendous monsoon weather.  But whatever the reason, it pays to ensure you have something on standby just in case your plans don't work out quite the way the lady in the travel office sold them to you.
Okay, we admit that studying marine ecology from a course isn't quite the same as actually swimming with dolphins, but at least you'll get something out of your time.

You're Free From the Distractions of Daily Life

Work. School. Kids. Housework. Social Life.  Whatever it is, there's all too often some reason that your distance learning course gets put off. It can be really hard to start a new habit of educating yourself even if you really want to.  Being on holiday gives you the free time to break ground on a new resolution to learn something new.  You'll have the time to start digging your way into new concepts and engage, free from the distractions and demands of regular life, and, hopefully when you return to your regular day to day existence, you'll be able to keep to the habit and see it through.

Study Devices Are Small and Portable

It's not the 80's anymore and there's more computing power in a typical mobile phone than possessed by entire countries during the days of the cold war.  Yes, progress is amazing and comes in the form of tablet and laptop computers that'll easily fit into the carry-on luggage of any flight and allow you to engage with your coursework wherever you might go in the world.  For the weight of a kilo box of cornflakes, you can have the computing power you need to study monkeys, whether you're on tabletop mountain or trekking the Andes.

The Internet is (nearly) Everwhere.

With internet access available as standard in many hotels, restaurants and coffee houses around the world, it's never been easier to stay in touch with your course, to do further research and interact with your tutor, wherever you are on the planet.  Unless, of course, you go somewhere without a decent Wi-Fi signal, like say, the middle of the Amazonian rainforest.  Then we admit you'll struggle.

So wherever you go this holiday, whether home or abroad pack your learning in with the suncream with a course this summer from ADL!