How do I come to research open educational resources and explore an open PhD?

I have always been interested in learning by myself since I was in primary school. Rather than asking questions in class on something that is not clear for me I would prefer digging into the subject by myself after class at home. Whether in a formal school setting or not I have always learned independently: I am an independent learner. I am also interested in learning independently things I need to know: I am a lifelong learner. In Graduate School I took independent and online courses. I used the internet extensively for personal research most of the time. About a year ago I started researching on "universite populaire", a system of french open university system (ex l'universite populaire de Boston, de Nice, etc). In my exploration I came to research all the alternative education systems and the philosophies behind them such as those of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, etc. Inadvertently I came upon on free courses and online educational resources on the internet. My first encounters were a site of compilation of different free courses on the internet,MIT opencourseware and other universities opencoursewares. The next interesting site I discovered was about Open PhD by Lisa Chamberlin. Then I explored Leigh Blackall, James Neill, Jason Derr sites among others. All the names I cited started their project of Open PhD by figuring out how to do it, which is mainly through independent educational resources, open courseware and social learning. I became interested in the project myself since I started a PhD in Curriculum and instruction five years ago, did my own research and figured out the best way to do it. This led me to Open Text Book Collaborative, Peer 2 Peer university, MIT Opencourseware, Curriki of which I became a member and a supporter. I used Wikiversity, WikiEducator among others. This blog will be about my open PhD project and open educational resources.