Plugin.com

A Partner in Learning

Written by: Donna Ann Peck 504 views

Does your job require you to be in constant learning mode? Does your boss want you to make AND perform in a podcast? And promote it to as many people as possible? Such skills are part of the average job description these days, whatever skills you lack, the internet is a career-building cornucopia.

Among the array of resources is a host of material geared to any level. The advantages are obvious. Instruction is available 24/7 and tutorials are often professionally produced.

Mediabistro offers online courses for media professionals in new media and online content. If you want to write scripts for online video, the four-week course costs $350. Access to the Mediabistro On Demand video library costs $19 per month.

Before you fork over $350 for courses, look into free online courses and seminars. In a video tutorial on podcasting, Apple brought in Joe Cipriano, a frequently heard voice in the U.S.; and Paul Garay, host of the popular indie podcast, Inside Home Recording. The result  is a refreshing learning experience. Apple provides online seminars for specialists as well. High productivity tools for chemists and biologists is a tutorial on ChemDraw and BioDraw for Mac OS X.

Printed user guides and manuals have been dropped in favor of free tutorials and community forums. Adobe Design Center was set up to teach people how to use the company’s popular software programs. Adobe’s video tutorials are organized by user level and product. They also provide creation dates so you know which features will be missing. You can download a trial version of Lightroom, for example, and begin right away without paying a dime.

Case study: building a WordPress website

My career path requires a website. I’m about to add to the 150 million blogs worldwide. When I decided to build a website in WordPress, I started with the terminology. Online materials are great for explaining the jargon associated with an unfamiliar program. WordPress is the world’s favorite blogging platform, so a google search turned up lots of beginner information. I studied the jargon to learn how to use this open-source blog tool.

I downloaded WordPress and Ryan from my web host FatCow led me through the installation. I watched the WordPress video tutorials at Lynda.com which took me through the initial set up. Next I downloaded and installed the free WordPress Thematic theme. When I moved on to blog design and layout, my confidence plummeted.

I hit a wall with the available online resources. The link to “A guide to customizing the Thematic Theme Framework” provided this update: “OH, YUCK. This is the old, busted guide. Make sure you check out the new, wiki-powered, Thematic Guide.” Unfortunately, the volunteers writing the wiki guide have no interest in beginning-level material. In the WordPress world, the hot topic is theme development and I’m lost when the discussion turns to code, CSS and php template files.

What I hated about online learning with respect to WordPress

• It’s frustrating when the steps you are following on a tutorial video and don’t look the same as the application on your computer screen. The WordPress videos on Lynda.com were outdated. In the current version of WordPress on my computer screen, there was no gravatar box to edit.
• Wiki-editable resources for using software applications are geared to the interests of the volunteer contributors, not the neophytes.
• WordPress has email and phone support only for hosted blogsites.
• Power users dominate the community forums that arise around a popular topic or software application. If you are a beginner, you could drown in the minutiae that experts love to discuss. The forum members tossed around terms that drew a blank for me. I wasted hours not getting anywhere, trying to digest arcane material.
• Running across this caveat: “This article may be outdated and contain information pertaining to an older version of WordPress. Please take caution when following the procedure, as many things may have changed.”

To wrap up a day-in-the-life of an online learner, my online research showed me what WordPress is capable of. The beginner tutorials gave me a head start on building a website. But building a website requires technological know-how and months of trial and error best left to an expert. Because of my online learning, I knew it was time to get one-on-one sessions from an expert.

Tips and treats

Review the catalog of videos on Lynda.com. The site has tutorials for hundreds of software programs for free or for $70 a month.

The internet, as a visual resource, delivers quick learning experiences. Watch any YouTube instructional video by Lee LeFever. He  creates scenes with paper cut-outs to dramatize information.  Blogs in Plain English is LeFever’s 2.58-minuted introduction to blogging. You’ll want to watch all his videos.

No Responses So Far... Leave a Reply: