Great Resources to Educate Yourself
This is probably relevant for many of my readers and followers. In my work environment I need to constantly move forward and learn new things. For about 3 months now, I’ve been reading, watching, and generally learning the topics “motion graphics design” and “design (generally). Before that I learned about “marketing”, “project management”, “money”, and “accounting”. Before that I got into things like “video encoding” (for my screencasts), “video editing”, and “management (generally)”. All to become better at what my job requires and to accommodate for the changes I was facing.
Along the way there were many things I can now see as my “go-to-points” to find new information. This article is meant to help my readers to get better at whatever they have to get better at.
Google & Wikipedia
The most obvious source to find out about new things is Google. To get a grasp about a topic, e.g. social media marketing, marketing strategy, etc., I tend to search on Wikipedia even. I like Wikipedia a lot to get a general overview of something.
Normally I would use Safari’s Reader function to format these articles in a way they are easier to digest. Longer articles get Instapaper’d.
I try to set time aside to read articles and watch tutorials. Normally I do this in the evening hours. Depending on weekday the time shifts from 8pm to 10pm.
Google is useful when I already got into a certain topic already, have a general understanding of the terminology and an idea of what terms I can search for. Using Google or other search engines, you can find many interesting and relevant articles on blogs, forums, etc. Instapaper is my friend when I want to read these. I try to share as much as I learn on this blog.
YouTube & Vimeo
Video pages like YouTube and Vimeo are great to find (amateur) video tutorials. Sometimes you find tutorials by people who are really great with a certain tool or topic, but their screencasts are simply not as good. Not everybody is a professional right?
You can bookmark videos using Spool or myPlex.
Quizlet & FlashcardExchange
Lately I discovered the joy of Quizlet and FlashcardExchange. I’m using Mental Case to learn new vocabulary for many years now. Ever since the new Mac version was released, I didn’t realize how valuable Quizlet is to learn acquire new knowledge. Recently I was wondering about a list of shortcuts for Final Cut Pro X. It turned out there is a shortcut list in the manual. However, that one is a tad long, I was looking for something more compressed, to put on my cork board. Luckily someone created a collection of shortcuts he or she wanted to learn on Quizlet, so I was able to import their flash cards into my flash cards.
Conclusion
Depending on the topic you want to learn, you probably need to pick a different starting point. As mentioned in this article, Wikipedia and Google are most of the times recommendable to start with. I find myself using all of these. In the end, the most important thing is to keep studying and moving forward, otherwise you simply won’t learn new things. Appreciate the changes, realize how bad you are, it’s all part of the process of getting better at something.