I’ve been teaching web and digital skills for quite a while now, and I can guarantee that anything you learn today will be outdated in five years or less. The solution? Learn how to learn new computer skills and you’ll always be current! Here are the five steps I use to help people learn new computer skills.
- Find a good overview of your topic. When you’re starting out with a new skill it’s hard to know exactly what you need to learn, so start out by finding and reading (or listening to) an overview of the topic, program, service, or other subject you think you want to learn. Figure out how big the subject is and decide exactly what it is you need to accomplish.
- Figure out your objectives and write them down. It’s important to start by learning what you need to accomplish, not what’s possible to do. This is a common error among computer skill learners, who often assume they need to learn everything about Photoshop before they can edit their first photo. This idea also underlies my course, which teach the basics many different skills so that you can build on your learning quickly. (Most online education offerings teach every aspect of a single skill, say Photoshop, so that you have to spend many more hours becoming an expert in things you might never need.)
- Find tutorials to learn the new skill. Finding tutorials can be tough, but start by using my 10 Great Sites for Free Computer Tutorials and go from there, basing all of your searches on keywords from your objectives list.
- Practice, practice, practice! Create the thing you are learning about. It’s no good to read the steps and imagine using them, you have to get your hands dirty and actually create the thing you’re learning about. That’s the only way you’ll find the right menus, figure out the limitations of the software,
- Teach someone how to do what you just learned. This is a critical final step for everyone. You never truly learn how to do something until you teach it to someone else, which is why I include lots of ways to do this in all of my courses.
