Thing #41: There's No Excuse Not To Learn! (or "How To" 2.0)

Lifelong learning is often discussed in the context of professional development, but most of us have things we want to learn for purposes of personal development as well.

Sometimes we need to learn something new out of necessity. Perhaps you’re a first-time home-owner who suddenly needs a crash course in basic home repairs. Or maybe a diabetes diagnosis requires you to learn a whole new way of cooking. Other times we want to learn something just for fun—like knitting, cake decorating, or Chinese!

In the past, if we didn’t want to enroll in a formal class we could usually go to a bookstore or library and find instructional books or tapes designed to help us learn desired skills. Self-instruction books and DVDs are still widely available in bookstores and libraries, but in recent years the variety and quality of free online instructional resources has skyrocketed. And I can think of a number of instances in which I—or someone I know—relied primarily on a free online resource to learn something new.

Examples:

• Last year, half-way through vacation at a lakeside cabin in Minnesota, I hit a knitting roadblock. I’d finished the “easy” part of my project and I now needed to perform a different and more complicated stitch. For the life of me I couldn’t follow the written instructions or decipher the diagrams in my book. If I couldn’t figure this out I was done with knitting for the remainder of the week. In desperation I took our laptop to the car and drove closer to the resort owners’ house in order to access the wireless signal they provided to guests. Once online I quickly located a short video clip of someone demonstrating how to perform the stitch. That made all the difference! I was able to return to the cabin and resume my project as though I’d never had a problem!

• On a recent trip to visit my friend Karen, she cooked us steak for dinner. I’ve known Karen since junior high and she’s never had the slightest interest in cooking. So where had she learned to cook steak? Some video she found on YouTube!

• My son has difficulty with handwriting, so several educational advisors have recommended he learn keyboarding as soon as possible. So how do people learn keyboarding these days? No longer do they sit in a classroom in front of a typewriter while a teacher rhythmically calls out letters. Now they use free, online typing tutorials like Dance Mat Typing or E-Learning for Kids Keyboarding Skills.

It’s certainly possible and often quite productive to search for exactly what you need, using your favorite search engine. For instance, click on the following links to see Google search results for the following:

• picking up stitches while knitting socks
• how to cook a steak video
• free keyboarding tutorials for children

However, it’s also fun to browse some of the numerous “how to” sites that have sprung up to host or serve as directories to free instructional videos on the web. And that’s what we’re going to do for Thing #41!

General Interest "How To" Sites

The first three sites I’d like to direct your attention to host instructional videos on such a wide range of topics that probably everyone can find something of personal interest or value. All can be used without registration, but signing up for free accounts gets you additional functionality. Take a look and see what you think!

• Graspr: The Instructional Video Network
• Instructables
• MonkeySee

School "How To" Sites

These next three sites are probably of greatest interest to students who need help with schoolwork—or the adults they ask to assist them. I know as the parent of an elementary student I sometimes have trouble helping my son with math not because I can’t do the problems, but because I wasn’t taught to solve them the same way he’s being taught.

In these instances I’ve found it useful to go online and search for lessons that present the material in the same way it’s being presented in his classroom. If I can find such lessons—and I almost always do on sites like those listed below—it gives me the background information I need to provide my son with the type of assistance he needs.

• WatchKnow - Thousands of great short videos, and other media, explaining every topic taught to school kids. Videos come from many sites include YouTube, eHow, National Geographic, TeacherTube, and more.

• TeacherTube – An educationally focused, safe venue for sharing instructional videos; designed for teachers, schools, and home learners.

• Khan Academy – Thousands of short videos created by Salman Khan to explain math concepts from simple to advanced. Useful to students of all levels. (Watch this 3-minute CNN clip to learn more.)

The instructional video sites I’ve highlighted above are only a sampling of what’s available. In fact, the “how to” video phenomenon is becoming so widespread that someone even created a Google Custom Search Engine to search across multiple instructional video sites. It is called the How Do I? Instructional Video Search. (Note to Michael: Try searching for “move a shed.”)

Assignment

1. Explore the "How To" sites referenced above. In your blog post identify and link to at least two lessons or tutorials that particularly interest you.
2. Describe your experience exploring the sites and explain what you like about the resources you chose to highlight.
3. Finally, spend some time reflecting on the advantages and/or disadvantages you think these online "how to" sites have over more traditional "how to" resources. How do the online resources compare to physical "how to" resources owned by your library? Are these sites competition for our collections or are they welcome supplements to them?

Postscript: On Friday, September 24, Google awarded Khan Academy two million dollars "to bolster its free online library of educational videos and translate core works into the world's most widely spoken languages." Khan Academy was one of five groups chosen to receive funds through Google's Project 10^100

And here's a final interesting anecdote: According to an article on the CNNMoney.com site, Khan Academy creator Salman Khan is supposedly Bill Gates' favorite teacher!

Time to move from Bloglines to Google Reader

It has just come to our attention that Bloglines will cease operation as of October 1, 2010. We realize that many Nebraska Learns 2.0 participants have active Bloglines accounts. Therefore we highly recommend that you move from Bloglines to Google Reader ASAP. Once you’ve signed up for a Google Reader account (which you already have if you have any other sort of Google account) you just need to export your content from Bloglines and then import it into Google Reader. (The links point to the relevant, simple, instructions.)

From the sound of it, if you don’t export your feeds from Bloglines by the deadline, you will loose all of your subscriptions so lease don’t delay.

Thing #40 Funky Photos

Wow! It's hard to believe we are up to Thing #40 already. Looking back over the topics we have covered, I realized a number of the sites we explored allow users to upload their own profile pictures and some, such as Facebook, Flickr and Blogger, even allow you to upload multiple photos. I thought this might be a good time to explore two online image editors to see how they can be used to make our images a bit more interesting.

Although there are a number of sites online that allow you to edit images, I’m going to focus on just two of them, Aviary and Pixlr. Both of these sites offer way too many options for us to cover in Thing #40, so we are going to skip right to the fun, creative stuff and use the filters and adjustment options these sites offer to create some unique photos. We will be able to make a photo look old, create an engraved effect, change the coloring, plus a ton more effects with just a few mouse clicks.

Before we start exploring the software, you might want to spend a few minutes thinking about your assignment. For this month’s assignment you will need use both Aviary and Pixlr to enhance at least one image and then include the manipulated images in your blog post. You can use the same image with both sites or a different image for each site. Don’t panic if you don’t have an image available to play with. I’ve put a few of my own photos online that you can use.

Here are a few basic things that apply to both sites.

• Both sites have an Undo option located under the Edit menu. I’m guessing you will be using the Undo option a lot, I know I do. Using the Undo option makes it easy to try something and then Undo it if it doesn’t look so good.
  


• As you work with different images you may notice that some images work better with one filter but not as well with another. The results really depend on the filter and the image.
  


• Most times you can apply more than one filter to an image.
  
• Both sites allow users to either enter the URL of an image or upload an image from your computer. If you are going to use one of my sample photos you can use either option.


• Go the album of sample photos.
  
• Click on the thumbnail of the image you’d like to use to enlarge the image.
  
• To download the image select the Download option and save it to your computer. Make sure you note where it’s saved.
  
• You can also just grab the URL of the image.
  
• In IE right click on the image and select properties. Select and copy the Address (URL) of the image.
  
• In Firefox right click on the image and select Copy Image Location

Pixlr - http://pixlr.com/

Let’s start by uploading a photo. Here are some suggestions of where to start. For the lesson you will need to spend some time playing with the different options. After you create an image you like, don’t forget to Save it.

• Want to see some examples of what you can do before you start? Check out some of the images I’ve altered. In the caption under each image I noted what filter I used to create that effect.
  
• Under Adjustments – Select Curves. Under the Presets drop down there are great options such as Vintage The 60’s and Chrome for B&W.
  
• Also under Adjustments is Color Lookup. This option provides many fun ways to change the colors of your photo.
  
• Under Filter try Halftone, Engrave, and Find edges.
  
• If you are using a photo of a person make sure you try Filter – Glamour Glow. It will give that soft, fuzzy glamour feeling to your photo.

Save Your Images in Pixlr

1. After archiving your desired look select File.
2. Select Save
3. Enter the name of your image.
4. Make sure Save to my Computer is selected.
5. Click OK.
6. The Save As box will appear. You may need to add the file extension to the file name if it’s missing. For example if your image name is lama you need to actually type lama.jpg. It’s a good idea to make sure the image downloaded correctly before you close the image.

Aviary - http://aviary.com/

Aviary is a suite of tools. The two tools we will explore are the Image Editor Phoenix and the Effects Editor Peacock. Let’s start by uploading a photo into the Image Editor. Here are some suggestions of where to start. After you create an image you like, don’t forget to export it.

• Want to see some examples of what you can do before you start? Check out some of the images I’ve altered.
  
• Try some of the options available under the Filters options. Skip the Peacock option for now. (Don’t forget the Undo if you try something and don’t like it.)
  
• Ready for more? Now let’s select the Filter Layer in Peacock. This will open the Peacock tool. This one takes a couple of more steps to use.
  
• In the middle of the screen you should see two boxes connected by a line. One box will be labeled Resource and the other Canvas.
  
• Click on the Effects tab along the left side of the screen.
  
• Select an Effect you would like to try. Drag the box over between the Resource and Canvas boxes. As you do that you should see two orange lines appear connecting the box you are dragging to both the Resource and Canvas boxes. Let go of the mouse button. All of your boxes should now be connected.
  
• The image on the Canvas box should now be updated to show the filter you applied.
  
• Adventurous folks may want to play with some of the Properties options that are available for most of the Effects options. To see the options click on the Effects box and the Properties tab which should be available along the right side of the screen. Now start changing options. If that’s a bit overwhelming most filters have a Randomize option located at the bottom of the tab.
  
• If you don’t like the Effects box you selected, it can be removed by double clicking on the trashcan icon located on the box you’d like to remove.

Exporting Your Images in Aviary (There is an option to save the file, however I am just going to cover exporting your image to your computer.)

1. After archiving your desired look select File.
   
2. Select Export Image (In Peacock select Export Canvas as Bitmap.)
   
3. In the drop down menu select the file type. In most cases the JPG(*.jpg) option should work.
   
4. Click on generate image. (In Peacock select Export Image.)
   
5. After the image is generated click Download and save the image to your computer. (You may need to add the file extension to the file name if it’s missing.) It a good idea to make sure the image downloaded correctly before you close the image.

I hope you had fun creating some unique photos and I look forward to seeing them.

Assignment

1. Use both Aviary and Pixlr to enhance at least one image and then include the images or the links to your images in your blog post. You can use the same image with both sites or a different image for each site.
2. Blog about your experience. Here are some things to think about: What did you think about the sites? Did you prefer one over the other? What’s your favorite filter? Are you going to add any of the photos you manipulated to your web or social sites?
3. How else could you use these in your library? Would the teens in your library have fun creating funky images?