Is learning from the internet a skill?

We live in the era of revolution. The information age will no longer accept excuses of “I did not know”

There is no defense on our part in this regard. Acquiring any skill online has been made very easy! Unlike the highly physical skills like doctor, athlete…. which may not be guaranteed, Soft skills can be mastered with time and guess what! There is so much demand for them.

Only the physically and mentally impaired would argue “I had no way of knowing”

For over 5 years, the internet has been my university, these skills I could not acquire from school.

• Virtual 3D modeling

• Video & photo editing

• Even the physical like, Playing the guitar

• And recently, Website & app building

However, learning anything on the internet is also a skill. I remember spending hours searching for guitar tutorials that suit my current skill level😭😭.

It can be so frustrating. The Information is available, yes…. but it will require you to jump in and synthesize it to suit your needs. You have to gather lots of it and organize it to achieve what you want.

For example, A few months ago, I set out to create a guitar chords app that would advance my playing skills, you can take a look at the progress👇🏽👇🏽

In the process of acquiring the above skills, here are a few lessons I have learned that can help you

1. Google Everything

And by everything, I mean every single thing. Google your dreams, your problems, even if it is a toothache( Uuuhm… may be not your health symptoms, that would be a bad idea) But Seriously, Search the web and you will be surprised.

Don’t ask anyone before you google it.

2. Rephrase your search terms

If you have searched once and can’t get results, search again with a few changes in the wording and again with further changes in your search terms.

By search terms, I mean the words you enter in google. By searching similar words, you will end up with content that is close to what you need

In my case, I watched lots of similar tutorials. Although the solution I needed did not exist in its specifics, combining Ideas from many tutorials led me to a good solution.

If you do this long enough, you will quickly realize that it is true that “…there is nothing new under the sun.” Eccl 1:9

3. Choose a platform that has a growing community.

Acquiring skills online can be a very lonely venture, yet we are social beings. You want to be in a space where your peers can lift you when you fall.

There is nothing frustrating like choosing to learn how to “design a house” and you discover that there was only one youtube channel and or website in the world that taught it. You would have hundreds of questions with no answers as one website may not sufficiently cover the topic.

Thankfully, there are millions of platforms for such useful content.

4. If you can, Pay for a course

Just bare in mind that 90% of all the information you need is freely available online. What you are really paying for is speed and efficiency.

The mentor may save you hours of roaming too and fro on the internet about a given topic. This is no substitute for searching the web but, the mentor will point you to the right direction.

In my case, I subscribed to skillshare to learn how to build apps. This is an online learning community that has lots of topics and when you take a class, you go through the entire course together with exercises, Unlike youtube where there are so many distractions.

5. Be ware of distractions

The best practice is to have a project in mind that you want to build. This gives you a sense of direction.

We have limited time and resources at our disposal, so we might as well direct them to places where the most impact is felt.

By searching deeper, you develop techniques of good practice that suit your needs and lifestyle.

If you want to take part on some of the skills I have acquired, you can join the class for free and we learn to model buildings in 3D and document them together with archicad.

-Namara Allan