FREE Learning

FREE Learning:
This is just a quick post about some interesting and powerful FREE resources I have been using just to stay up on a few of my skill-sets. I am having so much fun learning and discovering new things that I wanted to share. One is W3Schools, a division of the W3 Web Consortium. they offer some really good tutorials on web languages such as  HTML, PHP, SQL and more. I am quite amazed at how much information is available to the beginner as well as the intermediate. So far my training with PHP and CSS is going good.

I am learning what I need to learn and that is all that matters right now. I really don't have aspirations of being a coder but realize the importance of knowing some basic CSS and PHP as it relates to my projects.
I have met some really cool people in the process too. I was expecting to be met by a demographic of geeks and nerds but it has been quite universal so far. There are people who are learning for their jobs, others are boosting what they already know. And others like myself are diving into unchartered territory with some of these subjects.

Although I have been doing websites for over 10 years, I managed to get by using the best software such as Dreamweaver, GoLive and Flash. I have survived using the WYSIWYG features in these software programs and still do occasionally. But my favorite tool for designing websites and blog's is without a doubt WordPress now. Each day it reveals more hidden power and usefulness.

So, resource #1 was W3 Schools which can be found here: http://www.w3schools.com/

And my next learning resource is Alison. Alison is an online learning resource with classes offering both certificates and diplomas in various subjects. It is a great way to reduce the digital divide for seniors new to computers for example. It can be a good refresher course for some of the Microsoft Products, etc. I find it is a great way to explore a subject or industry for free to see if I have any interest.

There are quite a few courses covering a wide range of skills and they are in video format so you can pause or stop a course and resume it later, the site keeps track of your progress and completions stats and you can optionally purchase certificates or diploma's as needed. I found this resource through CalJobs which is a division of EDD. It is listed as a source for learning and training for new job skills. not all of the courses are up to date but many of them are. I recently got certified in Photoshop CS6 and Adobe After Effects so that is not bad! My next course is "Fundamentals of Network Security" to help fortify my IT skills.

For me it beats watching TV which i don't do much of and keeps me fresh on my old skills and intrigued learning new ones. Check it out for yourself and see if they have anything to offer you or someone you know. Alison can be found here: http://alison.com/

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Written by
Allan Whitney
Owner/Administrator
MindVisionMedia.net
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