The first I would think of is Google. If you want to know how to do anything, google the name of that action/application/hardware, or even type in a particular short and well-phrased question. I find that there are people who have gone before me who had the same question and found answers. For example, just yesterday I was taken by surprise with the scribd application I ignorantly signed up for on my facebook, that many people were subscribing to my scribd account (well, "many" being about 16 in one afternoon...for me that was a lot for something I didn't even understand). So I googled it with the question, "What is scribd?" and found a variety of answers. I think it's originally intended for sharing pdf documents. It sounds like it can be used for blogging, perhaps...but I have to see it in action to see how it would be better or perhaps a good supplement to a blog.
The next resource I'd recommend would be a library website such as we have. I hope your library is like mine, in that you can go online to find a resource and reserve it, and it will be waiting for you when you go in. Maybe your library is even better; I'm not sure I want to hear about it! Ha...anyway, secondarily, I hope that you know how to search for the books and reserve them. My library website is a great resource. I will search by subject, by author name, by book title...and when a list of books come up, if I don't find what I want, I'll search with any synonym I can think of; be as general or specific as is helpful. When the book comes up, I can usually look at some information about that book such as a summary, maybe the table of contents, excerpts, commentaries. These things can be informative in and of themselves! If necessary, I'll reserve the book. Usually I will get carried away and reserve armloads of them. But sometimes I only need to look at some of the internal information carried on the website and learn what I need.
Then there are video websites that can teach how to do things in a visual way, such as doityourself, howstuffworks, or YouTube. It's a strange medium in that when you find what you're looking for, supposedly related videos will likely be available at the side and usually they are foul or disturbing in some way. If you don't like foul and disturbing, be cautious clicking these...but I digress. These websites have how-to videos that can help you learn about many topics, some of which you never wanted to learn. Sometimes the video is inadequate or the teacher is intolerably boring, but keep trying with other videos or other websites and chances are a more gifted teacher will have posted something that will help you. Even googling will send you to these sites.
Computer websites are also a good resource for understanding certain software and whether it's one you want on your computer; cnet and pcmag are websites rich in computer information. Use their search to find videos or other information.
If you want to read part of a book without buying it or even going to the bookstore, you can often find it on books.google.com; you might find the first hundred pages or so of the book here, and if you have a list of books on the same topic, you can get a pretty good overview without even leaving your computer chair or spending a penny.
This is probably a good list...to start. After a day or two, I'll probably have another bunch that I think of to share.
No comments:
Post a Comment