Learning (Live by LEMBS!)

I find it so amazing how much you can learn online for free these days. I'd really love to hear where you learn things online. 

Here are the main free websites I've been visiting:

    A non-profit platform, offering up to degree level education for free. I follow some of the
    courses to improve my skills at work (maths, electrical engineering, programming) and
    other courses for general interest (biology, cosmology and astronomy, world history).

    Codecademy
    Free coding classes that are good for beginners. Definitely need to follow it with something 
    a bit more challenging. I found it really helpful for familiarising myself with syntax and 
    concepts, but less helpful for learning how to actually write programs.

    TedEd
    Video and written content aimed to educate individuals on a wide range of subjects. Mostly
    I just watch the videos on the youtube channel when I'm procrastinating. I like the    
    presentation of the videos, they're short and to the point.

    Youtube
    You must know what youtube is, hehe! :) I've found tutorials on Ableton, crafting, bullet 
    journaling, reviews of games and things, etc. Tiny cooking! Oh, and of course, animal 
    videos! My recent favourite in the animal video department is 'Hamster Mazes' where
    people make these gigantic assault courses for their hamsters (as a joke of course). Here
    is a classic example: Hamster Maze


Here are the paid websites I visit:

    Skillshare
    Video tutorials on a wide range of subjects. I got a 2 month, free trial and I'm so glad I did.
    I've watched videos on Pro-create (a drawing app on the iPad), productivity, graphic design,
    storytelling and creative writing. I've bookmarked some videos on agile project   
    management and Adobe tutorials, I'll probably be sharing some of my learning in the future.

    Lynda.com
    Tutorial videos on a wide range of subjects. I mostly watched this whilst on my degree,
    at the time Lynda.com was a leader in Adobe tutorials. I learned how to use Adobe 
    Premiere, Photoshop, and Illustrator to a basic level. As I was studying photography,
    I became very familiar with Lightroom.

    A weekly magazine, and now a brilliant website, that covers all aspects of science and    
    technology. I mostly read this instead of reading the news these days.



I would put 'learning' up there with 'eating', 'breathing', 'sleeping' and 'making'. Maybe I can make some kind of acronym. BLEMS? SMELB? LEMBS? Hmm... 'Live by LEMBS!'. Haha! Anyway, the point is, if I don't learn something each week, I start shrivelling and unravelling.

When I learned to talk, I would follow my mum around and ask about 5 billion, trillion questions a day. When I was 4, we got a computer. When I was 5, we got this:


I think I have this bad boy (ENCARTA'95) to thank for igniting a lot of my 'need for knowledge'. I spent hours learning about instruments, watching videos about the doppler effect, playing that maze game...

"Continue with the gripping story about your education" I can hear you frantically demanding. 

Well, I loved it when I finally got to go to school. I was like "You what now!? All-day, every day we learn things?!". I loved it so much that I was known to have meltdowns on baker days.

Things went well until Secondary school, as is the case for many people I guess. When I was 14, I left school early to be home educated. My mum had good intentions but was going through some very difficult stuff, namely divorcing a violent psychopath. Unfortunately, this disrupted my education somewhat.

Thankfully, when I was 15, an anonymous individual (through the Connexions agency) paid for me to do an Art and Design First Diploma at Truro College. This gave me a foot up, back into education. I then went on to study AS Photography, Psychology, Graphics and Film Studies. I followed this with Photography as a National Diploma, and A2 Psychology alongside.

I'm very grateful for my time at Truro College. It meant that, without GCSEs, I could go and study a degree at Falmouth University. My degree is the latest course that I attended, but I'm sure it won't be the last. I'm thinking about taking my GCSEs next year, though maybe I won't need to attend a course for that. I sometimes toy with the idea of doing another degree or a masters. I think if I went back to university I'd like to study something related to the job I'm working in now. Something either business-related or something that would further my skills in testing or electronics.

Anyway, there you go, I was just planning to share some cool links and ended up (Grandma style) telling you about when I was a whipper-snapper.

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