How to use software

So this week was meant to be a lecture on cyber-utopia with Jason Nelson, but... instead Jason gave us a lecture on software and how to effectively teach ourselves a new software. He explained a 14 step process of using a software program.

step 1- Find the most simple and easy to use software to do what you want to do.

step 2- Maybe what you think you want to do is not actually what you should be doing. Exploring the software is what learning is all about. Exploring what industry standards and expectations are if search for employment with certain software.

step 3- So you've figured out you need something advance... so how do you teach yourself how to use software in a few days.

Step 4- Software is designed to be deep. Meaning that you might be able to open and save something or re-size or make an audio clip.

step 5- Begin by playing. Make something, anything. The best way to begin learning something is to open it up and look.

step 6- Look at what the common features are, most commonly there will be about 15 - 20% that you already know.

step 7- Save your work. Do not write over the same file, it protects against corrupt files and errors. Make sure to give your work appropriate file names.

step 8- Use the help file if a problem arises.

Step 9- The help section SUCKS. the help tool is not ideal for the beginners.

step 10- Search the problem. Don't start by search the entire web, find a specific site(s) with content and use specific search tools within the site.

step 11- Join forums and ask questions. This is an excellent way of getting answers, only thing is it takes a while to get a response.

step 12- Once you have learnt what to do, don't fear the tutorial book or videos.

step 13- don't take a course just to learn how to use the software, you will learn the same thing that you have just learnt.

Remember that we often learn how to use software to do something specific so it is always about content. The only problem with software is that it is often updated and upgraded quite often which makes learning and maintain certain skill levels difficult.

As you can see from these steps this lecture stood to be quite entertaining... pretty self-explanatory but worth the fun in all.