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Creative Commons License photo credit: Shutter Stealth Photography

I was sat at my desk the other day when a colleague of mine, sat at the desk opposite was getting a little frustrated with something. I asked him what was wrong, he was having a problem with doing a task in Powerpoint; something that I knew how to do so I talked him through it. He said thank you and remarked that every day is a school day. How true!

The solution I had presented to my colleague, was in fact one that I had learned from someone else who had showed me. Everyday we are presented with numerous opportunities to learn something and develop ourselves. I am always amazed at just how much we can learn and how many resources we have available to us, and even more amazingly they do not always have to cost money!

Case Study

A case in point, I am looking to develop a web delivered course. My friend Lee (crikey he pops up regularly doesn’t he) recommended a learning management system (LMS) called Moodle. So the process I followed was Google “Moodle”, I download the application and look at what I need to do. The quick start guide talked about stalling a complete server package, including Apache, PHP and MySQL using XAMMP. Ah, but, I am already running all of that on a WAMP server as a local development server… so what do I do now? Back to Google, enter a search for installing Moodle on WAMP and Bob’s your Mom’s Brother I find a help guide on how to do that. I follow the instructions and voila, I have a fully working Moodle installation sitting on my development environment. Great! Ah, but, what do I do know? I don’t have a scooby-doo of where to start… back to Google… within minutes I have access to umpteen You Tube tutorials and a free e-book to guide me on my way.

Resources

In one of my earliest posts, I generated a list of possible resources and ways that we can build knowledge and develop ourselves; I won’t duplicate that list here, take a look at 31 Possible ways to grow & develop yourself. The point is that there are so many ways, so many opportunities available to us to continue to expand our horizons, develop our skills and to make a difference. Ultimately, it is down to us and our motivation to choose to embrace those to our advantage or not.