A Little Example of Learning

Online learning means a lot of different things depending on whom you ask. My example for the week is how I learned to make one of those tiny site icons that show up in the favorites list in your browser.)

The first thing I learned is what those little thingies are called: Fav(orite) + icon = favicon. How did I learn this? Well, I had to use my already learned skill of how to figure out the right keywords to use in a browser search. I learned/developed that skill mostly by trial and error, though I would say my software skills (honed through training others) and writing skills (based on a good general education, language facility, and, well, lots of writing) helped considerably.

I used Google (of course) and came up with the term "mini-icon." I started with little or small icon, but my brain told me to make it more like one word to focus the search. I also typed "how do I make a mini-icon" rather than just "mini-icon." Perhaps not the official "right way" to search, using unnecessary words. Another thingy I've learned--perhaps a life lesson--is that sometimes you just say what you need. Just "mini-icon" would have produced sites that wanted to sell me favicons, but the question resulted in sites that offered help in learning about them.

Once I did that, I hit some "how to" sites for favicons right away. How did I know which one to look at? Any good Internet crawler will review the list, then click in and out of a few likely candidates before spending any time on a specific site. Experience taught me that one. I found a site that succinctly walked me through the process and gave me just enough information. Did it help that I had previously learned Photoshop? Heck, yes. Did it help that I had prior knowledge of pixels? You bet. I found a site that helped me at the level where I was ready to be helped.

This is Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD) at work. Sorry to throw the whole theory thing in so suddenly, but I couldn't help myself. With all learning, but with online learning specifically, it's all about the ZPD. If I'm off on the net looking for distraction, my tendency is to follow what I already know about and understand. The familiar, we call it. AKA The Comfort Zone. However, if I'm looking to learn, I'm going to look for content that's new to me but that I can relate back to what I already know. I want to build on my existing knowledge with new knowledge; I don't want to jump into the middle of something I know nothing about. That's the place of learning that we learners (great and small) are always looking to find; the point where we can use what we know to learn something we don't. When learning in person with a good teacher, s/he can adjust the level of the topic to fit our needs. On the net, we mostly meander about searching for that point for ourselves. I'd venture to say that most of us know it when we see it, and the more practiced we are, the better we get at zeroing in.

So I whipped through the making of my new favicon and the posting of said favicon on my website. And it worked brilliantly...in Firefox. Sadly, Internet Explorer does not like it, not one little bit. But I learned about the fickleness of browsers way back in web design class, so I am not discouraged. I just look at it as something else I have to learn.