Month: December 2018

Different teams, different place, different moment. Just one thing is similar: the jubilation of one is another’s pain.

This is a picture of my backyard that I took several days ago. Just thought it is beautiful and I want to share it.

I joined the Tech Lit Typing Class in order to improve my typing skills and that was an important experience. I have completed more than seven hours of typing and I could see some improvements of my typing skills.

The picture above shows what I have accomplished in this online class of typing. I have finished Beginner level, Intermediate level, Advanced level and on the way practicing. Along with lesson typing, I also played games to improve more. Moreover, I also took tests to examine how far have I gone. I took a lot of one minute tests, and several three and five minute tests. The results are becoming promising. Below is the summary of my entire work in the Tech Lit Typing class in this semester.

My typing skills are significantly improved. My accuracy has developed form nearly 90 percent to 97 percent on average now. My typing speed has also been improved, from under 40 words per minute, I have reached 60 words per minute.

This typing class has a very interesting activity that I am really fond of. It is typing stories. I can choose my own adventure and start exploring it. Those stories are kind of interactive stories, after one section I can choose how the adventure continues. It makes typing practice more exciting and interesting. What is more, after finishing one story, I can totally go over it, this time choose another way of telling the story! It will never get boring.

Throughout this project, I understand thoroughly the importance of typing fast and correctly. The world is moving forward with rapid improvements in the latest technology. The importance of computer skills is at an all-time high, one skill in particular has become an ever increasing need – typing. Typing is a fundamental skill, and it is still one of the most important computer skills people can learn, and should learn. Learning to type fast and accurately will be helpful in many ways in life, and it should be considered an essential skill for anyone who sees themselves working with a computer in some capacity.  It stands to reason that the faster you can type, the more time you will save. When you are tasked with typing up a report, or even when you have to send an email, if you can do so quickly while remaining accurate, you could end up saving a lot of time. If you learn to double the speed you type, you can also essentially get twice as much done in the same space of time. Employers might even want to ensure their employees are trained up in typing due to the productivity boost it could lead to.

For the first few week, I took a historical course at Khan Academy for my Lifelong Learning project. It was very informative and interesting when I learned about the ancient history, the period before the recorded history.  It means the period of time the ancestors of all human beings existed without writing or other records.

For the few week after, I took a course named Advanced formulas: 30 days challenge at The Collins School of data. This website is very useful and I strongly recommend it. Ben Collins teaches functions of spreadsheet, from basic and fundamental ones to complicated ones and how to combine them to sort and analyze data in the way that we want. For example, you can see from the picture below the curriculum and what we can learn from this course. The curriculum is sorted for students to took steps by steps and gradually get to more complicated lesson. Each lesson takes no more than fifteen minutes and is edited in a very concise and concrete way, which make learning formulas more interesting and not too time-consuming.

Unfortunately, because of the busy schedule, I only can keep up with this course once a week and until now I have just finished four days of the entire course. Day one I learned about some basic core skills. It teaches about some errors that commonly happen, about ranges, how to name a range, created a protected one and other practices. Day two we learn about functions related to if (if, ifs, etc) and day three I learned about counting formulas. Data validation is taught in day four.

This course is great because not only does it teach us  by video, which means a great visualization, it also provides us with starter template for practicing on our own. By taking a video screenshot of each lesson, the author gives a great demonstration of empirical practice, which helps students learn a lot better and quicker. Not only that, we can have access to the solution file to look for and find ways to correct our mistakes.

This course of Ben Collins helped a lot because I learned many useful functions that are not only essential for accomplishing the class work but to fulfill my personal project. When the semester is over, I will continue learning, of course finishing this course of spreadsheet formulas, and not only that. I wish to dig deeper.