April 8, 2020
Transcript
Crystal Washington: Hello, I’m Crystal Washington, Technology Strategist, and Futurist
Karen McCullough: and I’m Karen McCullough, the millennial evangelist who helps you adapt to change and we want you to rethink it forward.
Crystal Washington: And by rethinking it forward, we mean that there are things that have worked for you in the past that are not going to work for you in the future. And when we’re honest, they’re not even working for us right now.
Karen McCullough: So today we’re going to talk about digital learning and I’m excited to learn because that’s why I have Crystal for in my life. She is my digital guru. So I’m going to turn this one over to her and I’m going to take notes.
Crystal Washington: Okay, so we’re going to make this simple. I don’t want you, you know, I’m going to give you a lot of resources, but I don’t want you to then download all these resources, think about things that you were already interested in learning, and then maybe adapt to one thing that I share with you that will accomplish that goal. So let’s agree to that. First, I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed. This is a buffet. You don’t need everything. At the buffet. You only eat the items you actually want. Hopefully.
Karen McCullough: Good analogy.
Crystal Washington: Hopefully you don’t need everything at the buffet. Some people are like, I eat everything. Yum, yum. Jamo don’t do that here. Okay. Um, so first few things you want to do is if you’re a member of professional organizations, check them out first. Because a lot of professional organizations right now, business organizations are making their courses free basically to help the economy to help with continuing education. So a lot of those courses that may have been 500 $600 before that may have been only available to members or certain levels of members. A lot of them are free now. So start with your own industry. Have you seen anything like that, Karen?
Karen McCullough: Oh yeah, I’ve seen so much. In fact, I’m thinking about to myself right now, but that would be more screen time and I don’t know if I can do it, but they’re out there.
Crystal Washington: Yeah, Coursera is another great resource. Coursera is a platform and an app where people have all kinds of courses on anything you could think of. Do you want to learn? Sign language, you want to learn computer programming, you want to learn data science, there are courses on everything and they’re making so many things absolutely free to the public right now when we’re all in self-isolation if you will, to keep us safe. So they want to make sure we’re feeding our minds while we’re keeping each other say so. Of course, there is a great one. Do a lingo for any of you all who have been trying to learn another Spanish, Spanish, another language. For instance, I have been trying to learn Spanish forever. Unfortunately. [inaudible] my Spanish is hot garbage, but Duolingo helped me even be able to say that. How about that? All right, go ahead.
Crystal Washington: So that’s another great resource for you. Um, what’s really cool is that for anyone that’s a member of a gym or maybe you’ve been wanting to learn how to do a different type of dance or maybe start yoga, a lot of the instructors are making their classes free online via zoom or other platforms. A lot of gyms have their own platforms where you can participate in classes. Absolutely Bree. So this is a great time for you to learn how to become that yoga master you’ve always wanted to be. Or maybe you want to practice your Pilates. I don’t know. Um, in addition to that, a lot of the Ivy league higher education, um, institutions have made classes free as well. So you know, places like Yale, Harvard, you can go in there now online and take a lot of the courses that they normally charge for.
Crystal Washington: They’re just giving it to us at no cost. But what a wonderful gift. A couple more, uh, one of them is podcasts. Now, if any of you are listening to us via podcast versus YouTube, you already know this, but podcasts are an excellent way to get information. Now that you’re home and you may have more time. Not everyone has more time. Some people have less time because they’re home educating their children. But if you have more time and you want to learn some new things, why not check out some podcasts? And if you haven’t already, make sure you subscribed to us with rethink it forward. A couple more things. If you want to learn about covert 19 and, and not just the stuff that’s floating around on the internet, but actually really understand infectious disease a little bit better, guess what? John Hopkins and the world health organization have complementary courses that you can take where they’ll educate you on what’s going on with that disease. Last and not least, I gave a lot of resources. Please do not fall victim to learning overload. Don’t try to stuff yourself with everything. Just focus on the things that you already wanted to learn and take it from there. Make sure you have a stop-off point so that you’re not overdoing it.
Karen McCullough: That’s, this is great information. I’m a stop-off point. So you went, you jump off. Is that it? You can get off when you don’t. You know, when she, when she said you’re done, you’re done. And it really, I thought of a story. I can’t believe I think about it as few. Crystal is the queen of when you’re done, you’re done. And she doesn’t make any excuses, which I am learning from her. Uh, we were at a conference. I recommended, uh, are you gonna tell this story? I’m gonna tell it cause I gave you this whole one. This just speak on because I’m so she, well this was a live conference. It wasn’t an online conference. We paid a lot of money to go to this conference and I always think about the Benjamins we’re on the plane. We get there. We’re at the conference.
It’s with a lot of people that we know. I won’t say which conference it was and she was a baby millennial back then. She wasn’t a grownup millennial like she is right now. And I was really excited about the speakers and I noticed she was disconnecting. She was like cutting it off. She had gotten as much as she wanted. And at lunch, we’re sitting with a bunch of people, pretty much all baby boomers who were really that you got their money and how much they invested in the course. And she said that she was taking the rest of them off and maybe even the next day and she was going to Disney.
Crystal Washington: Yeah, I did. Yeah. I spent the next day at Disneyland, I sure did. While everybody else was in their classes. Yes.
Karen McCullough: This was the beginning of my understanding, millennials, this was the beginning for me. Really. I have to thank Crystal for giving me an entire 10 years of content because I study her and whatever she’s thinking, I’m thinking the total opposite. And so what I’m learning is instead of saying, no, don’t do it that way. I say, Oh, tell me why. And crystal has probably taught me more than I had ever taught her and I thank you for it. So when we talk about online learning, I love online learning, but sometimes I have to call people to help me get online. Sometimes, especially in the beginning with, Oh, now my daughter’s a, we can put that on the TV. I didn’t know how to do it. And this is for all of you that aren’t techie. Don’t be afraid to ask. This is a chance for you to call your kids.
Karen McCullough: They’re going to have to talk to you over the phone. Call a neighbor, maybe, maybe do a zoom call. If you could figure zoom out. And I’m saying that because I have a group of friends who we’re going to do a zoom call that I was the only one on it cause they both figure it out. So I’m helping them. So what we have to think about right now is we have to begin to help those that don’t know how to do these things because there’s a lot of people out there, and it could be your mom, it could be your grandma, it could be your neighbor who are stuck at home. They don’t know how to use technology, they don’t know how to get online. And this is really a good way for you to drop them a call or an email and say, you know what? I saw really good for free online learning courses. I’d love to help you get on, think about it, and just help us out a little bit.
Crystal Washington: But he didn’t want that. Let’s end on that amazingly warm, fuzzy note where we’re helping each other. Yes. So look forward to seeing you all tomorrow. Remember, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe to our YouTube channel, to the podcast fee, and we’ll see you tomorrow for a brand new spanking shiny new episode.
Karen McCullough: Yeah. can’t wait. Can You?
Crystal Washington: No. Laughs