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In today’s high-tech work environment you may find yourself pushed to learn how to use new software in order to take on a new role or responsibility. Sometimes you may find yourself forced into using software that you have never heard of, let alone used. Maybe it’s not even the case that it’s new software; rather, you get forced into using the same old application in a way that surpasses your technical capabilities. If you are like me, you may just want to master a new application for fun as well as for the potential work benefits.
Learning on your own or from snippets of information gleaned from Internet forums can be a very frustrating experience. The great tutorial you found on YouTube turns out not to be so great. You can’t see the screen and the amateur tutor barely knows what he or she is doing. I have spent many a frustrated hour looking for decent tutorials to get me started on some new app that I have to learn. But finally I am not frustrated any more. I subscribed to Lynda.com.
Lynda.com is one of the oldest software training companies around. I had always heard great things about their courses, which cover everything from Microsoft Office, QuickBooks and Photoshop to full-on programming languages like PHP and C#. It was not until recently, however, that it really became affordable to do their courses.
The proliferation of streaming Internet video has dropped the price of their courses from over $150 for a single course to a simple $25 per month subscription for individuals. This subscription gives you access to all of Lynda.com’s courses. You can view them any time on just about any computer. The only downside of the subscription model is that you don’t get access to the example files that the tutors are using. Most of the time, however, I find that I don’t need these files anyway, especially if I am simply looking through a course to find the bit I need. However, if you do sit down and do a full eight-hour course, you receive a printable certificate for each course you complete.
You can find a complete list of courses here. There are over 900 courses, so you may want to use their search tools to find the ones you need.
I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me. Happy studying.