Post written by Laura Cococcia. You can follow Laura on Twitter.
I’m a how-to person. I love to learn and research how people do “things.” Obviously, writing is something about which I’m passionate – but I’m happiest when I’m soaking up knowledge about pretty much anything.
My education program: I’m out discovering and uncovering in the world, and I read a ton of books and articles. Even the occasional billboard offers insight. But it doesn’t have to be complicated – I just ask a lot of questions and try to pay attention to what’s around me.
I subscribe to a site called “wikiHow” For more context, here’s the site’s goal, straight from its home page:
wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. With your contributions, we can create a free resource that helps millions of people offering solutions to the problems of everyday life. wikiHow currently contains 68,023 articles – written, edited, and maintained primarily by volunteers. Please join us by writing on a topic not yet covered, or editing an article that someone else has started.
I find wikiHow’s collaborative education concept to be Very Cool. Every day, more how-to articles are posted and people get to comment. It’s a never-ending encyclopedia with a built-in conversation.
Some of the article topics have been pretty useful. Like “How to Develop Your Photography Skills.” Or “How to Cut a Limb from a Tree.”
Not long ago, however, an interesting article came up on my wikiHow gadget. It was titled “How to Escape From the Trunk of a Car.” I wondered if I needed to know about this. It’s entirely possible, so I clicked on the article. And about 10 people had already chimed in with their opinions and alternate solutions.
My question: is this article useful? It’s accessible, but how many people will ever need to escape from the trunk of a car? Or my personal recent favorites: “How to Humanely Remove a Mouse from a Sticky Trap,” or “How to Crochet a Yip Yip Alien.”
Not sure if I’ll ever need to do these things, but now I know how.
Who’s to say what’s useful knowledge for me but not be useful to another? What I do know is that the models for knowledge sharing continue to evolve – and even for those of us who feel ‘up to speed’ or ‘learned’ – it’s time to think again.
Think back to when you last learned a new skill or concept – anything goes. How did you learn about it?
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