Using YouTube to Learn

Last week I worked with several people who wanted to know more about Excel. I know the basics of Excel and use Spreadsheets regularly. I use the basic formulas and often use it as a fancy table.

I am comfortable using Excel 2003, but it has changed quite a bit.  It still does the same things that it did before, but it has a new ribbon menu that is confusing to me.  I could get used to it. I just need to take time to practice and use it.

So, I decided to learn on YouTube. YouTube has short videos on about anything that you would want to learn as well as lots of entertainment videos. Here is what I did:

1. I opened up Excel to a blank page.

2. I opened up a browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, or some other program that will get me to the Internet) and went to YouTube

3. I right clicked on the task bar (the bar across the bottom of the screen) and chose to show the windows side by side so that  I could see both of them at the same time. You can set up the windows to cascade,
show stacked or side by side.

4. I searched on YouTube for what I wanted to learn. I started out by just typing Excel in the search window and then selected videos that seemed like they might be helpful.

5.  I ran the video and paused it to try things out using the Excel program that was open on the other side of the screen.

6.  If there were things that I already knew in the video I fast forwarded past them by dragging the scrubber to the next point in the video that had something of interest.

My Favorite was How to Demystify the Ribbon because it went over using the ribbon in an organized and helpful way.