Learning foundations...

Okay, so the Make Your Website school is aimed at a very wide demographic; the site basically caters for everyone looking to learn how to create your own content managed website. But don't think this means you will only learn to create a basic, outdated website. You will have the ability to create a very complex website with content management. Upon completion you will have the knowledge to be able to extend the site to include some of the 3000+ pre-built features such as:

• Shopping Cart Facilities
• Forum Software
• Photo Galleries
• (We cover extending your website in Make Your Website School - Grade 5)

To get the most out of Make Your Website, we have prepared some learning tips that will be useful for anyone whether you are currently learning or not. They are proven methods for the retention and recall of information.

In addition to these methods, and to help with the learning process, we will do our bit by not giving you half instructions and expecting you to magically know the rest, as is the case with other sites out there. We dont want you stressing out, this is about having fun while learning a new skill and having something to show for it at the end. We promise to give very clear, detailed steps to help you create your site, and if there is anything we have missed, please contact us through the support ticketing area and we will either clarify or add the missing information to the lesson.

Advanced users will be able to skip through the lessons at their own pace, that is why we provide both video/screen capture of the lessons as well as a text/image version that can be easily skimmed over. But it is certainly not a rece, and attention to detail is a big requirement when designing, developing and maintaining a website.

Learning Tips and Methods

1. Keep Practicing What You Have Learnt

One sure-fire way to become a more effective learner is to simply keep learning. A 2004 Nature article reported that people who learned how to juggle increased the amount of gray matter in their occipital lobes, the area of the brain that is associated with visual memory. When these individuals stopped practicing their new skill, this gray matter vanished.

So when learning how to make your own website, it is important to keep practicing the skills learnt in each lesson in order to maintain the gains you have achieved. This "use-it-or-lose-it" phenomenon involves a brain process known as "pruning." Certain pathways in the brain are maintained, while other are eliminated. If you want the new information you just learned to stay put, keep practicing and rehearsing it.

2. Learn in Multiple Ways

Focus on learning in more than one way. Instead of just reading a lesson, which involves visual (spatial) learning, find a way to rehearse the information using verbal, auditory and visual methods. This might involve describing what you learned to a friend, taking notes or drawing a mind map. By learning in more than one way, you’re cross-referencing and further cementing the knowledge in your mind. This cross-referencing of data means we have learned, rather than just memorized.

3. Teach What You've Learned to Another Person

Educators have long noted that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Remember your primary school presentation on Costa Rica? By teaching to the rest of the class, your teacher hoped you would gain even more from the assignment. You can apply the same principle today by showing others how to make a website.

Start by translating the information into your own words. This process alone helps solidify new knowledge in your brain. Next, find some way to share what you’ve learned. Some ideas include writing a blog post, creating a video or participating in our group forum.

4. Gain Practical Experience

This is an easy one at makeyourwebsite.com.au! We are all about action learning and getting you to practice all the lessons. For many of us, learning typically involves reading textbooks, attending lectures or doing research in the library or on the Web. While seeing information and then writing it down is important, actually putting new knowledge and skills into practice can be one of the best ways to improve learning.

So, when completing a lesson in the make your website school, pause the video and complete the tasks yourself. The invention of tabbed browsing on all modern browsers makes this alot easier to achieve. Have makeyourwebsite.com.au open in one browser, and your website open in the other. You will easily be able to switch between the two.

5. Look Up Answers Rather Than Struggle to Remember

Of course, learning isn’t a perfect process. Sometimes, we forget the details of things that we have already learned. If you find yourself struggling to recall some tid bit of information, research suggests that you are better offer simply looking up the correct answer. A recent study found that the longer you spend trying to remember the answer, the more likely you will be to forget the answer again in the future. Why? Because these attempts to recall previously learned information actually results in learning the "error state" instead of the correct response.

6. Understand How You Learn Best

Another great strategy for improving your learning efficiency is to recognise your learning habits and styles. There are a number of different theories about learning styles, which can all help you gain a better understanding of how you learn best. At makeyourwebsite.com.au, we offer you audio and visual materials and encourage action based learning to try and suit all techniques.

7. Stop Multitasking

For many years, it was thought that people who multitask, or perform more than one activity at once, had an edge over those who did not. However, research now suggests that multitasking can actually make learning less effective. In the study, participants lost significant amounts of time as they switched between multiple tasks and lost even more time as the tasks became increasingly complex. By switching from one activity to another, you will learn more slowly, become less efficient and make more errors. How can you avoid the dangers of multitasking? Start by focusing your attention on the lesson at hand and continue working for a predetermined amount of time.

Each lesson video is no more than 5 minutes. So complete one full lesson and have a beak if need be before moving onto the next. But focus for the duration of the lesson. You can spread the grades out for as long or as short as you like. Similar to how each lesson has been designed, each grade rolls into the next to provide a seamless training solution. Some people will aim to build a website in a weekend, some a week, others a month. The choice is completely up to you. There is no time limit on your registration, and once enrolled, you are enrolled for life (unless of course you choose to un-enrol!)