Learning for Learning’s Sake

Girl answering math problems on the chalkboard.

I’m here… don’t send out a search party! I’m not dead, just haven’t had time to write any posts recently.

Since I’ve been so busy, I’ve also noticed that I haven’t really had much time for my own learning. L&D professionals know better than anyone else how important learning is, so I’ve felt like I’ve been a bit short-sighted by getting involved in other projects at the expense of my own learning. So, I figured today I should carve out some time for myself, to learn something new.

When I graduated from my Master’s program back in December, I had a whole plan laid out over two years into the future of what I planned to learn, week-by-week. All of that has fallen by the wayside. Today I picked up where I left off – with some fun Photoshop skills.

These days when I use Photoshop, I tend to use the same skills over and over. I never really try out anything new. This means my courses might be missing out on great graphics that I simply don’t even know I can make. Everything I use in my courses work, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be even better.

To ease back in to my own learning plan, I decided to play around with something simple (and fun) – Photoshop filters. Filters can dramatically change the look and feel of a photo. They can also draw attention to certain areas or aspects of the photo.

Despite being something a beginner could use, in my odd, round-about way of learning Photoshop, I always skipped over them, because they seemed a bit too childish or cheesy. Well, as it turns out, some of the filters are neither childish nor cheesy. And you know what, some of the ones that are can still be useful when used in a fun, up-beat way.

After spending some time playing around with the filters, I thought I should create something to remind myself of what I’d learned… enter Super Rodney!

I wanted to create a comic (or at least a very small portion of one). Unfortunately, I didn’t have any story in mind. So, I just made up something silly. In the end, it’s the skills that I’m learning that matter, right?

I hope you enjoy it! (because I have a feeling that you’ll be seeing more of Super Rodney in the future)

Launch Presentation