There’s a lot of Web tech. You can’t spend all your time learning. What to do?

Learning science can help.

Learning science studies:

• How people learn – the mental processes.
• How to write books and teach classes that fit with the way people learn.

Learning science researchers mostly agree about how people learn best. I use their insights when writing CoreDogs.

Here are some things learning science knows.

• Learn a few important things in depth. That’s more useful than learning a little about many things.
• Learn how to use your new skills in the real world.
• Hands-on is better than just reading.

There’s more, a lot more. But let’s stick with these three. You’ll see how CoreDogs uses these three ideas.

Read less to learn more

CoreDogs only covers stuff that Webers use on just about every project.

Take HTML, for example. There are 91 HTML tags. CoreDogs covers only 31 of them. Only one-third of the total.

It’s better to know how to use the core tags well, than spend your time learning a little about all 91 tags.

You can always Google the other 60, if you ever need them.

Learning for use

CoreDogs lessons are about outcomes. What you can do with the tech.

The lessons could be, “Here’s an HTML tag. Let’s talk about it. Here’s another tag. Let’s talk about it.”

That’s not the CoreDogs way. The lessons are, “You need to make a page with text. Let’s see how. You need to make a page with menus. Let’s see how.”

“A page with text” is an outcome, something you want to make. Stay focused on the goal. You’ll learn not just the tech, but how the tech is actually used to do real work.

Hands-on

You have to do it to understand it. You have to create Web pages. There’s no other way.

But you need help.

• You need software, like text editors.
• When you make a page, how do you know it’s right?
• What happens when your page doesn’t work?

Some things CoreDogs does:

• CoreDogs shows you how to download free software.
• CoreDogs lessons have many examples and exercises. Learn from examples, do in the exercises.
• Exercises come with solutions. Compare your work to the solutions, but only after you’ve tried the exercises yourself.
• Exercises have discussion forums. Ask for help, offer hints, whatever you like.
• There are lessons on how to fix things that don’t work. They include screen shots, short movies, and other useful stuff.

More, more!

There’s more to CoreDogs’ support for learning. Like:

• Learning portfolios.
• Behavioral models.
• Simple, conversational writing.
• Etc, etc.

Check out the educator’s FAQ for more.