Organic Learning

Last week, I took an Intro to Photoshop class offerered by LACOE in Downey, CA. The instructor was John Chambers. This was an excellent class to learn about beginning Photoshop. Not only is the instructor outstanding in a face to face environment, he also has all of his presentation online, along with podcasts and videocasts of his lessons (and other tips). His good sense of humor and expert knowledge of Photoshop made the class enjoyable.

He made this course very engaging, even for a techie like me. I encourage any educator in the Los Angeles County area to enroll in his classes offered at LACOE. I already enrolled in his Adobe Photoshop: Beyond the Basics class on July 13th-14th. He also will be teaching Adobe InDesign on July 17th, and Photoshop for the Web on July 20-21.

What makes his class outstanding is the fact that all his content is online. In our first session, we strayed a bit from the outline, but he easily reordered the outline online to match what he was teaching us face to face. I especially enjoyed his outstanding podcasts and videocasts that reinforced what I learned in class.

Even the geekiest of us take classes sometimes. I want to use Photoshop better. I struggle with professional apps like Photoshop and Final Cut, so taking a Photoshop class seemed like a good class to take. This class, although very introductory, was enhanced by his love of Web 2.0 technologies that he mentioned throughout the class, like Pandora and Second Life. I even was able to share Box.net with him. That was fun to find someone who knew about some of the new tools that are available for educators.

Thanks, LACOE, for offering this outstanding educator at such a reasonable price. I’m sure this class would have cost at least 8X the price if taken somewhere else.