Digital Skills

There are four digital skills one will find useful to master:

1. How to Connect and use good resources/tools on Internet
2. How to Communicate using mediums like Docs, Slides, Posts. Videos
3. How to Analyze collected data, visualise and discover insights
4. How to Automate tasks using Computers and the Cloud

For some of you, first two skills are all you might need. For some, first three skills will help. For a few, going all the way and learning all four skills is what might be needed. Below, you will find pointers to help you start learning each of these skills.

Before you dive into these skills, it also helps to quickly get a grip on How Computers Work, and How Internet Works. If you are new to typing or wish to learn the right way of using a keyboard, check Learn Typing. And if you don’t have one, open an email account at gmail.com.

Connect

Connect to everything good the Internet has to offer. Start with:

• Follow some interesting channels on YouTube. Check this collection
• Watch TED Videos. You can start with: Most Watched TED Videos.
• Here is another good digital habit to try now! Subscribe to Newsletters
• And follow some blogs – see here and here
• If you enjoy listening more than reading/watching, try Podcasts!
• Try these Digital Distractions whenever you need a break!
• Start building your list of bookmarks of online tools you occasionally use

Use Google, YouTube to learn to:

• Install ChatGPT App or use your browser to take it for a spin!
  • Check this short course on using AI – https://2weeks.ai/
• Use Online Cloud Storage Tools like Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive
• Use Productivity, Note-taking and Planning tools like Notion, Trello, Asana, https://affine.pro/
• Use these & other tools to collaborate with your Classmates or teams online
• Pick the right Desktop/Laptop/Mobile for your needs

Tip: Taking notes is a good skill to develop. Try reading Buidling a Second Brain!

Communicate

A Self Learning Tip: Find opportunities to teach what you learn (friends, family, vlogging, podcasting or blogging). You will not only develop a deeper understanding of the topic, but you will also remember 90% of what you learn.

• Create your personal site at pop.site or carrd.co
• Create your first blog! Help available in this learning capsule: Create a Blog
• Start a Newsletter on a topic of your interest using https://kit.com/
• Complete this learning capsule: Learn Google Docs
• Complete this learning capsule: Learn Graphic Design Basics
• Complete this learning capsule: Learn Google Slides

When communicating online, it is very important to be a good Digital Citizen!

• Be News and Media Literate
• Manage your Digital Footprint and Identity
• [todo] Privacy & Security
• Cyberbullying and Online Harm
• [todo] Relationships and Communication
• AI Literacy

Few additional useful skills some of you will enjoy acquiring are:

• Learn HTML & CSS
• Build and Launch a Website
• Build and Launch an E-Commerce Store

Analyze

The ability to read, collect, analyse, reason and communicate with data and make informed recommendations to drive effective decision-making will turn you into an indispensable member of any team/project. This skill might also make you a better financial planner, a good trip organiser for your friends/family and more! Complete these learning capsules.

• Learn Google Forms
• Learn Google Sheets
• Learn MS Office

MS Excel deserves to be learnt in more depth. Do this course on Udemy: Excel from Beginner to Advanced (around 500 INR). Datacamp also has some very good courses on Spread sheets if you need more guided help. A subscription to Datacamp is strongly suggested if you wish to gain a deeper understanding on working with data in general!

To enhance your Data Visualization skills, complete these learning capsules:

• Learn Data Visualization
• Create Infographics

If you haven’t already done, do subscribe to Newsletters of https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ and https://informationisbeautiful.net/. Being able to appreciate good infographics and practicing this every day helps improve your own skills! https://www.datascience4everyone.org/learn-data-science points towards some additional resources if you wish to explore more.

Some additional tools to check out: Grist, Airtable, https://ottogrid.ai/, https://www.clay.com/, Baserow, NocoDB.

Additional Skills: Your ability to connect to a Database Server and run queries that can pull data/aggregated data is an important skill if you wish to acquire deeper Analysis skills. Learning how to use Structured Query Language (SQL) is an important first step for this. Start here.

https://dataskillsforwork.com/ can offer few more pointers on your journey.

Automate

If you used Google Forms or similar tools to collect data, you already learned how to automate data collection! If you started using Notion to keep your notes or Trello to organise your tasks/ideas, that’s automation too! All these are good first steps.

While learning to code is what will take you far in the world of Automation, you can automate many types of tasks using Computers without having to learn a programming language! Explore No-Code alternatives if you are more comfortable with this path first.

If you wish to explore programming/coding, jump to What is Programming?.

https://code.org/ is another excellent free resource to explore and improve your digital skills.

If you wish to dive deep and explore more – here are some resources:
https://adacomputerscience.org/ – Free Computer Science resources
Codecademy – Self-Paced Learning Platform for Technical Skills
Data Camp • Learn Data Science and Analytics
CS50 by Harvard – Most popular Introduction to Computer Science course
Flux Academy – Web Design Education Platform
Egghead – Software Engineering Education
FreeCodeCamp – Non-profit Software Engineering Platform
Replit • Collaborative, In-Browser IDE for Software Development
Kaggle • Machine Learning/Data Science Community
Frontend Masters – Front-end Engineering Courses
AI for Everyone Course by Andrew Ng on Coursera
https://roadmap.sh/ – A roadmap to learn
AI for Good – on Coursera
https://www.educative.io