As I head into module 3 of this 6 month course I must admit I am definitely getting my money’s worth hehehe J . No I do not work for squared and no I am not an Apple user who tries to justify my reason for spending over a £1000 for a MacBook (sorry if you are) but in all seriousness I have learned so much in a short space of time. Admittedly you get what you put in so another person may have a totally different outlook to me but I paid a lot of money for this and that is more than enough motivation to give it my all.
So what have I learned so far:
1. Let’s be Squares. The online community is such a vital source of information and collaboration. Thanks to posts from fellow squares and Squared tutors I have been able to access helpful resources that have furthered my studies, knowledge and skills. I recently saw a post from a fellow Square for a Google Analytics course which was running for about 3 weeks. I thanked the Square and took this opportunity to learn about micro and macro conversion, attribution and so on. At university I read an article about the benefits of ideas to economic growth. The author Joseph Cortright stated that “because ideas can infinitely be shared and reused we can accumulate them without limit” and I feel this is a MAJOR USP and plus that the squared community offers.
2. Teamwork. I am afraid I was one of those people who use to prefer working alone and doing everything myself. Also I did not trust others to do the work properly. However, from my experience in squared I worked with highly motivated individuals who were all incredible in promoting ideas for the project we worked on in Module 2 and even prompted me to step up my game - not that my game needs stepping up you know what I am saying… (Cricket cricket cricket) - Annnnywaaayy in all seriousness I gained a lot more from the team than I could have ever hoped for.
3. Technology. I have learned and used so many different technologies that I would never have used before. First of all there is Adobe suit which we need to access in order to watch our weekly webinars to hear from the course tutors. There is Google+ which I had never heard of – REALLY, I KNOW THAT BAD HUH – where I would participate in Google hangouts with my group – THE FIRST TIME EVER I HAVE EVER USED A WEB CAM – Google docs to share documents with my group, along with Dropbox as well – I have used Drop Box - Doodle, Blogger and YouTube for making a video.
4. Resources. I guess I have touched upon this in the first lesson learned but this needs its own subcategory. I CANNOT STRESS how much resources are available to the point where at times it’s overwhelming – I had to take a week of work to catch up haha. I use to think that I could find all the information on my own and to be honest I probably could have if I knew where the information exist but how do you find something that you don’t know exists. Therein lays one of the courses USP from my perspective. 6 modules all structured so you can focus on an area and not just gain knowledge for knowledge sake. Knowledge is abundant these days; however, the course takes it one step further by giving you TACIT KNOWLEDGE and therein lays the key. By providing you with practical activities to interact with the information you have been given, you are better equipped to learn and apply what you have learned in the work place. For Knowledge is not power it is potential power, Knowledge un- invested is wasted.
5. Have Fun!!! J. It may be stressful at times, but ultimately I believe you should have fun with it. Share, joke, complain, don’t complain whatever you do just have FUN with it and I believe the experience will be more than what you expected.
I can’t imagine what I would be doing now if I was not on this course. YIKKESSS!!
Well that’s all for now folks. I hope I have provided some insight into the course and its benefits. By all means it’s my personal experience and everyone else’s will differ but hopefully just slightly. Also I am half way through the course and my view may change, apparently module 3 is a KILLER hahahaha but no, I just need to have fun with it and do my best and forget the rest (For my P90X fans)
Alright as usual GOOGOOBANG!!
