Stay home - get smarter – really!

As we all settle into new routines around work and home it is somewhat likely many of us have extra time on our hands.

What if you could spend 30-60 minutes a day and become even smarter than you are now?

The real challenge is deciding what you’d like to learn. There are literally hundreds of options. Here are 10 I’d recommend – some you may have heard of, others, hopefully, you have not. These sites all offer free or free for a limited time courses:

edX – A site founded by and populated with courses from some of the best universities in the world (full disclosure: my university, RIT, is a member and I’ve developed two courses on this platform). It offers massive open online courses (MOOC), specializations, and certificates (some of which can be applied to graduate degrees at member universities). There are 1,000s of courses for free (including quizzes and other knowledge checks) most of which can earn you a certificate of completion if you are willing to pay a small fee.

Coursera – This platform works with universities and businesses and also offers MOOC courses, specializations and degrees in a wide range of subjects such as engineering, data science, machine learning, social sciences and more.

Khan Academy – You’ve likely heard of this non-profit educational organization and its 10s of 1,000s of short lessons (delivered as videos). Its website also includes supplementary practice exercises. All resources are available for free on the web or the Khan app.

TED-Ed– Only got a few minutes? Then this is the platform for you. TED-Ed is the famed TEDx organization’s award-winning education platform that serves millions of teachers and students around the world. There are thousands of 10-minute videos – admittedly targeted at grades 6-12, but heck they’re interesting.

HowStuffWorks – As the name suggests focus on explaining the way many things work. The site uses photographs, diagrams, videos, animations, puzzles and articles to explain complex concepts, terminology, and mechanisms. This is also something you can fit into a smaller time frame.

Alison – This is a free online education platform that mostly focuses on workplace-based skills and generates income from advertising, and sales of certificates and merchandise. The site offers more than a 1,000 courses at certificate, diploma and learning path levels across nine core subject categories including tech, science, math, health, humanities and lifestyle. The certificate level courses require two to three hours of study while the more rigorous diploma level courses require 10 to 15  hours of study

The Great Courses – A subscription service (currently offering a 1-month free trial) streaming lectures (more than 11,000 of them) with some requiring up to 20 hours to complete. Be warned: These are often literally videos of professors lecturing for 30 – 60 minutes straight. Not my ideal learning environment, but there a wide range of serious academic and general interest topics.

LinkedIn Learning – Known as Lynda.com before being acquired by LinkedIn this site offers courses taught by industry experts in software, and creative and business skills. You need to have a LinkedIn account to access LI Learning and most courses have a fee, but the first month is free. Also, check with your employer – many buy business-wide subscriptions to LI Learning.

Hubspot Academy  – Is an online training platform that provides various digital marketing training programs in such areas as marketing, sales and service. It offers free certification courses in social media, inbound marketing, email marketing and content marketing among others.

Open Culture – Still not sure what you’re looking to learn? Then this site is for you. It’s directory of free online courses and other learning resources including MOOCs, free movies, free audio books, free eBooks, free textbooks, free language lessons and free business courses.

Analog games played with distant friends

Just because you’re isolated at home doesn’t mean you can’t play old-fashioned board games or card games with a bunch of other folks who are somewhere else.

This idea comes from a colleague, Dave, and involves setting up a board game or card game at one location and using your phone or tablet or laptop to send video of the setup to others.

Wherever the board is that’s where the dice are rolled, the pieces moved, the cards are dealt and hands displayed etc. Everyone else is watching on a screen and deciding what to do, Pieces are moved etc by the owner of the board.

These games can be played in one day or over several days.

Dave had set up a Monopoly game, but all kinds of games would work this way. The only ones that don’t work are those that require some kind of secrecy (hidden cards or Stratego or Battleship, for example). What games might work well? A few examples:

·       Monopoly – as mentioned. This lends itself well to this kind of play.

·       Trivial Pursuit – this will work well as long as there is a good live communication. It’ would be best to have a camera angle that makes it easier for telling the person moving the markers  whether you want to move clockwise or counter-clockwise.

·       Scrabble – for word nerds. As long as everyone agrees to open display of each others’ tiles and to worry about their own words. If everyone can see everyone else’s tiles it’s fair, right? You might want to agree on which dictionary rules for word disputes too.

·       Chess or Checkers – again, just be sure your camera angle makes it easy for the people not present to explain what they want their pieces to do or learn the correct terminology for chess’ algebraic notation. 

·       Catan – since the only hidden cards are Development cards, this game could be adapted for this kind of play. Perhaps everyone agrees to just be open abut what they hold or choose not to use Development cards.

This is just a short list. I’m sure you  an think of others and, if you do, can share them with me. Thanks!

-Mike Johansson

Playing with your food

Stuck at home and you have a cupboard full of random items? What are you going to do?

Can I suggest playing with your food? Really!

You have all this time on your hands, why not become a kitchen experimenter?

Now there are multiple ways to do this, but I’ll start with a few that are likely to yield edible results and you can take it from there.

The first way I’ll call Crazy Combos. It’s basically combining two (or maybe three) things that you would not expect to work together. Here are a few I can vouch for (but, be warned not everyone’s taste buds are the same):

·       Canned kernel corn (not creamed corn) and bacon bits fried in a little butter until everything is crispy brown. For variety, add some ketchup, let it sizzle and then serve.

·       Mustard spread on toast with cheese on top. Microwave for 20 seconds to get the cheese bubbling.

·       Warmed (in the microwave) marmalade poured over ice cream. The tart marmalade and the sweet ice cream make for great contrast (although my friend Ricky wasn't a fan).

·       Lettuce or sprouts and Vegemite sandwiches. I know, I know Vegemite is not for everyone, but it is good and good for you, as they say. Delicious!

The next way I call Mix-and-Match. It’s basically picking random items from the cupboard, pantry, refrigerator or freezer and figuring out how to make them work together. A couple I’ve come up with:

·       Hash browns, baked beans and egg casserole. Don’t knock it until you try it. Put hash browns in the bottom of a deep, but smallish greased baking dish (like a loaf dish), top with baked beans. Break eggs (leaving the yolks whole) over the top. Bake the whole thing for 2-25 minutes at 425F or until the eggs are crisp (yup, crisp!) and the beans a hash browns are bubbling. Let cool slightly before serving.

·       Cheese sticks and gravy. Take 2 slices of bread and broil one side. Turn them over, cut each into four strips. Sprinkle grated cheese on the strips. Broil until the cheese browns and crackles. Let the cheese sticks cool slightly. Meanwhile heat some jarred gravy. Place the gravy in a small bowl and use it for dipping. Think of it as poor man’s poutine.

The final way I call The Challenge. This requires two participants. Each picks three ingredients already in the kitchen and the other has to make something and can only add two more ingredients (no more!) that are also right there in the kitchen. 

This works best if one person is working on something savory and the other on something sweet.

The bottom line here is to have fun and discover just how inventive you can be with your food. Bon appetite!

If you have fun foods you’ve come up with let me know…

-Mike Johansson

Taking a trip without leaving home

Antelope Canyon as seen on FullScreen360

One way to get ‘out’ of the house without leaving the house is to take a virtual tour.

In this time of social distancing and social isolation All kinds of organizations are compiling lists of free and virtual tours.

A starter list:

·       LifeHacker compiled a list - You Can Virtually Tour These 500+ Museums and Galleries From Your Couch - which is as wonderful as it sounds. 

·       Virtual dives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration takes you into a series of the Unites States’ National Marine Sanctuaries described as “an immersive 360 view of your national marine sanctuaries.” 

·       The website Fullscreen360 offers 360-degree panoramas of iconic destinations around the world and even a few on other planets. It allows you to virtually travel to some of the most beautiful sites in the world and arrow keys to pan around the view and the plus and minus keys to zoom in and out. The site also offers descriptive text for each location.

·       Watch some live nature on a livestream cam. There are literally hundreds of these. A few that are popular:

o   Explore.org has a great YouTube channel with a lot of live web cams. Here you’ll find everything from eagles to hummingbirds from coral reefs to kitten rescue facilities.

o   The San Diego Zoo where you check in pandas, koalas (warning, they sleep A LOT), penguins, polar bears, baboons and more.

o   There are Bald Eagle nest cams galore – many are found at the American Bald Eagle Foundation  – but a good one right now is one at Dollywood in Tennessee where you can check in on Grant & Glenda.

·       Or just escape into a made-up environment by exploring the ambient sound and video world. A good example of this genre is the Miracle Forest and its YouTube channel built by a visual effects artist who goes only by Melinda. These types of videos are called ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response. These calming clips aim to give listeners "brain tingles" through various visual and auditory techniques such as whispering, scratching and tapping.

This is just a very short list. I’m sure some diligent Googling on your part will uncover a lot more options. If you find really interesting ones I’d love to hear about them.

- Mike Johansson

Updated: Facebook Messenger for group activities

My next suggestion relates to another passion of mine – social media. 

Specifically I want you to think of social media as a way to stay socially connected in real time or over time. I’ll have a lot of suggestions on this in coming posts, but for today I’ll focus on ways to use Facebook’s Messenger app since more people have FB and Messenger than any other social media platform.

There are a lot of features in Messenger that many are not aware of. For some good wrap ups on these see the Mashable article 10 things you didn't know you could do with Facebook Messenger  or the PC magazine article 22 Cool Tricks and Secret Gems Inside FacebookMessenger.

Update (3/27): Facebook has launched a new Coronavirus Community Hub for Messenger, which aims to highlight key ways in which people can use its messaging app to stay in touch amid the COVID-19 lockdowns.

What I’ll focus on is the relatively low-tech idea of Messenger group conversations and chats – where collections of people who share an interest can chat about it in real-time or over time. Instructions on how to uses these at the end of this post.

Think about these possible uses of Messenger conversations and chats:

·       Starting a binge-watching group based on a streaming TV or online TV show. People agree to watch a series of shows and agree on times to chat or maybe they do it asynchronously after a certain time.

·       Creating a book group – where people all agree to read a free online book by a certain date. You might agree to have regular check-in times along the way or you might wait until everyone is done reading the book.

·       Have family and friends agree to a once-a-week (or some other schedule) check in. In these times of social isolation hearing from multiple family members at the same time can be very reassuring.

·       Form a group around a shared interest. This could be something that you can do at home like cooking, crafts or home projects or something you do virtually right now – like travel (there are tons of wonderful virtual travel sites on the web). Set up a schedule to talk about your interests and share tips and insights. 

The post that got the rainbows in the windows started

·       Get together virtually with your neighbors near and far and start life-affirming projects. For example, in my town folks have been posting hand-made rainbows in the street-facing windows so kids and families (well, anyone really) can make a game of counting them. (See pic). This came about as a result of a chat.

·       Start a learning group. Have you always wanted to learn a skill? What can help you stay up with the online class you’ve been procrastinating about? A group of others doing the same thing.

These are just a few ideas. You likely have other ideas for ways to use Messenger. I’d love to hear them.

Now, in case you need it, how to get going on Messenger:

Messenger conversations: Facebook offers a lot of tips on how to set up group conversations and chats inside Messenger here: Create and customize group conversations 

- Mike Johansson

The Curiosity Game

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

My first suggestion relates to a passion of mine – curiosity. 

Let’s talk about The Curiosity Game – something that can be done online among far-flung friends and family or at home in a more analog way. 

Online:

There are probably a lot of things you’ve wondered about, the secret for this game is to turn curiosity into a competitive sport.

Think of something you’ve wondered about and look for a number related to it. For example, you might wonder how many times a politician has uttered a certain phrase or how many M&Ms candies have ever been made. Or maybe which US airline flies the oldest planes and how many of those planes are still flying (well, under normal circumstances). Or how many craft breweries there are in your state or your country. You get the idea.

Now you challenge others online to be the first to find the answer (and to cite their sources). It’s best to keep this to a manageable group, preferably friends and family. Maybe make a small digital image of a “winner’s certificate” that can be posted on the winner’s Facebook or other social media pages for bragging rights.

The point is to get everyone searching for answers. Then each new challenge can come from another member of the group. Maybe you keep a journal of your findings for everyone to look back on.

More Analog:

Had enough of staring at screens? Or maybe you have young children and you want to take this game analog or IRL.

Think of something that is countable and set everyone to seeing how many are in the house. For example, drawer handles, door knobs, taps, light fixtures, books, etc.

To extend the learning here have discussion, for example, about the history of doors or door knobs.

If you want to take it outside challenge everyone to figure out how lines are on a particular utility pole, how many flowers are in a particular garden, how many bricks or pavers are in a path, how many trees are on your lot, etc.

To extend the learning have an adult or older child explain the purpose of each line on that utility pole. Don’t know? Look it up! Or have a discussion about how bricks are made, what concrete is or what types of trees you have (again, look it up).

The point of all this is to stimulate curiosity – one of the greatest of human attributes – and, sadly, the one we tend to use not nearly enough.

Got your own variations of The Curiosity Game? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you

-Mike Johansson

Why this blog exists

A lot of us are at home or working ‘from home’ and I was wondering “How can I help others?”

And it occurred to me that there are likely a lot of folks who are looking for new things to do “at home” or “from home” and the idea of From Home – HIH (Help is Here) was born.

The idea is to share a new idea every day for something that can be done from home or at home that doesn’t involve leaving the house or if it does it allows for social distancing….

If you like the ideas please share them with others. If you have suggestions for an idea or enhancements for an idea please let me know.

I hope you find this useful.

- Mike Johansson