How do you learn a new computer program? Do you start with the Read Me file and then the manual and go step by step by step?
Me? I plunge right in. The manual and help files are a last resort. Most computer programs follow fairly predictable conventions in the way you use them, so experience helps, but curiosity is your best tool. Try everything--every button, every menu. If it doesn't make sense right now, it will later. Explore, experiment, try different tools to see what each does. Play with possibilities. Then read the manual.
Now, obviously part of this is simply differences in learning style, but I think there is something much more critical at stake here. When you follow the manual or tutorial what have you learned? What is in the tutorial. That is it. You haven't learned to apply it to another situation or discovered any other possibilities. It is like following the directions for a quilt pattern. When you get done, that is all you have--a quilt pattern translated into your fabric. And a lot of quilts get made in exactly the same fabric as the pattern...
Frankly, this scares the daylights out of me. We are becoming lazy thinkers. It is much easier to just let someone lift our lids and pour it in--no work, no muss, no fuss--Instant Learning.
One of the things I have learned in the past few years (and that will be another story) is the incredible power of pattern. If you think of a pattern (whether it is a computer program or a quilt pattern or any other "Proper" way of doing something)as being something to be followed exactly or you will have made a mistake or done something wrong, then you have immediately set yourself up for the possibility of failure. No wonder people get scared of learning or taking classes.
If on the other hand we can think of a pattern as simply a starting point, then a whole world of possibility opens up. Technique becomes a tool, not an end in itself. You can play with ideas and learn techniques when and if you need them. Curiosity and "what would happen if...?" become the keys to creativity.
To be continued...later...
