The Best Free Training

Topic: Gardening, landscaping, and related topics
Format: Websites with online training (many formats)
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

It’s that time of the year again (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere)! It’s time for all you home gardeners to start thinking about getting organized, laying out this season’s garden, prepping the soil and planters, and maybe even doing a little of that long-needed landscaping you’ve been dreaming about. This post provides a brief review of a couple of resources I just  discovered, as well as links to previous reviews of great free resources to help you learn all about gardening. Enjoy!

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Topic: Organizing time, space, documents, and managing clutter
Format: Online class with quizzes and feedback. Also available as a single downloadable PDF file and 6-part podcast [free registration required]
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

This great free training item is filled with simple, specific, and practical steps you can follow to organize all that stuff that you’ve accumulated around the house and office.

It will help you break down that overwhelming mass of clutter into bite-sized chunks, deal with it by developing systems (rules) to handle each type of clutter, and figure out how to maintain your well-organized space.

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Topic: Gardening, landscaping, and related topics
Format: Websites with online training (many formats)
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

It won’t be long until all that snow and ice is gone and you’ll be able to start working with your lawn and garden. This year, why not be proactive? Why not use these last weeks of winter to dig a little deeper and teach yourself everything you always wanted to know about gardening and landscaping?

Below are links to three of our previous reviews of great free training resources to help:

* How to Be a Gardener (From BBC… Fun!)

* Xeriscaping: Landscaping Without Irrigation

* Landscape Sprinkler Irrigation Design Tutorial

Topic: The US switchover from analogue TV broadcasts to digital TV broadcasts and how it will affect you
Format: Slide tutorial with graphics, pop-ups, and links to additional resources
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

These days we’ve all been seeing words like this scrolling across the bottom of our TV screens: “On February 17, 2009, this station will stop broadcasting analog signals and switch entirely to 100% digital transmission. You may need to take action to assure you continue receiving our programs.” So what’s this really mean to you? Will you need a new TV set or other new equipment? (Not necessarily!) And how do the new HD TVs figure into all this? This clean, simple tutorial from Sony makes all the technical issues easy to understand, so you can figure out what you may need to do.

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Topic: How to build and repair almost anything in your home
Format: Printed guidelines with step-by-step diagrams, text explanations & tool/material checklists
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

Millard Lumber says its how to series is “A complete online guide to the most common do-it-yourself projects around the home.” And they aren’t kidding! 71 no-nonsense, step-by-step sets of guidelines will take your through all sorts of home improvement efforts, from a project as broad as planning and designing a new bathroom to a task as specific as selecting the right screw or nail for the job.

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Topic: How to save energy by product choices, organizational changes, and changes in individual behavior
Format: website including job aids (work sheets), text information, videos, podcasts, games, and links to many other resources
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

What are some simple and specific steps you, as an individual, can take to save energy, save money, and fight global warming? And what about the organizations you work with? How could they be saving energy? And what might your kids be doing to educate themselves about global warming, energy savings, and their role in protecting the planet? Find answers to all these questions at the Energy Star website.

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Topic: Basic cooking techniques, recipes, & misc. culinary skills
Format: Videos (View Flash online & some Podcasts)
Reviewer/email: Mike G – greers_pm@yahoo.com

This site is loaded with brief, well-produced, no-nonsense videos that will help you learn almost any cooking skill you can imagine. Tours of famous chefs’ kitchens and special holiday cooking videos are included. (More in comment.)