Talk about a time you taught yourself how to use a digital tool. What motivated you to do so? How did you go about teaching yourself? Give an example of a new digital tool you needed to learn to complete an assignment or solve a problem. Why was that tool the best one? How did you go about learning it? How did you evaluate its effectiveness? Have you learned a new digital tool this year? Have you applied existing knowledge of a digital tool to a new domain?
Technology is so embedded into our lives that it is just a matter of time before someone is forced to learn a new tool if they are to succeed. For me, this call, out of nowhere, came from my Chemistry Laboratory Class. I also had to learn the new Turtles Python program but since a previous post was made for that, I will talk about the new chemistry computational program I fell in love with. This was near the end of my first fall semester. Unfortunately, I was not doing good in my Introduction to Programming course and so having to learn a new digital tool came at a bad time. However, my chemistry professor really helped us to learn how to use this Chemistry computational tool/program called WebMO. I had to do some of my own learning but as I was doing so I fell in love with the program. It was so fun to use even though it was for an assignment. I never really saw chemistry as a computational science but the program really opened my eyes. Consequently, it even helped me solidify my interest in chemistry as a major. I developed a growth mindset and I soon started to see youtube videos on how the program works and also reading the bibliography on the tool’s website that was filled with tutorials. Unfortunately, I finished my Chemistry Laboratory Class last semester and so my access to the program ended. However, I am currently trying to find out if the university owns the program or if I can access it using an educational pathway. Thus, my motivation for Chemistry helped me learn how to use this tool. Although I am not an expert, I will try my best to continue learning more about it. There is even a professor here at Wesleyan whose research heavily involves the use of WebMO.
Other programs I have learned are WordPress which is fun, Python, JavaScript, and some HTML and CSS.
