Writing Skills & Lessons

You can write skills and learning missions using Skillpedia to make it easy for anyone to learn how to do what you know how to do.

1. First, think of a skill that you know a lot about.
2. Look through Skillpedia's Skill List and Mediapedia's Medium List to see if it has already been posted.
3. If it exists, take a look at it. Chances are it is a stub (a short article without much text) that you can expand upon by editing it.
   
   1. Open it up and click the Edit button in the top-right corner of the window. 
4. If it doesn't exist, create it.
   1. Mouseover the Post menu and click Skill.
   2. You are now editing the new skill.
   3. Give it a title, preferably a verb like "guitar playing" rather than a generic noun like "guitar".
5. Now you are editing it's body text.
   
   1. Introductory Paragraph: start by explaining why it is worth learning and what it allows you to do. Be sure it has a suitable description and that the first paragraph of the skill's body text has this concise explanation.
   2. How To: Provide an explanation of how the skill is done.
   3. Tools: If the skill involves using certain tools such as guitars for guitar playing, mention these and consider linking to the tools or creating some to link to.
   4. Examples: If you can find some cool examples of using the skill, list them here. For example, if you are writing up how to make something like flyers, post some cool things people have made along with pictures like Doctor Steel or Empowerment flyers. If you are writing how to do something like public speaking, post some examples of people who do it and things that have been done before like Steve Jobs and Apple keynotes. 
   5. Links: Provide links to useful sites for learning and sources of your information.
6. Required Skills: If the skill requires certain other skills to be learned as a requirement, list those here.
7. Click Submit to post the skill. Congratulations, you've contributed to human learning!

Create Learning Missions

Once you've got a skill you want to help people written up, it is time to add some lessons. Lessons are open learning missions anyone can do to learn skills.

1. Go to the skill that exists or that you just created and click New Learning Mission. A form appears.
2. Title: Give the mission a title that describes what you'll learn how to accomplish, such as "Learn basic HTML by creating your first web page" or "Prepare to learn PHP by setting up a PHP environment".
3. Learned Skills: This should list the skill from which you clicked New Learning Mission.
   
   1. If it teaches more than that one skill, add some more learned skills.
   2. Click the select list and choose the skill or skill category. Each skill may have subskills under it that appear to the right.
   3. Once you've selected the skill you want, click Add.
   4. It will appear in your list of selections.
4. Required Skills: If performing this lesson requires certain prior skills, list those the same way.
5. Body: Now it is time to write the body text.
   1. Hook Paragraph: Give the mission a first sentence that explains why the lesson is cool, what you'll learn and why it is worth learning.
   2. Explanation: Explain the lesson in more detail.
   3. Ingredients: List all the skills, tools and preparation that are required to begin the mission.
   4. Steps: Write a list of steps to complete just like this one. Click the unordered list button on the editor toolbar(it looks like 123 with three lines) to make a numbered list.
      
      1. Use the indenters to make sub steps like this.
   5. Click Submit to post the lesson. Good job, you've just made it easier for someone to get started actually learning the skill!

Making Followup Lessons

If you try to teach everything in one big step, people will get overwhlemed so it is a good idea to break lessons into multiple lesson chunks. Each lesson can have one previous lesson and multiple next step lessons.

• To create a next step lesson, click New Next Step Lesson.
• To set a lesson's previous and next steps manually, click the Edit button on the top right and the edit tab that appears. 
  • Scroll down to where it says "Next & Previous Steps."
  • Choose other missions you have created there to add relationships to them.

Testing Your Missions On Willing Subjects

After you create a lesson, it is a good idea to ask someone to try completing it and see how they do. Adjust the lesson and clarify steps as necessary. By producing high-quality skills and lessons, you are empowering people everywhere to learn anything. Allowing people to educate themselves makes the world a better place and your contribution is valuable.