Online Learning - Frivolous and Serious

There are a lot of positive things about learning online in your own home - you pick the lesson time, you work at your own pace, you aren't seated in a stuffy classroom with coughing fellow students and there's no possibility of bullying because you're working on your own.  What's not to like?

Let us begin with frivolous since we all like to be amused while absorbing bits and pieces of knowledge.  The more exotic the better is a good thing.

Worst of McMansions (mcmansionhell.com) is one such site.  An architect-run site, it shows a picture of a house with colored arrows pointing out exactly what is wrong with that particular house.
Additionally, you will learn architectural terms that will allow you to hold your own in any conversation with an architect.  Hip roof, castellated, bay window aka oriel (often found in crosswords) and proportioning - what's good and what most definitely is not.

I learned that in a genuine mansion, the columns holding up a second story or balcony are made of genuine marble or wood.  In a McMansion they are made of foam, treated to look like stone!

Seriously -  trying to learn a new language - either for tourist purposes - or a genuine interest in the country whose language you are learning. 

A lovely woman at our French Conversation classes told me about duolingo.com which is a free site that teaches:  English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Ukraine, Polish, Turkish and (whew) Esperanto!

Richie has been trying to learn French for some time,  so he decided to give it a try.  He likes it!  And he is doing amazingly well after just a short time with it.  He went from more-or-less extremely limited (Merci, S'il vous plait, un pression (tap beer)  to seven percent fluent in a very short time.

Knowing that I needed to work very hard on my version of Spanish, I confidently logged on and asked for the Spanish placement test that decides at what level you enter the classroom.  I flunked it.    This was a tremendous shock to my amour propre and when I get tired of sulking I will go back and try it again.  Don't hold your breath.