Getting Started

Welcome! Learning for Life Online at the Boston Public Library is a self-guided program to help you discover tools and skills needed for living, learning and working online. Learning for Life Online will highlight useful resources, teach best practices, and discuss how to “think online.” Most importantly, you’ll learn how to explore, play with and learn new tools on your own.

How does it work?

• Every Monday, we’ll put up a new post here on the website.
• Some posts will be about a new online tool – describing what it is, what it does, and what it’s good for.
• Other posts will give good suggestions for the most effective, safe or interesting ways to do something online. (See our “Safe Shopping Online” post for an example.)
• We’ll also use our Facebook and Twitter accounts to let you know when there’s a new post, and to share other tools, tips, and articles we find about living life online.
• You can follow along with the posts in order, or just check in on different categories when you have time:
     This Week on LLO to review the weekly posts
     The Basics of online life
     Best Practices
     Just the Tools

Remember, the point of this program is to explore and play, and you’re doing this for yourself. If you get stuck, ask your friends, family, coworkers or kids for help. The best kind of learning happens together.

What do I need?

• Access to a computer, smartphone or tablet that can play audio and video
• A reliable internet connection – broadband, DSL or 3G/4G

What order do I do it in?

Any way you’d like! From the menus at the top of each page, click on Home for the latest posts, or choose from the Popular Topics. On the right of every page, use the website Search to find specific tools or topics, click on a Post Category, or go back through the Archives month by month. At the bottom of every post, you’ll find tags – short words and phrases that describe what the post is about. Click on a tag to see more posts about that topic.

We do suggest starting with these posts for some basic information:

1. Playing With Online Tools – Read this post first.
2. Blogs and Commenting
3. Facebook – The Basics
4. Twitter – The Basics
5. The ‘Social’ Library Catalog
6. Search and Maps
7. Online Accounts: Email and More
8. Email: Some Definitions
9. Upload, Download, Attach, Save
10. Apps – The Basics

For more information

• Video explanations of social media tools at Common Craft
• Lifehacker’s Hive Five, a weekly suggestion of top 5 tools for just about everything