Reviving the Lost Arts with E-Learning #229

Lost Arts and Forgotten Skills #229: Challenge | Recap

I’ve been teaching my daughter how to tie knots. Not shoelace knots. Real knots. The kind of safety, household, and technical knots our grandparents knew and used.

Searching for knot-tying resources, I started thinking about other lost arts that seem “old fashioned” by today’s standards.

What Are the Lost Arts?

Lost arts are the basic skills for self-sufficient living that have been forgotten or replaced by modern technology.  

These include skills such as: using slide rules, reading maps, and renting movies at Blockbuster. Here are a few more examples:

• Basic survival skills (making fire, foraging for water, reading animal tracks)
• Reading a map, using a compass, deciphering Morse code
• Cursive, calligraphy, and letter writing
• Sewing, knitting, and crocheting
• Canning and food preservation
• Developing photographs

Lost Arts: Animated Knots

This site is one of the best examples of ways to use animated GIFs for learning. Using a slideshow format with animated GIFs, you can learn how to tie knots of any kind. The player options include speed controls and perspective views.

View Animated Knots

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to share an interactive example or tutorial that highlights one or more skills that qualify as lost arts.

Your entry can be something simple, like a list of lost arts you wish would come back. For more involved entries, try sharing a tutorial, how-to, or process interaction that teaches a lost art or forgotten skill.

Even if you don’t have time to build a demo this week, let us know about a lost art or skill you think needs reviving.

Last Week’s Challenge:

Before you relearn the skills of our forefathers, check out the observation games your fellow challengers shared over the past week:

Spot the Difference E-Learning Games #228: Challenge | Recap

Wishing you a found week, E-Learning Heroes!

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.