Necessity is the Mother of Invention

No, I haven't invented anything, although I would like to invent something really great like a hula hoop. But I was thinking a lot about the above phrase. I even considered rewriting it to read "Necessity is the Mother of all Learning." It certainly applies to my life in Turkey. I've had to rely on myself to learn lots of things. Take computer use, for example. Before I lived on another continent, I used to call my son whenever I had a computer question. After about five years, he finally admitted that he didn't know how to do everything and he'd just been "Googleing" my questions and walking me through the solutions. His response was a real "eye-opener" to me. And, it embarrassed me into more independent learning especially with regards to my computer.

But, I'm also human and can be a bit lazy. For example, at my current school, I find short video clips can be really effective at engaging students in a lesson. But, they are a pain to find and even harder to make play on our school computer system. Luckily, my young, Canadian, male colleague is a video-conversion guru. So, usually, I say something like, "It sure would nice nice to have a little video about...." and then several days later he comes to school and says, "I've got something for you," as he loads some video files onto my flash drive. I'm so happy he helps me out but I'm also embarrassed that I can't do it myself.

Flash forward a half of today(Saturday), and I've now successfully taught myself to convert a YouTube file to a format that I can play at school. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon how one rates a clean house) the "free converter" was very slow (I mopped all the floors and cleaned the bathrooms during the conversion). However, the advertising promised me the service would be better if I upgraded...Should I pay to upgrade?  Any comments or suggestions from my readers? Oh, I just remembered ..I can probably Google "product comments and comparisons" and answer the question myself so.... never mind. It's necessary that I learn this on my own.