The vacation season is here and many of us are busy planning leisure trips to friends and relatives, joining a sports club/trainings or having some relaxing time at home for TV, sleeping, surfing the internet or playing games on the computer.

Along with these activities, there’s ample time to learn something new related to computers in these couple of months. So today, we will explore some ways of utilising the summer vacation time for honing skills that will help us not only academically but will also help those seeking to explore their own abilities and converting them into areas of expertise.

Let’s start with the basics first. For those acquainted with Windows, it’s time to get their hands on something new, such as exploring the latest version of free operating system named Ubuntu. It’s available for download at Ubuntu.com and can be run directly off a USB or CD without having to installing it in computer. This Linux-based operating system is extremely user-friendly, brings in a fresh user interface, free office suite and internet tools, new games and programming tools.

For those interested specifically in programming, the starting point could be BASIC or one of its advanced forms such as thinBasic. There are lots of resources on BASIC available online such as chapter-wise books that take a reader through step-by-step concepts such as loops, conditions, input and output commands and calculations, etc.

One such site is gladlylearn.com/BlastOff.htm offering topic-wise tutorials with examples. Taking help from BASIC books available easily in the market can also be a good idea, particularly for developing practice programs. The reason why there’s so much emphasis on BASIC programing language is because its learning curve is low and ideas grasped over here are applicable in advanced languages such as Java and C++ as well.

Those who are already familiar and proficient with BASIC can devote some time now in learning the next high level language or can even get their hands on smartphones of their parents which usually run Android or iOS – operating systems from Google and Apple respectively. There are huge online communities of mobile application developers out there making use of Android and Apple’s SDK — Software Development Kit — to develop simple and complex mobile phone applications such as auto-reminders, auto-responders for calls and SMS, games, etc. These SDKs are available for free download along with loads of documentation, sample applications, online forums for discussion, training videos and other forms of tutorials to get started with. For developing mobile applications on Android phones, check out developer.android.com and for Apple phones, developer.apple.com.

Other than programming, there’s one more area of specialisation that fascinates teenagers given its presence and reference in movies — its hacking. Normally, hacking and hackers are regarded with negative connotation, but the very origin of the word meant anyone who goes deep into functionalities of computer software and finds out flaws in it. If this activity is done for bad purposes, such as sabotaging or unauthorised access, its called black-hat hacking or simply hacking in short, a punishable crime in most countries around the world.

Whereas, those who counter hackers are called white-hat hackers and the practice is sometimes called ethical hacking. In order to gain knowledge of building network defences (such as how firewalls and anti-virus work), understanding how hacking works is essential as only then can counter-offensive and prevention be planned. This can be learned at home by studying books available in the market such as hacking exposed series that takes the readers in the footsteps of a hacker undertaking a journey to harm others on the information superhighway, and along the way discloses how computer security professionals counter them.

Application of this knowledge is useful even at home, to make computers more secure, prevent malice of malware, worms and virus, and ensure secure usage of WiFi and other wireless broadband services prevalent today.

There are many other creative activities one can self-learn through computers and internet and pass on to younger siblings during the holiday time. This includes online typing tutorials (powertyping.com) for practicing touch typing, free 3D modelling and home designing tools (sketchup.google.com and sweethome3d.com), online tools for developing games (sploder.com and pictogame.com), quick animations tools using stick figures (stykz.net), interactive presentations and videos mash-up tools (kerpoof.com and animoto.com), exploring and creating music (jamstudio.com and soundjunction.org) and creating a personal blog (blogger.com and wordpress.com). Keep learning and exploring!