Word Class

We teach Computer basics and Microsoft Office basic programs at the library in order to help the people who visit us use these programs more effectively.

Although a basic class outline is provided by a staff member from somewhere in the system we can always make up our own PowerPoints and exercises as long as we hit all the markers for what the class should cover.  I am always re-inventing myself anywho so when I do a class I tweak my presentation like a fiend.

Microsoft Word, especially the 2010 version is a really versatile program.  I spend time talking about the Ribbon and the Tabs and the Groups pointing out the main features.  But!  I don't like lecturing and I want to keep my class engaged and actually working with the program.  Also, if they are busy typing they are not gooning me and making me nervous.

For my last class, quite at the last minute, I thought up a small series of exercises that I felt used the unique features of Word.  It went really well and next time I teach Word I will have something more elaborate written out.  Here's what I did:

We're having a big party.  We'll start with a party committee.  We create a Word Table with columns for Food/Decorations/Entertainment/Setup/Takedown and four rows for our helpers.  Highlight the column headings.   Highlight the names of the people who have confirmed they will help.  Click to see example!

I am in my my snuggly home writing so I don't have Word 2010, alas.  Use your imagination to think that we have this nice vast array of templates in Word instead of 2003's download everything, install Active X blah blah blah...

Instead of the bozo invite illustrated here we have a nice invitation that allows us to show how the templates do all your formatting for you and you just replace text.  We will have been GOOD DOGS and will have shown them the Resume templates and wizards before we have our fun "tell a story" exercise :)

Also in Word 2010 there is a big category of templates for Lists. List makers unite!  There is a subcategory for lists for the home, which I used, and several options for grocery lists.  Since we are in 2003 la la land here at DOA Central, we have this downloadable example:

The point of all this is, I really want people to see that Word is more than just a blank page on your screen.  It's basic function is that it is a mock up of a piece of paper.  You can do so much with this paper though, things that are actually useful to you in everyday life.  Next time I teach Word I will have a really cool scenario.  

Or...what about one where the person is applying for a job...so we help them with a small cover letter using Word's helpful, oh my G, it looks like you're writing a letter helper.  We do a brief resume template.  We use the list feature to give them a workspace for their job history components so they can write adaptable to the situation resumes and their job history is all nicely laid out.  Also they can use that list feature to track where they have already applied and when...yup.  You can see, I hope, how useful it is to show the basic elements of the program, but you need to also get them to use it in class so it makes more sense.

Just thinking out loud...D.O.A.

Integrating Exercises into Computer Classes

All of the librarians at my branch teach computer classes for the public. None of us had any training for this, we needed to learn as we went along. Everyone has their own approach, though we now have standardized class outlines and some pre-made Powerpoint presentations from the ether, we still really need to work and re-work our presentations. I'm always trying to find a way to make sure everyone who attends the classes gets the basic core information for each topic.

Yesterday, I incorporated into the lesson a series of exercises. I basically taught some concepts, then had them open a prepared file that contained practice in what we just did. Except for one man who had on a headset and my have been taking phone calls, (and he missed concepts,) I could see that everyone was working on each exercise, and our floater was kept busy helping them stay on track.

I adapted some exercises I found on the web, and liked how this went so much I'm going to try to incorporate exercises into each lesson from now on. I think it will help everyone be successful in attempting to learn basic computing skills.

The exercises were:

I gave three topics for them to look up in Microsoft Word Help and emphasized that anytime they were stuck using Word, this was a great place to start. It has step by step directions, and pictures.

There was a "letter from camp" that I found on the web. I edited the text of it to include many misspellings and grammatical errors. I asked them to find and correct these using the built in dictionary and talked about the strengths and weaknesses of the dictionary.

A short list of misspelled words and phrases was used for Spellcheck practice. I also had them use this list to practice Cut/Copy/Paste and changing font size, color and type. They learned the big three keyboard shortcuts (in my opinion) Ctrl + A to highlight all text, Ctrl + C to Copy, Ctrl + V to paste.

We went through a step by step exercise on adding Pictures first with built in Clipart, then finding a picture on the web and adding that to the document. People really love this particular thing, and they were impressed that you could re-size the image and rotate it.

Lastly we worked with saving and naming documents. Practice finding and opening them was provided by their searching the folder which contained the exercises and renaming a document they had altered.

Note to Self: Opening and Printing Tricky Adobe Documents

We're having a rash of problems with people not being able to print Adobe documents. Our techies have no solution since it is "intermittent".

So, we had a man's resume that he had created on an online site, and it was an Adobe doc but showed as a Word doc on his flash drive. It did not open in Word with any of the encoding options. We've seen this before and had no solution, but today, my tiny brain said, "look at the document Properties" why isn't the dang thing recognizing the formatting?

I still don't know the answer but I did see that the file was set to "open with" Microsoft Word but nada happened of use. So I looked to see if it could be opened with another type of program and there was Adobe Acrobat 9 all snuggly and shiny. I changed the doc to "open with" Adobe 9 and voila! a lovely resume.

I'll never remember that if I don't jot it down someplace. *scribble*