| A REAL Beginner's Guide to BY MARK HASLETT Finish this sentence: I learn the most when I ...... If you finished the sentence with "teach" then you get five stars. Teaching computer skills forces you to concentrate, simplify complex topics, and learn how to use a program's commands because you know that a lot of people are going to be staring at you. The hangman's noose may focus the mind, but not more than teaching. If you really want to learn how to create a simple Web page, plan to teach a lesson on the subject. Teaching a technical subject can be great fun as you watch people who never thought they could use a computer click into understanding something. Their eyes light up. They laugh. They giggle. They become "Super Controllers of Technology!!" They love you. But, (there's always a but), teaching a technical subject can be very frustrating if you haven't thought through the problems you'll encounter. There is nothing worse than 20 people staring at you when you're floundering on the computer trying to find a command. (OK, maybe there is, but I don't eat at certain fast food restaurants now that the kids have grown up.) "There is nothing worse than 20 people staring at you when you're floundering on the computer." The first problem in teaching a technical subject is that computer programs always have many options for doing one thing. In Microsoft Word, for example, you can save a file by clicking on the SAVE icon, or you can open up the FILE menu at the top of the screen, scroll down to SAVE, and click on the command. Or you can touch CTRL S. Or you use the option to SAVE AS another name. Or you can save a file in a different format such as MS-DOS or WordPerfect. Or you can .... Another problem is that students will be at different levels of comprehension or experience. This means you can be guaranteed that while you are teaching you will have at least one student who will be playing with the program while you are trying to teach. Guess which student will be the one who doesn't understand the exercise you hand out or gets hopelessly lost in the program because they "just wanted to try something"? Yet another problem involves the number of operations involved in using a program such as Microsoft Word. It's not like a typewriter where the biggest problem was making sure you rolled the paper in correctly. To produce the same result as a typewriter using a word processor you need to: open the program, type the words, save the file, type more words, make sure the printer is on, save the file, find the print command and then finally print. Multiply those steps many times over if you are going to use the complete program. A word processor makes it easier to produce a printed page, but only after you've learned a long series of individual commands. Then there's the glazed-eye problem. While most of your students are trying to understand and follow your instructions as you introduce the program, there will always be at least one who didn't understand a crucial step and is starting to get lost. And will they tell you they're starting to get lost? No. Non. Never. People in groups act like people in groups. They are under pressure to act like the rest of the group. So they won't say anything. They will pretend they are like everybody else in the group and that they understand exactly what you are saying. But eventually they will have to admit they are lost. And then just try to figure out where in the series of commands they got lost. Good luck. The solution to the glazed-eye problem is the stare, but more about that later. |