Lockjaw's Lair: Sometimes Things Just Click

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April 22, 2005

Sometimes Things Just Click

This morning at 8am, I met with my class at the local Civic Center. It was a class full of teachers' assistants, getting credits under the "No Child Left Behind Act" programs. By 9am, we were sitting in front of computers, while I taught them things they didn't know about computers. Oddly enough, I started the class with no idea of what I was going to teach. I could only hope that the class wasn't high enough on the knowledge scale that my possible lessons wouldn't be usable. Luckily, they were at pretty much the perfect skill level.

To start the day, I spent nearly two hours teaching them how to use Google. This might seem like overkill, but most of these ladies had never done more than enter a couple words into a search engine and end up with WAY too many returns to handle. I taught them methods to refine their searches, and get closer to what they were looking for. I also taught them how Google could be their calculator, dictionary, memory helper, and other useful tools. Often, during my class, I found students looking up with wide eyes, having learned something truly useful about searching that they didn't know. My goal, as I told them, was to help them find something they needed in five minutes, instead of an hour.

Moving on in the class, I taught them how to create, nest, rename, move, and delete folders. I taught them how to create a document within a folder, and how to save a document into the folder that they created from scratch. This was a quick, 20 minute segment of the day.

In the afternoon, I taught them how to create a Powerpoint presentation. Having only created my first Powerpoint presentation yesterday, as a prelude to teaching the class, I felt I was exceptionally prepared to teach them this necessary skill. Many of them learned new things with this part of the class, as well.

All in all, I think the class went extremely well. The students were energized, and having fun. They all said that their previous instructors had been much harder to understand, and less exciting. I had a blast, and most of them did as well. One lady, whose skill level was nearly non-existent, kept complaining that she didn't understand, because she was scared of computers. I kept watch over her and made sure that she A) had fun and B) learned something. I think she did both. I didn't look at the evaluations, but I think they'll look good for me.

April 22, 2005

Sometimes Things Just Click

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