🖥️Basic computer literacy

Structure

This document is structured in lessons. Each lesson has been thought to be explained in sessions of 1 hour.

Of course depending on the level of the students and their interest it might take longer or shorter. This is not a problem. Take this set of lessons as a guide to help the instructors to split the content in different sessions.

Context

This document has been implemented based on the experience of the first course done to a group of 8 students with a good level of English. They had no knowledge of computers, but they all have a smartphone, so a screen and Internet is nothing new to them.

We have been using Mac laptops, meaning that rather than a Mouse the students have been getting used to a track-pad.

The course has been focused on Google suite, mainly because all of them already had a google account. And of course the tools are well known by the community.

Preparation

Accounts

Before starting the lessons make sure that all the computers have an account created and the password of these accounts is known by the instructor. Best is setting up the same account (name and password) for all the laptops.

Chrome

Also make sure that all the laptops have chrome installed. As said we are getting focused on google tools, so Chrome is the browser that suits us the most. By default Mac only has Safari installed as a browser.

Language

Also make sure all the laptops are configured in English to avoid issues when explaining the lessons due to Arabic being written from right to left.

Keyboard setup

Some laptops had a keyboard configuration which was not matching the actual keyboard. So this was getting the students confused. Make sure that keyboard config and physicall keyboard are matching.

Sharing screen

I kinda managed doing the first 3 lessons without sharing my screen to all the students, but definitely it makes things way slower as I had to go table by table showing what I was are talking about.

So it is highly required having either a projector or a big screen you can get our laptop connected to, in order to show all the students at once what you are talking about, with examples.

Tips

• It really helps having each laptop in the same place every day. The point is that not all laptops have the same keyboard, as we have different models of Mac. Also background images are different. So making a diagram of the distribution of the laptops the first day and placing them in the same table everyday will really help.

• Make sure that the wifi password is visible to everyone.

• Before ending each class, remind the users to log out their google accounts for safety.

• Try to make the students be as participative as you can. I had the feeling they are a bit afraid of asking questions. So when explaining the lessons, when do you feel they might know the answer, like how to open a new tab in a browser, always ask them before explaining.

• Keep wtaching how are they using the track-pad. For some of them it was really hard getting how it works. Sometimes they were pushing so hard, or the oder way, not pressing at all. Some of them were clicking at the center of the track-pad, some of them struggled with double click... if it was needed stop the lesson for a while and spend some time on getting them used to it.