Flexible Learning Project

At our community learning centres we get a wide range of students from 16 to 80+ and from very different backgrounds and cultures. Most of the students that enrol have never sat in front of a computer before and/or have not been in a learning environment for a long time.

Because our courses are self taught and self paced we have a introduction book that students are ask to go though, after the initial enrolling process, called “Back 2 Basics” This is the first book the students are given to go though and read and follow the diagrams and instructions. For some students this book will either make or break them into wanting to come back and learn more.

There is a real need to have this book in video form for students to access at any time.
The students that like to have a more visual approach to learning will be encouraged to learn more. These videos could be on all those simple things that we find we just do everyday without thinking about it. Also the videos would help with the language that we use for computer programmes etc.

Some Ideas for the videos are:
What is the desktop?
What is a screen saver?
What the mouse is used for….left click / right click?
How to play solitaire…..or other games that are helpful to learn how to use the mouse.
How to open a word document?
How to save a document?
How to find my files?
How to print a document?
How to Shut Down the computer?
How to turn the speakers on?

Some of these could be put into one video…….

Some more advanced video’s could be:
How to…. Anti Virus software on my own computer?
How to….System maintenance, disk cleanup, error checking and disk defragmenter?
How to create shortcuts to programmes for easy access?
What is hardware and software?

These instructions would be there for all the students to access and view at any time on the desktop.

At our community learning centres we like to make our students welcome and comfortable about being here and learning something new….I find the first book is helpful to some students, but there is a need for something better to work with the book. Some learners at the start need to have a facilitator beside them reading the words literately from the book and also pointing to the computer and explaining what is being read also. This would be ideal to be able to do this for all students but is very impractical as our Central Venues are usually run by only one facilitator at one time.

These would also be helpful to other students from different courses that will be accessing our venues in the near future.