What Should a Community Computer Lab Offer? 383
Ballresin asks: "A local computer company is expanding and including a computer lab in their setup, and they want me to come in as its Administrator. I am supposed to be giving them input on what to teach/host. What does Slashdot think a medium sized tourist town (Okoboji, Spirit Lake, Arnolds Park, Iowa) should have to offer to the locals? I was thinking something along the lines of 'How to Use Windows 101' and 'How to Use Office 101'. My compatriots want to offer some off-the-wall classes such as 'Hacker Ethics: Why and How' and a few other odd classes. I have polled people in the area, which resulted the discovery that 80% of them are from out of town, so don't really care. What you guys think; What kind of classes or what games/LAN party setups should a new, small business offer? Any ideas/input is greatly appreciated."
Web and EMail is where it's at (Score:5, Informative)
Email
WWW
Email do's and don'ts would be good - including handling of spam and crap (the junk your father-in-law sends you that is either urban legend, or ancient, or both).
Web browsing, security (don't tell folks your passwords), and virii are all important things to know about.
Don't let users install software (Score:4, Informative)
101 (Score:4, Informative)
Our community lab... (Score:5, Informative)
Building a Webpage
Intro. to Windows
Intro to Macs
Office 101
Using E-Mail
Finances and Bills with Your Computer
An Introduction to Digital Photography
And depending on your community...We have a lot of immigrants in ours and we offer a lot of computer-based ESL programs/courses
Good Luck!
What computer to buy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'd suggest.. (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously though, a course about how to find information could start out quite simple and end up being quite advanced. You could start out with something as basic as different search engines and what techniques they use to return results and go all the way through how to organize information effectively. It sounds like it could really be a good class.
I'ld also consider doing some publicity stunts for your lab. You know, to try to get people excited. The easiest one might be a LAN party with prizes.
Whatever you do, I'ld suggest concentrating on locals though, not tourists. Very few vacationers want to sit in front of a computer, even if it is to play a video game.
Alternatively, if your town is in a really nice place (you said it was a tourist town), you could offer some (relatively) advanced workshops and try to bundle them with a local hotel/Bed & Breakfast and cater to corporate executives.
Foreign Language Labs (Score:2, Informative)
For more information email me or visit www.esl.net
Re:Suggestions (Score:4, Informative)
Linux 101 (Score:2, Informative)
You can make it just as easy as the Winblowzzee courses. Show them OpenOffice, Evolution, Mozilla; if nothing else, it could raise awareness. Enrollement will probably be small, but I think you'll get a few people interested in seeing what a free operating system has to offer (slip 'free' into the description somewhere). You'll need to warn them that Win programs won't work, however at the same time you can counter that by saying Linux is not susceptible to Windows virii and worms (of course, it has its own worms). But, if all they do is type up papers and surf the web, then it could be for them.
Internet Awareness for Parents (Score:4, Informative)
Download all the popular chat clients, some irc clients, and install all the common browsers.
Offer clases teaching parents how to find browser history, change their security and ratings settings. Show them how to review chat history and url history for IM clients. How to check file sharing folders and search their computer for images, movies, etc.
You'll find that (80%) disinterest or not, you'll draw quite a few attendees, especially if you repeat the course and offer a basic and advanced course.
Community Computer Courses... (Score:3, Informative)
"Demystifying the Digital Divide" (Score:3, Informative)
The article lists several more sources for information:
Introduction to the Internet (Score:2, Informative)
I work at a public library, and part of my job is teaching introductory computer classes. Our most common _request_ is for "Basic Computer", but the people requesting this have no clue what they want to learn how to do, so you have to probe them a bit to see what they really want. Usually if you offer them some options ("Do you want to learn to type letters and papers and print them? Learn to surf the internet? Learn about email?") they'll be able to make a selection (or else they'll sign up for all of them, which is okay too). Once in a while you'll get somebody who insists those things are all too advanced, and they just want basic computer. This is a symptom that what they really want is help solving a specific problem or question they have and are embarrassed to ask about, because they don't know how to explain it.
Our most popular class is Introduction to the Internet, which mostly covers the www. My course materiels are here [lib.oh.us] (though the materiel there is intended mainly as handouts, and since I try to make the classes at least somewhat interactive, so not everything can be covered in the handouts). These materiels won't be directly usable for your purposes, but you can use them as examples. I get positive comments from our patrons, and this is a fairly technophobic community. The Windows Basics and Introduction to Word Processing courses are also very popular. Surprisingly, the Searching the Internet class is much less popular; either my Introduction to the Internet gives them all they need in that direction, or else they're just scared off by the idea that it has a prerequisite and therefore must be advanced. (NOTE: under no circumstances offer a computer course with the word "Advanced" in the title, unless your target market consists of computer geeks. If you want to establish a series, go with Part A and Part B, or something like that.)
On a side note, you can win MAJOR brownie points with users by treating them as if they were intelligent, but maybe just computers aren't they're field of expertise. They're so accustomed to computer people treating them like dirt, they will almost worship you if you treat them well. You'll get free word-of-mouth advertising this way. We put announcements in several local papers, signs all over the library, and advertise on the radio, but over half of the people taking my courses were encouraged to do so by someone else who did previously.
One more piece of advice: Make a survey that fits easily on a single half-page, with multiple choice questions about what other courses people would be interested in taking if you offered them. Also have an "Other" choice where they can write something in (but most people won't). Encourage everyone who takes any of your courses to fill one out. This will help you know if there's a demand for something. We added the email class due to write-in votes on our eval forms, and it's been more popular than we otherwise would have imagined.
Floorplan (Score:2, Informative)
Series of classes for Women (Score:3, Informative)
Another class would be technical skills for younger girls- Networking and the like. You could probably get money from Cisco for this, they are forever trying to attract women into the field with their Cisco Academy program- just look at the frontpage of cisco.netacad.net.
Even better if you can get a women to teach this. Go find a local college girl to do it.