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."
Offer basic Self-defense (Score:2, Interesting)
Wireless internet (Score:3, Interesting)
This of course, presupposes courses on Microsoft 101 and the Internet 101.
Don't forget Linux 101 for those who like a challenge!
-6d
Tourists, Photos, Libraries (Score:3, Interesting)
Tourist town, you say? You will make them happy by providing every digital media reader known to man, and the means to burn and e-mail the photos back home. They can burn a CD full of photos and empty their camera, and they can e-mail a few photos home to family/friends. This, in addition to "the usual" public kiosks that aren't annoyingly locked down, printing services, internet access for people with laptops, etc.
Also, get in touch with your local public library/libraries. See if they have a computer lab. See what they offer. Look into working together, if only from the standpoint of "oh, we don't offer that service, but they do". If you can refer people to each other, you will both benefit.
Linux Terminal Server Project (Score:3, Interesting)
Jonah Hex
Not the right place to ask (Score:5, Interesting)
We are going to have no idea whatsoever what Joe Average will want from a set of computer classes. Hey, we don't even know if you're dealing with residents, which won't want the same classes every year, or transients, which will want brief and to the point classes.
I suggest you take all the ideas that SlashDot comes up with, cull at least half of them, put them in a list, and put that list up in the business. Print it on flyers with five or so entries. Ask people to check which ones they would be interested in - maybe let them say sorta interested or very interested - and allow them to write in suggestions. Given that they'll be looking at other things of scale, they'll be able to input what's germane to them.
When you're writing down what you'd present, don't just come up with a topic and go. Think about it: what would Office 101 be? It's not going to be enough time to cover the whole suite. Some people will want document layout and setup in Word, like it was a publisher; some will want Excel and Access, for their small business (maybe tax stuff too.) Some will want to learn how to use Outlook, or Exchange, so that they can function in their corporate environment. Some will want to learn to make PowerPoint presentations.
You've got to remember that most people do not learn computer topics at the rate of a slashdotter. This isn't because they're dumb, or clueless, or any other such geek slander; it's because they have less context to bind to. I'm not stupid, but a mechanic is gonna pick up the specifics of fixing a foreign car way, way faster than I will, even though I likely have a better grasp of the underlying physics. You're going to need to allow a lot of time for basic cluestickery.
Maybe, here's a thought. Every month or so, offer a 101 course on one Office suite app. See how it goes, and have a second one prepared. If it goes well, do your second one while you prepare a sequel to the first.
Above all, don't get stuck in plans. The people that show up won't always be the same ones and they won't always want the same things. Some things (word) you'll be able to repeat. Prepare occasional side-tracks into the weird for geeks if you find them; if you don't, get ready to explain MS Project.
Basically, it's all about your audience, and we aren't your audience. What you get here is nothing better than a starting point.
Gates Foundation Classes (Score:3, Interesting)
At least that's part of what we offer at the local library (grant from Gates Learning Foundation)
For our demographic, we keep things simple. You figure people who frequent a computer lab don't have a machine at home with internet access...so we gear towards the basic stuff.
I'd have loved to do more OSS stuff like maybe some Linux or OpenOffice.org (again, the demographic...let them know they don't have to shell serious $$ to get decent apps) -- and if at all possible (unlike here) show them Mozilla and compare it to IE.
Any chance to let people know of the "alternatives" should be taken.
Megahertz and megabytes (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps a class called "How Your Computer Works" would be in order. The class would have gentle, simplified explanations of all the tech "mumbo-jumbo". And how it all fits together.
People aren't stupid (well most aren't). Sometimes they're just overwhelmed by information and lingo. A guiding hand could make all the difference in the world and actually help make them computer literate.
wbs.
Wireless 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
First part of the class is how to put in the card and attach the router to the modem. Then to get to the internet with the wireless setup. Then how to run a peer to peer local network using the DHCP sever on a wireless router.
WEP and security are good topics for later. If you had people that wanted to share but were a little distance away from each other, you could even do Yagi 101, but that's a little much.
Have everyone bring a can of Pringles. You could have snacks for the class and materials for an antenna.
Re:How to find pr0n 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
Moron... (Score:3, Interesting)
what do you know? (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of that is advocy. That involves teaching and listening. There are plenty of people here with a clue.
I've been teaching a newbies class for the last four or five months. I've worked in large and small companies and have some idea of what people want and what software can reasonably offer them.
Set up multiple OS for demonstration. This is the hardest thing for a newbie to do, so it's the best service to offer. Windows 101? Sure, teach it on KDE and give them a reasonable notion of why there's a log on, what it protects them from and what it gives them. Games, OK, windoze wins there for now. For everything else, free software is easier to use and maintain. "Sheilding" newbies from the "complexity" of different OS and desktop environments does them a disservice. They quickly master basic concepts of files and GUI. Giving them more makes them happier and lets them make up their own mind down the road.
Visit the, admittedly windoze heavy, Cajun Clickers Computer Club [clickers.org] for an idea of what a community, all volunteer computer club teaches and people want to know.
build onnthe tourists. (Score:3, Interesting)
But you also need to allow tourist a place to get email. You might be able to offer thema temp email account and call them if it gets an email from a specific person(for a fee, naturally)
If ypour a sking town, you could offer the tourist a place to go to check the price and availability of things inside the town. make it a free service, then get your money from the merchants, either paying to be listed, or a finders fee.
Offer a WiFI account.
Not a lot of people go on vacation so they can learn Word. yes, some do and I know of geek cruises, but I'm talking about MOST people.
You could offer to send an email at a latter date, so a person boss thinks they are working, when they're on the slopes!
Some useful ideas. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been tempted to get back into teaching classes such as this. One of my previous employers, an ISP, held such sessions for its customers to teach all sorts of interesting things, and they were generally well attended and well received.
To get people to show up, however, you have to teach them stuff they're not going to just be able to fumble their way through on their own (or with their neighbours kids help :) ). So, some of the ideas I can think up off the top of my head include:
Some thoughts, FWIW.
Yaz.
I runned a cybercafe myself (Score:2, Interesting)
I runned a cybercafe myself for 2 years and quitted because it took too much of my time. It was in Europe so maybe the data will not be accurate in the US. It may go beyond the scope of your question but many issues in the success of such a place comes from marketing and such.
I suggest that you advertise some around the schools/universities (schools will give you more casual customers because they will not have probably already a computer)
I will divide the games market in 3 categories:
Action games: they work really good, it will attract many customers mostly during the day and week-ends, this category is the only one which will attract young children
Examples: Counter-Strike (the HL mod), UT2K3, Quake 3, and many others.
Strategy games: they will attract less people but these customers will probably return if they were satisfied, and the games requirements are quite low. ...
Examples: SC/BW, Warcraft 3, Cossacks, Rise of Nations, Age of Mythology,
MMORPG: although you may not think to these games, if you can attract some people relatively well known in the games, it can attract more customers, they will probably fill the holes in the hours where you do not have many clients, because they usually play late. Most of these customes will come with their own game and cdkey.
Examples: Asheron's Call 2, Planetside, StarWars Galaxies, FF Online, Everquest and many others.
How to improve efficiency
You can get top comps, in order to get the customers who always want top-notch comps with fastest hardware, but it will cost you really much more. I think the best solution is to find a rent contract where it is specified that equipment can be replaced each year. I dunno if you can get this kind of rent service in the US but here it saved our business. Hardware changes very fast.
Creating a community is really important. Customers will probably return if they find nice people to hang with in your cybercafe. So you may want to hire someone who has some charisma in your cybercafe. You may organize some events, weekly contests (best fraggers in the cybercafe get X free hours or anything else)
For the payment system, we used shiva, and it had many backdoors, security issues. So you should watch out for people who will try to get some free hours.
Keyboards, headphones, and mice will not last long, so buy cheap keyboards, headphones and mice. Get a decent quality but not the very expensive ones. After 1 month, you will see that many disappear, and have been stolen.
You may want to install a shared printer ro a printing service on the comp which will host permanent servers. Forums too may be a good addition, although it may be better to host them outside of your network so it will not decrease pings for customers playing on the net.
Internet access (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a thought...
Maybe off topic, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
The solution is to:
1) Install Debian (or other Linux you are comfortable with).
2) Install X and some window managers.
3) Install VMWare. Get a volume license, they do discount for educators. Call them and they will help you.
4) Install your virtual machine OS. This way you can have Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP,
5) Back everything up at this point. There are various methods and reasons to pull from a back up, but do it. You never know when you'll need a machine in its virgin state.
If you don't want someone to ever see VMWare or KDE or Gnome, you can set up your machine with some work to look like it boots right into Windows. I'm not even sure my flat mates know the machine is running Debian.
You should run into very little trouble with the virtualized OS. Unless you are gaming or doing something that is consumptive of physical resources (like a sound card or video card), most people can't tell the difference, even with VMWare tools installed.
And don't forget to install the VMWare tools where they are available, they are helpful.
Practice, practice, and more practice (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in Chicago's housing projects and have taught lots of little and big courses on computer skills.
What I've learned is that teaching a class in any given application is 1% of the work of teaching people how to use computers. What's most important, in my experience, is providing space and time for motivated people to just keeping banging away and learning new things. The great fallacy of many computer technology centers is that they are closed to the possibility of letting people goof around for a couple hours, when that's exactly what teaches folks.
When I started working on resume writing with some folks in the projects I work at, I was really disappointed that they couldn't remember anything I'd told them, etc. Now, three years later, a couple of those folks have home computers, write lots of email, are good typists, know how to use spreadsheets, etc. Persistence, time, and self-exploration and discovery are what teach lasting technology skills.
Lastly, it's important to remember that you should be trying to teach computing principles. One of my aforementioned buddies has been able to quickly pick up all sorts of other computing skills because he digs on the principles of how computers work, networking works, etc. I think that should be a goal.
How about just teaching people how stuff works? (Score:2, Interesting)
Building on that, you can teach people about other internet protocols like POP, IMAP, SMTP, and FTP. You can teach them that there are many different e-mail clients, mail servers, ftp servers, and ftp clients. When people start to see that there is choice and that computers are logical, well-thought out devices running well-thought out protocols, they will stop seeing computers as some magical box that they can't comprehend, and rather something composed of modular pieces. This breaks computers down into (relatively) easily digestible pieces.
Assuming that interest in these classes becomes and remains high, you'll likely have people asking more about computers. How do I protect my computer at home? How do all these computers here connect to one another? Before long, you could possibly start a class on basic netowrking and IP. How are networks sub-netted? How do firewalls work? How do bridges and switched and hubs work?
Perhaps people will start asking wuestions like "How do I setup an FTP server for my two machines at home to share files?" or "What can I do to protect both of my computers from hackers?". Then you can introduce them in how to setup Linux or BSD and run services on their own.
I really think the trick to teaching people about comptuers and getting people interested in computers is to break things down into pieces like this so they can understand one part of the puzzle before building the next piece.
Re:Suggestions (Score:3, Interesting)
And guess who's going to have to help them? There's more to running a publicly-accessible computer lab than administration.
And no, RTFM is not an adequate response to user questions.
Software, hardware, networking...... (Score:3, Interesting)
We also do two other popular courses;
-How to buy a computer, which is a vendor neutral description of the latest hardware technology and what people should look for to suite thier particular needs when they are box shopping, and
-Using the Internet, where we talk about all things internet, including browsers and searching, firewalls and viruses, file sharing, messaging, online gaming, home LANs, and ISPs as well as many other things.
I'd like to convince the commitee to add an Intro to Linux course in the future, but I doubt the administrators will consent to partitioning all the labs HDDs and installing Linux, so I'm hoping I can use something like Knoppix or Suse Live for starters.
Re:Not the right place to ask (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, maybe it's me, but I got the impression that this guy meant ongoing classes - 12 classes, every saturday morning for three months, or something like that. If that's the case, people are going to want help with weird stuff. Things we wouldn't come up with. I say this because I used to do telephone technical support at an ISP, and people will call and ask for your help with whatever's bothering them. You'll get everything from how to make the various programs on a machine start working (they've installed so much and trampled so many drivers that much software can't run) to how to start writing video games.
All I'm saying is that, given the crowd here, he should be taking into account that some topics are overstated here, and many topics that would exist won't be mentioned. Not the obvious stuff, that takes five minutes to explain once, and then five minutes again every week for the rest of your life. I'm talking about things of a moderate complexity that enterprising individuals want to spend time learning to do correctly. And since we're generally more computer experienced than the norm, we're just going to not think of a lot of things. So, to remedy, I thought he ought to just ask the people he intends to service.
Market research, after a fashion. Or, if you prefer, good old fashioned (and hard to find) customer service worth a damn.
I mean, really, have you ever looked at the classes that CompUSA offers?