Do you feel
confused, befuddled, & lost when it comes to computers?
Do you wish you had the time, and dollars, to take a real, live course
on computers?
Then these lessons are for
you!
Everyone picks up bits and
pieces of information while using and working around computers. This
can leave some pretty big gaps in your information landscape.
These lessons are an attempt to fill in the missing
pieces and to tie it all together. The “Illustrated” part means there
will be lots of pictures. Other sets of lecture notes I have seen
online are pretty much bare text. While the writing is often great,
such text-only notes do not take advantage of the possibilities of web
pages. So you will see some animations and graphics that enhance the
text and, hopefully, make it clearer.
New Material
May 27, 2018
- Updated Working with Windows 10 to version 1803, April, 2018 update.
April 29, 2017
- Updated Working with Windows 10 to match ver. 1703, Creators Update (Win10 CU)
This site is free for
personal use.
Links are welcome!
For other uses, please see the box below and
the Permissions page.
Some archived lesson units are available in both English and Spanish (español) on this site, but not the newest material.
Translations: Use the Google Translate box at the top left of each page in the new layout to get an automatic translation, even for menus. For pages still in the old layout, go to http://translate.google.com and type or copy and paste the address of the page you want translated into the box on the left. Pick a language from the drop box.
I do a lot of revising and
updating, but with computers, today’s best is tomorrow’s dinosaur. So,
please accept my apologies in advance for outdated or incomplete
information. Let
me know when you spot something that has gotten stale or when something new needs to be added.
Learn a lot, or just polish what you already know. But have fun!
CompLit 101 available for
download or on disc.
Download Popular bundle: $26.95 US
Contains
all
lessons except Working with Databases
Download Working with
Databases: $15.95 US
[Due to low sales volumes, I no longer can offer disc copies except in bulk orders.]
License to burn student
copies on disc = $5.00 US each.
Must have the order ID from download order or disc purchase. Not for re-sale! Can
charge students only enough to cover license and media used.
Why buy a download?
– No ads.
– Pages load faster
from your own hard disk!
– Saves connection time.
– No worries about the web server or Internet connection
going down.
– To help cover the costs of the web site!
How to order
Your incentive: A
set of end-of-the-chapter questions/exercises for Computer Basics for
any teacher who receives permission by using the Permissions
form!
Final step: After you have used
the site with your class, complete the Evaluation form to let me know how
things went. (It’s part of the deal!) Thanks!
Errors: Don’t forget to
tell me about errors that you and your students find. You may wind up
in the Hall of Honor!
Ads: Too many clicks
from the same IP address result in no payments for any of those
clicks! Normal clicking because the student is interested in the
advertised product, service, or school, is fine. But a whole
classroom clicking on the same ad will backfire.
How These Lessons Work
- Browsers: These lessons are formatted using style sheets. Most modern browsers show the pages
as planned but one never knows what a new browser or new version of an
old browser will do! - Menus: Most menus are created using JavaScript, so if you have turned JavaScript off for your browser, you won’t see the menus.
- Resolution: The layout was designed to look best and be the easiest to read at a
resolution of at least 980 pixels wide, which would be a nice size window on most modern
monitors. - Quizzes: After each lesson section, there is a review quiz. I’m not keeping
score though. If your first choice of answer doesn’t suit, keep on
trying. You’ll get a popup message after each choice. - Exercises: The hands-on Working with… units have student exercises at the end of each project. These exercises give you
practice and add new skills, too. These are your “homework” exercises.
Don’t skip them! There are new skills in the exercises as well as
useful practice.
Where did all of this come from?
The lessons started as homework! I was taking some of the first online courses, which were about writing web pages, in 1997-98. I had to create web pages about something. I started writing what is now Computer Basics, using my lecture notes and some old PowerPoint presentations from
a college course I taught on computer literacy at Roane
State Community College in Tennessee. So Computer Basics represents the core
information from half of that course, the other half being the hands-on
assignments with Microsoft Office software. If you master the
materials contained in Computer Basics, you
may consider yourself to have done half of that college computer literacy
course. And for no fees! Aren’t you smart!!
The other topics, Working with Windows, Working with the Web, Working with
Words, Working with Numbers, Working with Presentations, and Working with
Databases, are hands-on lessons that guide you as you
actually work at the computer. Different courses would use different
combinations and different amounts of these topics.
