computer user. My primary work is in a hospital, there I have
encountered many highly trained medical professionals, people who are
bight, articulate and well educated but who are 5-step computer users.
They can use a computer so long as they are able to follow they five
steps they have on post-it notes on the screen. Should the computer do
something unexpected, should someone send them an email enclosure in
some format they do not expect or should we ask them to perform some
computer task in a new or different way they are unable to do so
because it is not part of the "5 steps I wrote down". I wish I had a
dime for every time I had a user tell me that.
So here is how we avoid producing "5 -step users"
1. No school email or storage. You must get used to the ideas that you
don't know what kind of computer or program others, even your own
classmates, might be using. That you alone are responsible for your
own email, and files. If you don't back up our files no one else will.
2. Every day students will use a different OS, if you used a Mac
yesterday you must use a Windows or Linux computer today and so on. We
do this by colored cards the student carries.
3. Every paper, report, spreadsheet or art project and so on must be
saved in format that can be opened on any of the computers. because
the next time you are in the lab you can be sure you will not be on
the kind of computer you were on the last time.
4. We prohibit the taking of notes in computer labs except for
programing classes. No writing down the steps to open a file and so
on. You will internalize how each kind of computer works. You will
know it in the same way you know how to drive any car be it a Ford,
Volvo or Rolls Royce. You don't get into a car and have little notes
all over the place saying "put the key in" "turn key to the right" and
so on nor should you wit a computer.
Greg
On Sep 27, 2007, at 3:53 PM, Childs, Christopher wrote:
> Wow. Fascinating point of view.
>
> However, I've been in the real world, and in the real world
> companies do
> provide company email for company business. Just as my school
> provides
> a school email address to faculty and students (grade 7 and up) for
> school business. One of the reasons for this being so everyone is on
> the same system. The same way companies (and schools) do their best
> to
> provide the same computers and same software. Also email sent on a
> company's behalf is potentially their business, just as email
> between a
> student and teacher is potentially the school's business.
>
> I've seen no evidence that the students are anything but fluent in
> using
> email when we give them their school accounts in 7th grade. Perhaps
> because most of our students do have private email accounts, no
> doubt a
> family/parental decision. However we are able to teach the lesson that
> there is a difference between personal email and work/school email.
>
> Also, the amount of storage our students use on the servers is almost
> inconsequential. Our 500 or so students use up about 50 Gig. I'd be
> hard pressed to buy a hard drive too small to hold it all.
> Admittedly I
> could buy them all decent sized USB-drives and be rid of them, but
> that
> would actually be more work than just backing up their folders along
> with everything else. In reality with our admissions, business
> office,
> development, bookstore, grading software, and online course package to
> backup and maintain, we already are a small data center.
>
> Christopher Childs
> Director of Educational Technology
> National Cathedral School
>
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