What I Learned In Computer Class

Computers do what real people do in real life every day.

We heard that from our instructor, Vince, several times during every class.

"Vince, can we add columns to our Excel spreadsheet?"

"Can you do that in real life?"

And so it went with every question we asked. Yes, we can do it in real life which means we can do it on the computer.

Over the course of eight weeks we covered five programs in Microsoft Office 2007, which I now covet because of all the bells and whistles it has which 2003 does not: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook. Vince projected lessons on a large screen. He would read a section and then walk us through the lesson as we did it on our computers.

Vince was constantly in motion. He walked around the room when he wasn't at the front reading the lesson or helping us envision imaginary bookshelves or trash cans full of data we wanted to access, retrieve, and organize. He made it clear from the start that computers were nothing to fear, that there were ways to correct mistakes, and that we could start over if need be; as long as we saved the original document, spreadsheet, or presentation we always had something to go back to. Vince said our biggest asset was confidence that we could figure things out and that the "Help" button and Microsoft.com were always available.

Last night's class was our review and test. Yesterday, in preparation for the last class, I went back over the lessons and was surprised at how far I've come since the first week in October. It helped that we built on our knowledge over the course of several weeks, that what we learned in Word carried through to the other programs. It helped that I was in a class with a dozen other people who were pretty much where I was and had the same goals. It helped that we liked Vince and he liked us.

I had a feeling I knew how Vince would handle the last class, and I was right. The other students were expecting a formal test. Once we started our computers and he started going through the lessons, checking our screens as we followed the steps and asking us questions as we went, I knew the entire class period was our test. Vince wasn't out to "test" us. He wanted to assure us that we had learned what we wanted to know and that we could answer the questions that came up.

Vince was right. We all passed.