Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!pucc!BVAUGHAN
From: BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Looking for very elementary MS-DOS text
Message-ID: <7924@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 13 Apr 89 21:46:42 GMT
References: <9855@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Reply-To: BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Distribution: usa
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 29
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article

In article <9855@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>, ahr@bigburd.PRC.Unisys.COM (Allan Rabenau) writes:

>I will be teaching an elementary PC class to some really
>computer-illiterate persons (firefighters) and I require an easy-to-read
>introduction text to use.  I plan the course to start 'way down there with bits
>& bytes, through MS-DOS, right up to elementary spreadsheets ...
I don't know a good text offhand (wish I did), but I have done the
same kind of course many times and I can give you a little  hard-won
pearls of wisdom. 1) stop thinking of them as computer illiterate.
Would you like to be called a pyromoron? 2) DON'T start with bits and
bytes or with RAM and ROM or Boolean algebra or anything similar.
Start off with one simple operating system (MSDOS will do) and show
them how to list the files on a diskette, how to rename a file, copy
a file, erase a file. Then work up to a hard disk and the applications
they will find useful. Maybe you'll recognize a nascent hacker in the
class, and you can offer to go into the theory after the class is
pretty comfortable with the easy stuff. If you start with bits and
at least half the class will find it incomprehensibly esoteric and will
assume it's only going to get harder and give up. Do you need to
be able to balance oxidation-reduction equations to understand and fight
fires?
I have successfully taught many people to use computers (micro, mini
and mainframe) including little children, exchange students from
developing countries, the guy who worked in the mailroom where I used
to work (the latter went on to become a real hacker.)  I've learned
to show them how before you start explaining why. Probably your first
interest in computers developed out of some use of an application
(a game, maybe, when you were a little kid) rather than out of a
class or a learned discourse.