The study circle

The study circle as the form for seniors in learning how to use a computer

The material prepared by Swedish Partner

The study circle is a good way for seniors bringing awareness on how to use a computer. Here are some general characteristics of the study circle.

About the study circle
Study circle is a meeting place where people freely and voluntarily choose to come. Commonly they want to develop their knowledge in a specific area. The study circle is an interaction between the participants, the study circle leader, the study material and a method based on adult education based on fundamental values based on views on humanity, on knowledge and on society.

Knowledge implies that learning is a lifelong process, that knowledge can't just be given to anyone, but it must be captured by each individual and that knowledge must be based on curiosity, questioning, searching and reflecting.

Humanity is everyone's equal value, that every person has the ability and willingness to grow and develop, to influence and to take responsibility.

Society means that the future is responsive. Society also means striving towards a society where everyone has equal opportunities based on their different circumstances.
The study circle we usually associate with, is a group of people sitting at a round table and discussing. Everyone in the circle has eye contact with each other. Circle formation creates a good basis for discussion and collaborative learning. In a computer room are often participants in rows looking in a forward direction against the circle leader and a whiteboard. Data hall furniture is usually a trade-off for electrical wiring and Internet connections. Participants will feel the sense of school or course instead of the study circle. It is therefore particularly important that the study circle leader in computing already from the beginning of the circle emphasizes study circle features and working. Below is a list of important points for the study circle leader in computing to think about before starting.

Things to consider when starting a study circle
Plan the studies together with the participants and give a presentation how you planned the content of the studies (anchor of participants).
The view of the study material (the circle must be given the opportunity to influence how to work with the material (ex. rotation and priorities).
How to work:
Work rate of the weakest (it is very important that those who learn faster don't dictate the study pace).
Circle participants help each other, ie, those who learn faster will help those who need more time (to help and to explain to someone else is an excellent way for participants to test their skills and also facilitates the circle leader who nonetheless has been busy assisting participants problems and concerns).
Emphasize the importance of having a break and discuss the "computer and society" (for example, the participants in the circle can between the meetings look for and cut out articles about computers in the local paper in order to jointly address and highlight when the study group meets).
Explain that how to manage a computer is something that everyone can learn, but some people might need a little more time (and get rid of the myth of the mysterious and complex computer).
Explain from the beginning that the circle group leader is not an 100% expert on computers (and that there is no one who knows everything) but he/she can find out what someone asks about to the next meeting.
Remember that just to start the computer and handle the mouse can be experienced as major problems for many. Let the elementary bases take time, there is no reason to rush. You do not need to advance as much as was initially planned, it is better to build on with an extra circle.
Ask when you take a coffee break, or at the closing of the meeting if the pace feels right. Ask someone / some that do not say much about what happens before someone that often talk "for everyone" submit its comments and give details of what "everyone" thinks.
It is appropriate to initiate studies with an introduction to the word processing program Word (many Internet users have learned the computer bases by Word, to tap and to click, to create folders, to save documents, etc.). That is a very common starter. A goal is that circle participants in appr. 30 study hours learn to practice Internet. Word is only part of the way to the Internet. It is therefore important that the word processing part of the circles is not excessive. Keep in mind that many of the circle participants are not interested in any great depth in writing and editing. A recommendation is that when a circle comprises some 30 hours should appr. Half time includes Word, and the other half the Internet.

General advices

Considerations
If the study circle meets once a week in a computer lab many other study groups have been using the computers between the circle meetings. Both computers and chairs have been adjusted several times. Take a few minutes when you start each meeting to adjust the the chair and the computer:
Where to sit (at the first meeting)
Those with hearing problems should sit at the front (good at briefings) are there different skill levels, mingle "green" uncertain with those who have "tried"
How you look
The start of each circle meeting with the following adjustments:
- screen inclination to good visibility
- the distance to the screen
- bright / contrast settings to suit
- setting of speed (repeating keys, mouse)
- setting of the size of the screen text
How to sit
- adjust the seat's height
- adjust the backrest Explain to the group that it is good for everyone to stand up and stretches from time to time (people usually sit too long in front of the computers). Appoint someone to the monitor when it's time for some common movements.
In the computer room:
Be at the computer room in good time before the circle participants and make sure that everything is in order.
If many different people use the computers, it is inappropriate that the circle participants will save the folders on "desktop". If CD-discs/USB-sticks have been introduced the circle leader should distribute and collect them at each meeting to ensure that everyone's memories are there.
No one may bring their own CD-discs/USB-sticks and plug the computers (viruses easily spreads but are difficult to remove).
Leave the computer room in the same condition as when the study group started.

Advices for study circle leaders
If you know how to use a computer you also know that the computer commands can be performed in several ways. For the circle participant who is learning to use the computer, it is sufficient to only learn one way, it's still enough new impressions and knowledge. the study circle leader should follow this principle in the computer circles. Use only one way to perform commands, the most common and / or the way that is easiest to learn and / or where it is least likely to do wrong.
Start the circle by saying that everyone can learn to use the computer, talk about the circle method, so that everyone feel safe and motivated. Introduce how the computer is build up but do not go into details. Explain that the computer does exactly what you tell it to do, when using the computer is a process that you control by using the keyboard and the mouse. The work itself you follow on the screen.
Go through the keyboard of buttons. Introduce only the most used and introduce more buttons step by step during the circle studies. Remember to start the next circle meeting by repeating what the group did last meeting. Remember that it is important that everyone has turned on the computer at the first circle meeting.
The mouse is usually difficult to handle for the novice. Let it take time to test out how the hand should be above the mouse. Initially, it suffices to know how to use the left mouse button. Introduce Solitaire, a fun and useful (!) mouse practise. It should be fun to go in computer circles.
The computer "desktop" is very important. Stop and talk about it for a while, that's where that all work at the computer starts every time we turn on the computer. Repeat the desktop at the next coming study circle. Compare with a conventional desktop with folders and papers (documents), programs are tools that pencil, eraser, ruler, calculator, trash where we throw all we do not want to keep. Let the circle participant compare his/her computer desktop with the computer desktop of the person sitting next to him/her, and just as with ordinary desktops also computer desktops looks different. Show different icons for folders, documents, applications, etc.
When you teach how to create a folder you also will introduce the right mouse button. Come back often and question what is the difference between the left and the right mouse button. At this moment you also have to introduce menus and submenus. Let the participants provide their own folders, and give the folder a name (ex. the name of the circle participant) by typing directly in the highlighted name "New Folder". This is the right time to talk about "good" and "bad" names of folders and documents.
The easiest way to not fail when you start an application (or open a folder or document) is to point your arrow on the icon for the program, click it once so it becomes highlighted and then press the enter key. As a study circle leader, you probably belong to those who switched to "double-clicks". Note that in front of the above it might be educative to do the same as circle participants.
Window management is also an area that is important to stop by. Review concepts like title bar, task bar, etc. Window management is an area to come back to now and then during the circle time.
Compare for the circle participants the benefits of computer editing of the text compared to what it was like on during the typewriter time (not so long ago). Remember that some circle participants have no typewriter habit and have great difficulty finding the right key.
To save a document involves several steps. Saving is something that you can go through together at several pie hits. The most often overlooked is to instruct the computer where the document will be saved.
It's time to find out what we have learnt so far. Go through "What we can now" together and try to remember what we did and how. To summarize what can often tend to strengthen confidence among the participants.
Earlier was mentioned that the computer desktop was the place from which all the work you do at the computer starts. We can open a new document and start typing, or we can go into a new document and move forward. Discuss with participants on how to do in what situation, ie the new document you have to start the program Word, or you want to open an already saved document. This usually is often difficult to distinguish.
When the participant has further editing he/she begins to discover the features that can be easily done by the computer. Train to give the text more "space", to make blank lines, and to reverse text. Simple, but remember, it can be very abstract for many. Take the circle participants to help to sort out when you cut or copy.
Talk about backup. Use the CD-disc or USB-stick. Emphasize that it is important to take backups.

We surf the Internet and send e-mail
Go through the two 'surf' areas information search and e-mail. For those who are Internet beginners, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the programs Internet Explorer and Windows Mail. We recommend that the study circle switches between the two programs.
Explain what a domain name is and that it is easy to imagine how such addresses are structured. Emphasize that among organizations, governments, businesses, media and others their names are part of their address. Either the full name or the initials.
Addresses ending in Sweden most likely with .se, in Poland with .pl and in Latvia with .lv. Otherwise it can end with .nu, .com, .eu, .gov and others. Therefore, it is usually not a major problem to figure out an address of an organization or an authority. Let the circle participants try to figure out the addresses of any national newspaper or authority.
Let the participants repeatedly choose a homepage. It is nice to start with a homepage that you enjoy and benefit from.
Introduce links. Makes comparison of the arrow in Word and the hand in Internet Explorer. You can describe a home page with links to a wall with a variety of doors where there are signs indicating what is behind each door. You choose a door that looks interesting and go in there. In the room you entered there are more doors with signs on what is behind. You select a new door to proceed. Maybe you found nothing of interest behind the door you chose. Then you go back out through the same door you came in through and select another door to see if you find something that interests you and so on. This introduces the forward / backward buttons. Emphasize that it is the computer hand fingertip as you place the link. Similar to when you press a normal contact pressure on the wall, it's fingertip to apply.
Talk about when and why you sometimes need to use the so-called search engines that scans websites worldwide. You may want to mention that there are several search engines, but Google is today the largest and the world's most widely used, and also exist in different languages. Therefore, we use it. According to Google's own data, you may now reach many many billion of web pages (!) using their search engine.
Talk about the Internet as "the world's largest library".
Go through the "Advanced Search", search for a quotation items "to be or not be." See how many hits it will be when you use "Advanced search" and "With the exact phrase" or normal search.
Let the circle participants practice to save links and to remove links from Favorites. Talk about how to create folders for certain types of links and rename the folders, but there may be no need to fuss for participants to learn this now. It takes long time before your Favorites are so extensive that they need to be sorted into different folders.
There exist different email programs but it can be vise to teach the program Windows Mail. Windows Mail replaces Outlook Express and those who are familiar with Outlook Express will recognize themselves in Windows Mail. Windows Mail is also a part of the operating systems Vista and Windows 7. This means that anyone with a reasonably new computer has Windows Mail on their computer. In Vista the built-in security is high. Windows Mail sorted identified spam that is placed directly into a special folder called 'Spam'. Talk about spam with the circle participants.
Explain carefully where the mailbox is (not in the computer in front of the participant). Point out that although it is offline for a long while, so the mail will not be automatically added to the current computer, the mailbox must again be emptied. Makes the comparison to get the mail to a PO box at the post office. Then it does not matter how long time you sit at home and wonder if there was no mail, you must go and fetch new one. Explain how to obtain the @ ("at") and that it may differ on different computers.
When Windows Mail is started, do a proper review. It is important to stop and talk a moment about what you see, that's where that all e-mail handling begins every time we start Windows Mail. Talk about what you see, on the various folders and make comparisons with how it works in reality.
Go through the different text fields, making comparisons with how it works in reality. E-mail address of the recipient must be precise in order to function. This is a large difference between the electronic mail and how the mail system works in reality, where the postman has his own delivery district and knows where the postcard with street number followed by a question mark will be awarded. This may be appropriate prior notification that you can upload an address book, and the moment will the circle take up later. In the text field on the letter itself, it is useful to make comparison with the Word.
Sometimes, when you want to attach a file you do not know where to find it. One tip can be to place a file that is known to be attached to an e-mail on the "desktop" and thus is easy to find.
The address book is very important. Email addresses are not so easy to remember. Let the learning how to use the address book take the time it needs. It can be useful to revise the address book several times and each time the participants add three addresses items (cards), preferably the other circle participants' addresses.
The multicast section can be skipped if there are participants who have no direct benefit of being able to use this.
Explain at the appropriate time about hotmail and other free e-mail addresses and what it means. Most participants have heard the words, and certainly raises questions / concerns about this. Explain here the difference between a paid subscription and a free e-mail address. Explain the need for a pay subscription to use the Internet from home. Today there are many free email addresses except hotmail, a popular alternative is www.gmail.com (you fins it in many languages).
Hotmail and the corresponding free e-mail addresses grew rapidly in the beginning. These mail boxes could of course be visited from any computer anywhere in the world as opposed to pay subscriptions which called for specific settings to perform similar tasks. This difference is since some years eliminated and those who have a pay subscription for today at an Internet café items somewhere in the world can easily visit their mailbox to retrieve and reply to e-mail.
Raise the importance of not collecting the incoming mail. To have an inbox with a lot of letters that you do not know what they contain do not play any role. The letter you want to keep can be saved as a file in any folder or print on paper. Letter which was later to answer the other hand, may want to store on your computer.

Services via Internet
Discuss with the participants the advantages and the disadvantages of manage banking by the Internet. How much does it cost? Why not let the participants find out the current charges for your banking from the Bank's website. Find out the current exchange rate for the euro. Let the study circle more thorough visit two banks' demo versions. Compare with the other bank they will see that the titles and arrangements are similar. Mention the security aspect of banking over the Internet, it is something that many people have many thoughts about.
Google's greatness, also includes other aspects than the search engine. Google has also invested in Image Search, Book Search, satellite imagery and a good translation function between different languages. It is perhaps not necessary to work with all. Alternatively, the group selects one / some of the additional Google features, or the circle leader makes an presentation for the group. The circle leader should also take up the commercial aspect of various Google functions.

Technical issues
If your PC is slow - it's time to clean up your hard drive After a period of computer use, you might have installed and uninstalled programs on the hard drive. The hard drive can be experienced as dull, although there is free space on the disk. Fragmentation is when the files that belong to the same program is not located in the same area but in different areas on the hard drive. Reading and writing take longer. The Defrag program cleans the hard drive and puts together the files that belong to the same program. Before Defrag is running on the hard disk, run ScanDisk to check and repair any damaged files. Click Start, select Programs, Accessories, System Tools, ScanDisk, the Start button. Then start the Defrag as follows. Select Programs on the Start menu, then Accessories, System Tools, Defrag is there. In the next dialog, you choose which drive to defragment. Then click OK.
Your computer has been locked
Press Ctrl Alt Del.
First click on the program that has been locked, and then click End Task in the Close Program dialog box.
Note: In the Close Program dialog box as you roll by pressing the Ctrl Alt Del, you can even shut down Windows.
To decrease the cursor speed
Click the Start button. Select Preferences. Click Control Panel. Double-click the Mouse icon. Select the tab Motion. Go to the Pointer Speed, adjust so it is closer to slow, click OK.
You want a faster keyboard
You decide how fast your keyboard to repeat the characters when you press a key. Here's how: Go to My Computer, Control Panel and click the Keyboard icon, select the tab Speed. You can also test the settings by typing in the text field.
To change the cursor size
If you want to change the size of the mouse, follow these steps: Go to Start button, select Settings, then Control Panel. Double-click the Mouse icon, select the tab Pointer. Click on the scroll bar at the schedule. Choose between 3-D, Animated hourglass, Large and Extra Large-pointers. To create the shortcut on your desktop
Open Windows Explorer and locate the file you want to create a shortcut to. Is there a program file, you can drag it to your desktop as a shortcut is created automatically. Is there another type of file, hold down the Ctrl and Shift at the same time and pull out the file.

More useful shortcuts
Replacing the windows when you have multiple documents in time, Ctrl F6
Change from uppercase to lowercase (check first) Shift F3 (works in Word but not Excel) Select all Ctrl A.
Shutting down a window / document Ctrl + F4 Shutting down a program / Windows Alt + F4
Copy Ctrl + C
Paste Ctrl + V
Cut Ctrl + X
Delete Delete
Help menu, F1
Key combination Function Win + E opens Windows Explorer
Win + F opens the Find
Win + R opens the Run
Win + F1 opens Aid
Win + Break open the System Properties
Win + Tab to scroll through Activity Buttons
Win + M minimizes all windows
Shift + Win + M restores all minimized windows

You want to resize the screen area
Open the Display Properties dialog box with the tab Settings, click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, double-click Display, then click the tab Settings. Adjust the slider under the text size desk. It is the screen along with your graphics card determines whether you can change the screen resolution.

To free disk space on your hard drive
Run Disk Cleanup to free disk space on your hard disk. Disk Cleanup scans the device and then displays a list of temporary files, cache files from the internet and program files that are not needed and therefore can be removed safely. Start Disk Cleanup, click Start, point to Programs, Accessories, System Tools and click Disk Cleanup, then Select Device window appears, confirm by clicking the OK button.

To use the Help feature
Click the Help window on any of the following tabs:
The tab Contents to browse through the various categories.
The tab Index to see a list of index entries, and then type a word or scroll through the list.
The tab Search to search for words and phrases that may appear in the help section.
In the left frame of the Help window, click on a section, an index entry or phrase to view the corresponding section in the right frame.

To search for files and folders
Click Start, point to Find, and then click Files or Folders.
In the Name box, type the entire file name or part of it.
Type a word or phrase in the Contains text unless you know what a file named but known to contain a particular word or phrase that distinguishes it from other files.
If you want to specify where the search will start, click Browse.
Click Find Now.
You can also find the latest documents created on the Start menu and Documents.