How do you learn to use these wonderful toys?

November 1995

I took the second computer programming course ever given at the University of San Francisco, in 1966. It was Fortran 0, on an IBM 1620, and we all had to truck on over to San Francisco State to use their computer because we did not have one on our site yet. After that course, the university catalog was depleted, so I registered for night courses at UC Bezerkley. They had about 10 courses to choose from then.

When I got a job a few years later, some serious training budgets opened up. The typical way that training was done for corporations then, was via the intensive training courses put on by companies who you were either buying equipment from, or by companies who carved out some sort of nitch by offering courses that industry needs. These courses usually last one to three weeks, and they are usually not in the local area. And that is good -- when you send somebody away for training, it is very difficult for the office back home to get ahold of him and bother them with day to day silly details. They can put their whole effort into learning the material (unless you are in some resort city, where hot sun and beaches can be quite a distraction).

These forums still exist, and in fact our company, being in the selling of software business, now puts on such courses for other companies.

Technology has now advanced where there are other options. At the risk of being a bit of a grump, I do not personally feel that these other options are anywhere near as useful as a good solid week in an intensive eyeball to eyeball class. These options include video courses, and computer aided courses.

The video courses I have dealt with have the advantage that you can replay them over and over, and you see actual screen images of what the product will do. They have the disadvantage of it being something that your boss will tell you to "take home and view it some evening". Oh Yeah, that is real likely, even if you can rip the VCR and tv set away from the rest of the family for a couple of hours. And even if you do, you will generally treat it like the commercial on a regular TV program, and wonder just when the good parts start. This is especially true if the video was created at anything less than broadcast quality, because you will sit there and wonder why everything is so dim, or blurry, or who are these geeks with their high pitched voices, and are these just actors, or do they really know what they are talking about or .....

We are now seeing a lot of training courses show up with the software. The best known might be WordPerfect's Tutorial program. And it is not too bad, although I think I got more out of reading the manual myself. My first introduction to spreadsheets was a program that put up Lotus or something on the screen, told you what keys to hit, and then waited for you to hit the exact correct key. So I did, not knowing at all just Why I was hitting this silly key, and What the result was supposed to be. The screen flashed, and the program now said to hit some other silly key. And so on. Once again, I finally learned what little I do know about spreadsheets, by reading the manual. (One of the more infamous acronyms of our industry, is RTFM: Read The Free Manual.)

My much preferred way to learn stuff, is with a teacher. And there are any number of those options available here in Spokane. First, there are the "for profit" schools. These are what maybe used to be called trade schools, but quite a number of them offer introductory courses for novice computer people. Interface Computer School lays a lot of advertizing around town that looks like they have a good selection of one day courses on many topics, from DOS on up.

There are several ways to take a course in the traditional way. That is, one or two nights a week, for a semester. And that is to use the college resources in the area.

Both Whitworth and Washington State have night time courses, and anybody can walk in and register for them. I have taken a course at the Downtown Wasu campus, and found the accommodations to be quite adequate, if not the parking. Even though I work only two blocks from Whitworth, I have not yet dealt with them. Parking is less than desirable there too. My observation is that Whitworth seems to have course offerings oriented more towards the novice, and Wasu more towards the advanced professional.

There are the two community colleges in the area. I know that both of them do have computer courses, what I do not know is if somebody can walk in off the street and register for them, or if they have any at night. But they do have something of interest to businesses in the area: the Bytemobile. They have rigged up some sort of trailer with a dozen or so PCs and a lecture area, and will pull their rig right up into your parking lot (if You have any parking, of course), and plug in. They seem flexible to go dry or wet -- either you provide the teacher, or they will be happy to.

SIRTI offers individual courses in various esoteric subjects, and I hope it will be expanding its offerings to something that real people can use. I have visited their computer training area, and except for a rather unhealthy dose of Macs laying around, it seems to have adequate resources. And, it has Parking!! There are already some Internet companies using SIRTI facilities for their courses.

There is also the chance to get some one on one training. Some computer stores offer this, and sometimes you can see somebody offering their services in want ads or ComputorLink ads. A lot of this will be first rate, some of this might be some geek that barely knows how to speak English without spelling the words out in ASCII first, so you pays your money, and you takes your chances. This will be rather pricy, but the training needed can usually be tailored to exactly what you want, and you might get off the ground a lot faster this way than any other..