DATE Reflection on the Intersection between class topics and tech devices Sarah

The discussion with the women at the workshop last night revealed the women have many diverse interests. We discussed the possibility of presenting information about navigating the directory on a hard drive -- in order to be able to save documents, photos, etc. and open them later. (This lesson, of course, wouldn't be possible or worthwhile with a tablet.) Excel and PowerPoint were also brought up. These were just a few of the interests that were brought up, for sure, but it has clarified that the "Tech research team" (I believe that's Tiffany!) and the Adult Digital Literacy Team (I believe that's me!) should discuss. The tech that we buy has a direct influence on what topics we will teach. We will not be able to plan our list of topics without knowing what tech we are using. I am, I am sorry to say, not up to speed on tablet specs, but I know Tiffany is.

Questions to consider:

Do we want MS Office? (In either app or full version) Do we want a product that comes with it, or do we have money to buy it separately?
Do we want a hard drive? (Internal or external). Or to purchase cloud storage? Or thumbdrives?

This is important, because if we don't want these things, there is no point to teach powerpoint, word, excel, and saving or retrieving from storage. We should just teach google docs, FaceBook album-ing and other forms of free, web-based storage.

Ports: Do we want to be able to demonstrate on the projector screen? We would need either an HDMI port on the device, or a USB port and then purchase an adapter. Perhaps a VGI adapter as well.

Do we want keyboards?

Do we want a windows operating system? Or android? Or iOS?

These last two questions start to get at the idea if we're looking at a more workplace-oriented computer literacy or a lifestyle-related computer literacy. I'm not sure if that distinction makes a ton of sense -- in my mind, I do a lot of typing and archiving-of-documents and using MS Office at work. Windows is, in my experience, the default OS for the workplace. If we don't have a full operating system, it's a matter of sharing cool apps and trying them out.

We should also think about planning time. I had never made business cards, and it took me an hour to go through the steps and feel like I could present them the clearest and quickest way (in Spanish!). If the person planning lessons has to go through a novel task and write out step for 2 or 3 OS, planning time doubles or triples.

We might want to think about what OS teachers are comfortable with too. If we're talking about navigating a Windows hard drive, I don't have to do any research -- I've done it a million times. If we're talking about saving and sharing in GoogleDrive or Mac OS, I'd have to research and practice. I know I'm not the only person who will be teaching, though, so it's not so much about what I'm comfortable with, but what the average person is comfortable with.

I know that the actually technology landscape is varied, so I don't want to oversimplify. But, in a beginning class, I don't want to overcomplicate either.

Do we want to save a little money in the budget to purchase apps?

If we are working in an app-based environment, and there is an awesome app for, say, keeping track of your agenda that costs .99, would we want to be able to purchase it for the class?