Project:

Computer Training for Residents of Big Bear Valley

User Group Name:

Big Bear Computer Club

Location:

Big Bear Lake, CA

WHAT we do

Project Description: Members of the Big Bear Computer Club provide computer training, free of charge, to residents of the Big Bear Valley. The hands-on training includes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel plus we have a help line with various club members manning the help line on such subjects as: Window for Beginners; Outlook Express; MS Word; Digital Photos; CD Burning; and Quicken.

It's a mountain community with 20,000 residents that have no other resource in getting computer training; thereby, the computer tutoring has become a very essential part of the community. Residents and students are taking advantage of this community service provided by the Computer Club. Members of the community attend these classes to enhance their learning experience for work, school and just personal use. Sue Crane, Editor of the Computer Newsletter, "Bearly Bytes" enhances the training by having informative articles on all phases dealing with computers, software and programs.. These newsletters are available to the public at various locations. Bearly Bytes has been the winner of SWRUGC and APCUG newsletter contests.

Since the Big Bear Computer Club does not have a computer lab to provide the community this training, we have developed a partnership with the Public Library-- Literacy Program to use their computers for these training classes.

HOW we do what we do How we do it at the Public Library:

We advertise in the local newspapers, radio stations, local cable T.V. station, Internet newspapers, Computer Club Newsletter and throw away Shopper Advertiser.

The Public Library makes available five computers for these classes. They provide the Computer Club training program, one morning a week to conduct these free training

The sessions are six weeks long, one hour a week with five students in each of the sessions. We are working to increase this to 8 students per session.

The sessions are in great demand by those community members who want to advance in their work place and high school students. There is a four to five month waiting period.

The Microsoft Word curriculum consists of four projects students can customize and save as their own templates while learning about page set-up; formatting styles; Word Art and graphics; setting up tables in Word and Word on the Web.

Beginning Microsoft Excel consists of four sections: Getting Started; Editing a Workbook; Formatting and Creating Charts. The Excel Lesson Plans are taken from the Course Technology, Thomson Learning Excel 2002 Teacher edition.

Each student receives a disk with the lesson plans to follow in class.

One of the Tutors was awarded the Big Bear Literacy "2004 Volunteer of the Year" award in April, 2004.