I will be teaching a new class at the Ferndale Public Library on Saturday, September 22, 2-3pm. My grandson Christopher and I made ourselves available for an hour every two weeks to help people with their computing questions and problems last year, taking the summer off. We found out a lot about the kinds of difficulties folks have with computers.
As an engineer, I can’t work with anything unless I know how it works. Many people know how to use a computer, more or less, but they don’t know how it works—what’s happening inside those desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones. In the Saturday class, I’ll be talking about how it all works. When you understand how computers work, using them becomes easier for a lot of folks. Computers have tremendous power, and many limitations. Asking them to do things that are not possible or extremely difficult, causes frustration, and often, users don’t know what is easy and what is hard. In this class, I’ll try to lay the groundwork for understanding, rather than simply pushing the buttons on computers.
Putting the class together has been a challenge. I plan to explain digital computing in ways that I haven’t seen outside a few engineering classes. I hope the presentation will be clearer, easier to understand, and more revealing than anything I have read or seen for beginners. Christopher is a teenager who used computers from preschool, I wrote my first program in 1967. Between the two of us, we cover a lot of territory.
Christopher and I will also be back on every 1st and 3rd Wednesday at the Ferndale Public Library from 3p to 4p, starting Wednesday, September 5. Last year, we handled questions on email, setting up a Linux development environment, and folks who may have been hacked. We’re excited to see what will be bothering folks this year. We’re ready for anything… I hope.