|
About Us (Actually, About ME)
Arleen
& Grandson Wilson (2005) |
My name is Arleen Greenwood, and I was born in the early '40s, so
I am very definitely A SENIOR! I
was a high-school teacher for six years in the late 60's until our children
were born, and I stayed at home with them for several years.
In the late 70's I decided to go back to school and learn about
computers. As a part time student at University of Waterloo, I learned
enough to obtain a job as a Computer Operator in the Computing Services
department of Wilfrid Laurier University in 1981. |
Arleen and Grandson Grayson (2009)
|
Those early years at WLU were fascinating for me. I saw the mighty mainframe
replaced by small computers joined together to service our Laurier "users".
I watched as faculty and staff moved from having just a terminal (screen)
and keyboard on their desks (connected to the mainframe), to having a
microcomputer (screen, keyboard and mouse) connected to a bunch of other
microcomputers, all able to share their information.
I saw some of the early years of e-mail, and how it grew from something
that was used almost exclusively in universities, (because it certainly
was NOT very user-friendly at the beginning) to something that almost
everybody knows about, and is commonly used even by children to keep in
touch.
I remember when computer screens were all black, with just white printing
that showed what you what you were doing --- no colour, and certainly no pictures.
And a printer was something that there were only maybe a dozen of on
the entire campus. Big, clunky things that printed on that computer paper
with the holes down the sides.
I watched as the Internet exploded onto the public consciousness, and
it became common to find computers in the homes of ordinary people, rather
than just the techies.
During my 21 years at WLU, my career evolved from operating the computer,
to my great love, TEACHING about computers. I taught faculty, staff
and students about many things:
- UNIX (an operating system)
- Windows (3.1, 95, 98)
- word-processing (Wordperfect, Word, assorted older programs)
- spreadsheets (Quattro Pro and Excel)
- presentation software (Powerpoint and Presentations)
- the Internet (telnet for connecting to other computers,
FTP for moving files between computers, gopher for dispensing
information, HTML for creating information files for the
university website, several e-mail programs such as Pine
and Netscape Messenger, Outlook, the web browser Netscape
and Internet Explorer, and the web page creation software,
Dreamweaver).
- web graphics software Fireworks
- virus software McAfee
- and a lot more that my senior brain has now forgotten......
But because of the timing of the coming of the computer age
in the 80's and 90's, many people sort of missed the computing
boat. Those people were busy raising children, or working
at their jobs and many thought they would never need to know
computers, and besides, they were too old to learn.
They also thought it was all too complicated. And I
think many of them secretly thought they were just past being
able to learn all that technical stuff.
If that sounds like you, I'm here to tell you that you are
NOT unable to learn, it is NOT too complicated to learn, and
I can teach you to use your computer with confidence!
You don't have to understand all the inside workings of the
thing any more than you need to totally understand how your
phone or car work in order to use them.
I explain the things you need to know slowly and patiently, in language
you can understand. I write notes as we go through the lesson to
help you remember later. And I follow up to see how you are doing, and
answer any questions that have come to your mind.
You may be Clueless now, but after spending time with me, on your computer
in your home, you will be CLUELESS NO MORE!
|
