Once some initial shyness was overcome we settled down happily each day. They mostly had no keyboard skills, some had no access to computers, some had Windows 3.11 installed on a computer in their workplace but had not needed to use a computer, a few had a basic knowledge of WordPerfect and Lotus, and three or four had a very basic acquaintance with Word and Excel. We had frequent power failures (no UPS); the room was unbearable when the air conditioning, which had an undiagnosed fault, played up. However, being in a volcanic zone, when there was a 'tremble' one morning the computers ignored it and one of my students just opened the door to the outside world so we could escape quickly if necessary. Incidentally, as well as managerial staff, quite a few staff with humbler diverse occupations were on my roll sheet.
So what did we do each day? Early on I ordered copies of the TypeQuick program from Australia and when the first copy arrived I installed it on one of the training machines and all non-typists spent part of their three days with me becoming familiar with the keyboard layout Apart from this I concentrated on visual applications. All students have now acquired mouse skills. Students drew using MS Paint and subsequently printed out their masterpiece by saving it as a file on a floppy disk and opening the file on the one computer connected to the printer. The graphics included with this article were produced during the course.
Yes, we played Solitaire - after several demonstrations they were able to find and load the program themselves, so eager were they to play! After giving the students some experience with basic formatting in Word, I handed out advertisements, cut out from the PNG newspaper, and afternoons were spent creating the advertisements. This included drawing and inserting corresponding graphics. Excel was more of a challenge! The ease of entering data series and adding up rows and columns intrigued them, as did the production of colourful charts. I created a gypsy fortune-telling worksheet from a lookup function where students input their month of birth (or guessed it) and that stimulated interest in how a spreadsheet is set up.
In terms of the original task sheet, its objectives have not been met. What has been done is a preliminary step toward these objectives. The students are urging their masters to provide computer access for them. They are asking for more training. To me it has been a worthwhile project. I have been invited to return for four months early next year to continue with further training and expect to do so.
Mrs Gloria Robbins was born in Scotland in 1925 and saw service in the British Army as a kinetheodolite operator for four years before graduating from St Andrews University as a Bachelor of Science. She then migrated to New Zealand and worked as a statistician and later as a lecturer in medical statistics at Otago University. After marriage, Gloria moved with her husband to Australia and later lived in Papua New Guinea where she held three positions for a period of two years working as a librarian, research officer and trainer. Returning to Canberra, Gloria was employed by the Australian National University as a research assistant in economics.
After completing a Graduate Diploma in Computer Studies she transferred within the ANU to become a computer programmer.
Gloria's last position before retirement was as Coordinator of the university's Microcomputer Advisory Unit. After her retirement from the university Gloria worked on a casual basis a computer consultant. Her commitment to community activities and sense of adventure have taken her to cattle stations in the Northern Territory as a volunteer for Isolated Students' Education; to work as a voluntary Lifeline Counsellor, and a much sought after volunteer with AESOP-the Australian Executive Service Overseas Program Ltd, a non-profit organisation providing assistance to the management of businesses, organisations and institutions in developing countries of the Asia-Pacific region.
Gloria has been on AESOP assignments to Thailand, Papua New Guinea , Fiji the Solomon Islands and is now back from New Britain.
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