1. Computer Training for Elders

2. As the name suggests, the first task for computers was performing calculations Today, computers are more often used for writing, just as typewriters are

3. The application that allows a computer to be a writing tool is a word processor Word processors are programs (instructions) that tell the computer to record what you write, and show it on the screen

4. As you will see, word processors can do much more than simply showing what you write They can also help you write better, change what youve written, and help you find what youve already written

5. Our training is based on Microsoft Works, a low-cost word processor that can exchange documents with other, more powerful Office tools If you are writing only for yourself, this doesnt matter

6. If you are planning to send your writing to family members, they need to be able to read what youve written Works files can be read by most common word processors

7. Move the tip of the mouse pointer over the Start Button in the lower left corner of the screen Click (press and release) the left mouse button The Start Menu should appear

8. On the Start menu, click on All Programs

9. When the Start Menu changes, look for the for the Microsoft Works folder

10. Move the tip of the of the mouse pointer over the folder, so that it changes color

11. Click the left mouse button once to open the folder

12. Below the folder, you will see a list of icons with names starting with Microsoft Works…

13. Look in this list for the item labeled Microsoft Works Word Processor

14. Move the tip of the mouse pointer over the icon and click the left mouse button once

15. o You will briefly see a window with the words Microsoft Works o This will disappear, and be replaced by the Works Word Processor window

17. This window has a lot of things in it, most of which you can ignore It also has some things that you are already familiar with from earlier lessons

18. In the top right corner, youll see the window controls for minimize, make full screen, and close that are in all windows These work exactly the same as in any other window

19. In the top left corner, youll see the name of the document, and Microsoft Works Word Processor Until you save your document (well talk about that in a little while), it is called Untitled Document

20. In the very corner, youll see what looks somewhat like a pencil and paper. This is the icon for Works Word Processor documents, which youll see on the desktop

21. Just below the window name, youll see the Menu Bar You will use the menu bar to tell the program what youd like it to do

22. A Windows Menu is like a menu in a restaurant It offers you choices of what you can get Not all of the options are always available

23. A Restaurant may have more than one menu Breakfast Menu Dinner Menu Dessert Menu

24. In Works, well mostly use the File, Edit, and Tools menus

25. Most of the window is taken up by the white rectangle at the bottom This is the document that you will be working on A document is like a piece of paper You can put information on it, file it, and look at it again later

27. When you start the Works Word Processor, it creates a new document Sometimes you want to continue working on something that you were writing, and have put away You do this with the Open… command

28. Move the tip of the mouse pointer over the word File on the menu bar, so that the bar changes color Click the left mouse button once

29. This will open the File menu, just like before Move the mouse pointer down so that its tip is over Open…

30. The menu will show a colored bar over the selected command

31. Click the left mouse button once This will open a special window called a File Dialog Box

33. The File Open Dialog is similar to other windows, but has a special purpose

34. It shows you documents that youve saved Youll learn to do that in a little bit

35. You can select any Works Word Processor document to open and continue working on, or simply to read

36. To open a Word Processor document, move the tip of the mouse pointer over the name of the document

37. As you move the mouse pointers, the current document will be a different color

38. When you have the mouse pointer over the document you want to work on, click the left mouse button once

39. The screen behind the name will change to a darker color This means that the document is selected

40. Now, move the mouse pointer to the lower right corner of the Open Dialog, to the Open Button

41. With the tip of the mouse pointer over the button, click the left mouse button once

42. The Open Dialog will disappear, and be replaced by the document you selected!

43. When you are working in your word processor, there are two different cursors on the screen One is the mouse pointer, which youve seen and used already

44. The other is the Insert cursor, which shows you where your words will appear If you look carefully in the white area of your word processor, you will see a short vertical line blinking |

45. This line is the insert cursor and is where text you type will appear

46. You can move this Insert Cursor using the mouse To move the insert cursor, you place the tip of the mouse pointer in the area you want your typing to appear, and click the left mouse button once

47. Lets try this Move the mouse pointer to just before the C in Chapter 1 Click the left mouse button once The blinking Insert Cursor should now be just before the C

48. Move the insert cursor back to the beginning of the document

49. Once youve placed the insert cursor where you want it, the mouse position doesnt matter Just park the mouse out of your way, and you can begin typing

50. When people say that they dont know how to type, they generally mean that they dont touch type. Touch typists only look at the screen. Their fingers know where the keys are.

51. If you are planning to make your living typing, this is important If you are writing to your friends, it doesnt matter how fast or how slow you type.

52. For now, just use the Columbus Method Seek out and Discover With practice, you will start to learn the location of the keys, and be fast enough

53. Lets type: I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't. As you type, youll start to run out of room on the line

54. On a typewriter, youd hear a Ding and think about moving down to the next line In a word processor, you dont have to do that

55. When more text wont fit, the computer will automatically move words down (including the word that you are typing), and keep going.

56. As you write (type), you occasionally want to change what you have already typed

57. Sometimes you want to add something that you remembered Sometimes you want to unsay something that was better left unsaid

58. Sometimes you just typed the wrong key With your word processor, you can do all of that, and more!

59. In order to understand the next few slides, we have to understand how to think about what you see on the computer screen You can think of your writing as being on a very long piece of paper, stretching from ceiling to floor

60. But you can only see part of it at one time. Think of a screen sized piece of cardboard with a hole cut in it that sits on the paper

61. Most of the controls for what part of the document you are looking at dont move the paper, they move the window When you use a control to move up, the words on the screen will move down

62. After you have typed for a while, your writing wont fit on the screen any more With a typewriter, youd have to put in a new sheet of paper to continue

63. In the word processor, your writing just moves up the screen (the window moves down), and you get more space But you need to be able to get back to what you wrote earlier

64. On the right side of the word processor window, you will see a bar reaching from the bottom of the screen to the top

65. This has a number of important parts

66. At the top and bottom you will see small arrows pointing up and down These are the scroll arrows that move your window up and down in the document

67. Between the two arrows there is a box called the thumb Think if it like a holding a book with your thumb between the pages

68. The entire tool, including the arrows, the thumb, and the track it slides in, is called the scroll bar

69. The easiest way to move the window is to click on the scroll arrows to move the window up and down through your document

70. Each click on an arrow moves the window by one line

71. If you want to move faster, you can click in the track just below the up-arrow, or just above the down-arrow

72. This will move the window one full screen at a time

73. When you move the window, you dont move the insert cursor If you type something, it will appear at the last place you typed

74. Before you start typing, you need to tell the computer where to put your writing Move the mouse pointer to the place in the document that you want your new text to appear

75. Click the left mouse button once This will move the insert cursor to this new location

76. One of the things computers are very good at is paying attention to detail, and keeping track of where things are

77. If you know that you saw (or wrote) a word or phrase in document, but cant find it, let the computer find it for you!

78. To ask the computer to find something, move the mouse pointer to the word Edit on the Menu Bar so that it changes color

79. Click the left mouse button once The Edit Menu will appear

80. Move the mouse pointer down the menu until the word Find… appears Click the left mouse button once

81. The menu will disappear, and the Find Dialog will appear on the screen

82. To use the find box, click once in the box next to Find what:

83. The insert cursor should appear in the box (the blinking vertical line | )

84. Type the word or words you want to find in your document Type decorum

85. Move the mouse pointer over the Find Next button and click the left button once

86. Each time you click the button, the word processor will move to the next place that the word you are looking for was used, and highlight it

88. When you have finished searching for words, click the Cancel button to close the Find window

89. The basic rule of your computer is, First tell me what you want to do something to, then tell me what you want me to do First, what object; next, what action

90. In order to change something that you have typed, you have to first select the words that you want to change The first step is to move the insert cursor to the words or letters to be changed

91. Two lines below the word decorum, locate the word anything Move the insertion cursor to just before the letter a of anything

92. You may notice, at this point, that the mouse pointer changes. It changes from an arrow to something called the i- beam pointer

93. The i-beam makes it easier to place the insert cursor between two letters Just place the vertical line of the pointer where youd like the insert cursor to appear and click the mouse

94. You do this by first scrolling (with the scroll bar) until you can see the word that needs to be changed

95. Next, move the mouse pointer to the beginning of the word you want to change, and click the mouse button once

96. The insert cursor (flashing bar) should appear at the beginning of the word Hold down the shift key with your left hand (you cant use Caps Lock for this)

97. Press the right arrow key to move the insert cursor over the word you want to change

98. Each time you press the arrow key, another letter will change color This is one way of selecting text

99. One of the features of a word processor is that it makes room for what you are typing If you place the insert cursor before a word, and start typing, the words after the cursor move over to make room

100. Because you have anything selected, lets replace it with the equivalent no matter which Just type the words on the keyboard, and they will replace the word anything

101. If you have selected text, the letters you type will replace whatever was selected But if you keep typing, the words after the insert cursor will move over to make room!

102. Sometimes, when you are typing, you fingers dont go quite where you wanted Or, you and Mr. Webster might disagree about how a word is spelled Your Word Processor has a tool to help in these cases

103. As you type, your word processor compares the words you have typed with internal dictionary If Works doesnt recognize a word, it puts a wavy red line under it

104. Works doesnt know Mrs. Rachael Lyndes last name, so each time it is written, Works places the wavy line under it

105. The red line doesnt mean that the word is misspelled, only that Works doesnt recognize it It also wont recognize unusual names or slang, for example

106. But, Works does more than just tell you that it doesnt know that word It will help you fix it!

107. Weve added an error to Anne of Green Gables for this class If you are not at the top of the Anne file, move back to the top.

108. In the second line of the first paragraph, find the word holllow (the error we added) Move the point of the mouse pointer over the word holllow which Works thinks is an error Click the left mouse button once

109. This moves the insert cursor to this word On your keyboard, find the Menu key Press this key once

110. You will now see the Spell Check menu next to the word that Works doesnt know

111. At the top of this menu will be a list of words that are like what you typed

112. If one of these is the correct choice, you can choose it by moving the mouse pointer over the word and clicking the left button once

113. The correct word will replace what you typed in the document

114. If the word is a word, but Works doesnt know it, you can add it to the word processors dictionary Lynde is the correct spelling of the characters last name, but Works hasnt read this book

115. Move the mouse pointer over the word Lynde in the title of the chapter Click the left mouse button once to move the insert cursor into the word

116. Press the Menu key to show the Spell menu

117. Move the mouse pointer over Add on the spelling menu and click the left mouse button

118. The menu will disappear, and so will the red line. From now on, Works will know that Lynde is correctly spelled

119. However, Lyndes is still not recognized, because Works doesnt know how to handle possessives Repeat what you did to teach Works about Lynde on any example of Lyndes that you can see

120. Sometimes, after youve written something, you decide that it would be better if this paragraph came after that paragraph instead of in front

121. Without a computer, youd just have to write it all out again With a word processor, you can move things around Lets look at how you can do this

122. Look in your Works file for the words that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place These words start near the end of the second line of the first paragraph of the story

123. We start by telling the computer what we want to do something to Noun, then verb We do this by selecting the words we want to move

124. Move the mouse pointer to just before the word that and click the left mouse button once

125. Next, hold down the shift key with your left hand, and use the arrow keys to select the entire phrase Notice that you can use the down arrow to select a line at a time

126. When youve selected the whole sentence, move the mouse pointer to the word Edit in the toolbar

127. Click the left mouse button once, and the Edit Menu will appear

128. Move the mouse pointer down to the word Cut Click the left mouse button once

129. The menu will disappear, but so will the selected words!

130. Its not really gone, its just been moved to a special place called the clipboard The computers clipboard can hold sentences, documents, or just about anything else on your computer

131. But, like a real clipboard hanging on a wall, when you open the clip to put something new in, whatever was there fall on the floor and is lost The computer clipboard holds only one thing at a time

132. But we can put whatever is on the clipboard somewhere new Move the mouse pointer to just after the word road in the first sentence Click once to move the Insert Cursor here

133. You should see the insert cursor flashing just after road Note: you wont want road to be part of your next word, so type a space

134. Open the Edit menu again, and move the mouse pointer to Paste

135. Click the left mouse button once

136. The text from the clipboard will now appear at the place where the insert cursor was flashing

137. If you decide that what you just did was the wrong thing, you can undo it. Open the Edit menu

138. The first option is Undo Typing (The Typing part will be the last thing that you did, which isnt always typing)

139. Click Undo to undo the last thing that you did

140. Its unlikely that you will finish your life story in one session of typing Its not likely that youll even always finish a letter without a break Anytime you are leaving a writing project, you should save your work

141. This can be done easily Move the tip of the mouse pointer over the word File in the menu bar

142. Click the left button once, and the File Menu will appear

143. There are two options on this menu that will save documents: Save Save As…

144. Save means Put me back where I came from, with the same name I already have.

145. Save As… means Give me a new name, and a new home.

146. Of course, if you are saving a new document, it doesnt have either a name or a home yet

147. In that case, Save and Save As… do exactly the same thing

148. In your home, you probably have lots of different pieces of paper with information on them In my home, we have recipes, phone numbers, bills, pictures, and more

149. We dont put all of those things in the same place, because it would be hard to find them later Your computer works the same way You could just put everything into your Documents folder, and your computer will offer to do that for you

150. But after a while, it gets hard to find things So, its better to make piles of the same kind of thing

151. Your computer has two kinds of containers Documents Folders

152. Documents hold your letters, your web favorites, your recipes, and anything else that youve created or saved on your computer Folders hold your documents, and can hold other folders

153. On the screen, documents generally look like a piece of paper with one corner folder over Folders look like a file folder standing on edge

154. A folder can hold lots of documents and folders If you use folders to place all of the documents on a subject together, it will be easier to find them Now, back to saving your work…

155. Since we just changed a classic, we probably dont want to give it the same name.

156. Instead, we want to give it a name and home, so we click on Save As…

157. The File Menu will disappear, and the Save As window will appear

158. At the top of this window are some controls that are important The Save In: box shows where you are saving your document

159. To the right of this, you can see a small folder with a green arrow pointing up

160. This means Show me the folder that this folder is inside of

161. To the right of this is a another folder, this time with a red circle on its corner

162. This means Make a new folder inside this folder, and let me name it

163. At the bottom of the window is an area labeled File name: This is followed by the selected text Anne

164. Before you save a document, you should give it a name that tells you what it is

165. My vacation 2008 is good Bob is not as good. X3F79 is not very useful

166. Type the new name for your document It will replace the name that is already there

167. Next, move the tip of the mouse pointer over the Save button to the right of the file name Click the left button once

168. The Save window will disappear, and your document will be saved with the name you gave it

169. If you want a paper version of your document, to send in the mail or to give to a friend, you just print it Move the tip of the mouse pointer to the word File in the menu bar

170. Click the left mouse button once This will cause the File Menu to appear

171. Move the mouse pointer to the word Print… Click the left mouse button once This will make the Print window appear

173. Move the mouse pointer to the OK button near the bottom right corner Click the left mouse button once In a few moments, your document should appear in your printer

174. Now that you are done with your word process, you should put it away To do this, move the mouse pointer over the word File in the menu bar Click the left mouse button once

175. On the file menu, move the mouse pointer over the word Exit Click the left mouse button once

176. Microsoft Works will disappear, and you will see your desktop, ready for whatever is next