Session III - Using Mavis Beacon Program

This new year of lessons has brought on many challenges, but the ladies are excited about learning basic keyboarding skills to help them become more proficient in using their technology. This week’s lesson began with everyone creating a profile in the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing lesson.  We will start each week’s session doing several drills to help students become familiar with best typing practices and at using the computer along with basic typing skills. The instructor, Ms. Turner, identified early that many of the students had poor manual dexterity while attempting to stroke the computer keyboard and several had developed poor typing technics which slowed down their ability to keep up with the lessons and to progress further.

Tonight’s lesson focused on becoming familiar with the Home Row keys of A, S, D, F, J, K, L, ;.  They were thrilled at how easy it was to type these keys when their fingers where positioned in the right place.  No need to “hunt and peck.”  They were pleased at the movements from one key to another when the proper fingering techniques are used. We practiced the whole session until they became comfortable using the Home Row keys.

Our challenge this week were the batteries that we just replaced.  We will have to check out the electrical cords because some of the machines where not getting enough electricity to the machines.  This caused delays that we cannot afford, based upon the time we have for class. Our plan is to replace any defective batteries and cords and the make sure that all devices are in top running order.  We wasted a lot of time at this session checking out our equipment and making sure that each student could call up the Mavis Beacon Program that we had installed at an earlier date.

Our weekly challenge is each session we have to transport the laptops to the site; set them up; run electrical power strip; put up dry erase board; and start up the "hot spot." Sometimes we use the projector attached to a laptop and that has to be set up as well. The ladies who get to class earlier set up the tables and place the chairs in the proper classroom order.

The group is forever discussing fund raiser activities that we can have to help cover the cost of additional equipment and other things we still need like a virus protection software.  The administrator of the complex is interested in helping to meet some of our needs because we still need more laptops as the class grows. There are other things needed that have been identified by the instructor such as Microsoft Suite.