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Computer Technology Center
Gateway to Word Processing
Even if you're not planning to use a computer to go online, writing and editing documents is something almost everyone needs to do. ASB's Computer Technology Center addresses this need with our five-week course which immerses the student in the popular Microsoft Word program. Here's what we'll cover.
Creating a Document
Creating a new document is as easy as opening the Word program, and we start out by explaining how to do this from the Windows start menu.
Formatting
Transferring the words from your brain to the keyboard is just the first step in getting your documents in a presentable form. We'll talk about how to bold, italicize and underline documents to add emphasis where it's needed. We'll teach students how to center and justify their text.
Opening and Saving Documents
The more you use Word, the more documents you're likely to accumulate on your computer. We'll teach students how to manage those documents by saving them into folders, as well as how to open them again later.
Checking your Spelling
Even the most literate people get stumped as to how to spell certain words, and all of us make typos. The process of spell checking allows us to correct any mistakes we may have made along the way. Spell checking contains many keyboard commands to access all of the many options available to the student, and we'll spend time explaining them.
Checking Grammatical Errors
When your employer gives you a writing assignment, it's not enough to ensure that the spelling is correct. Microsoft Word's grammar checker examines your sentences and offers suggestions for many commonly made errors.
Finding Similar Words
Writing the perfect sentence isn't always easy. Perhaps you have a commonly used word that you'd like to find a synonym for. We'll explain how to use Word's thesaurus to do just that.
JAWS Specific Functions
Blind users who use JAWS as their screen reader will find that they have commands at their fingertips which aren't available to other users. With one keystroke, we'll teach students how they can put their spelling errors or grammatical errors in an easy-to-read list. This list will allow JAWS users to quickly zoom in on the error they want to correct.
Review of Cut, Copy and Pasting
Since highlighting text is the most important thing to learn, we feel it's justified to have a review of how to highlight, cut, copy and paste text in your documents.
Printing your Document
For many, the final destination for your document is not the computer but the printer. We'll explain how to print, including setting print margins and printing multiple copies.
Adjusting Word for Screen Readers
Even though we are teaching people who are blind or visually impaired, it is an undeniable fact that Windows is an operating environment designed for sighted users. Word has some annoying graphics and animation features which can interfere with the interaction between it and your assistive technology. We'll spend time explaining how to access Word's options menu in order to turn off some of the visual noise.
More than One Document
Some people like to have more than one document open at one time to do comparisons or to copy text from one document to another. We'll explain how to do this and how to easily switch from one open document to another with keyboard commands.
Searching and Replacing
Suppose you have a large document and you need to zoom in on a specific word or phrase. Suppose you wrote a letter to Mr. John smith but you kept typing his name as Jack Smith. Searching for text, as well as performing search and replace commands can all be done with keyboard commands.
Help Me!!!
We admit that there is so much more to using Microsoft Word than we could ever hope to cover in just five weeks. Using Word's Help facility will give students the chance to go beyond our course and learn even more about what Word has to offer. Reading the help documents is as easy as reading any other document in Word.
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