Solve : Looking for Basic IT Training?

1.	Solve : Looking for Basic IT Training?
Answer» HI, I want to set up a small IT business which will offer help in anything from setting up a laptop/desktop through to creating accounts on social media and such like. It's basically something I've been thinking about for some time because I believe there are many people (particularly the over 50s and retirement age) who simply don't know the basics, especially with Social media like facebook, Twitter, etc but desperately want to be able to COMMUNICATE, make friends, stay in touch or simply keep themselves occupied. What I'd like to know is, are there any courses or websites I could look at that would help me get some grounding and help put a plan together. I have a reasonable IT knowledge but I just wanted to see if there was anything specific out there that could help me build something professionally with structure. Any ideas would be grateful, no matter how trivial. Thanks DavidIf there are any community colleges in your area you could always propose a workshop or a course to instruct. I have run a few workshops before where people pay as little as $25 per seat for a 1 day event for 4 hours of instruction and hands on, or $125 per seat for a 4 week ( 4 course day ) workshop which is more involved with homework and a final at the end for a certificate of completion. Your are able to use the resources of the community college so you only need to bring the content to them, and the community college gets a portion of the take and you get the difference. Best of all is that you do not need a teaching degree to run a workshop. You simply just have to put together a well structured presentation and then submit that to the community college to see if its something that they may be interested in allowing you to instruct there. As as in my case for my first workshop there, there was a mock demonstration which I performed with an overhead projector, and dry erase board and gave hand outs and had them follow along with it. This then sold them on it as a well structured workshop and so they agreed to promote this and I got 60% of the take and they got 40%. Following this workshop I also instructed others and it was a nice setup. Workshops that I offered in the past were: - Computer Basics ( 1 day, 4 hour workshop ) - Introduction to HTML ( 4 days, 1 day per week workshop 16 hours total ) - Introduction to Microsoft Office 2000 ( 8 days, 2 days per week, 4 hours per day, for a month workshop.. with MS Word, MS Excel, MS Power Point, and MS Access with 1 week for each as a bare minimum basic introduction ) The Computer Basics was a good one which wasnt too bad. Some people were totally lost sitting in front of a computer which was running Windows 98 at the time back in 1999. And it was mainly a follow along and questions answered as given. The Introduction to HTML was the course I had the most fun with. While it did not cover Java Script, I allowed people to add it into their work if they wanted to go beyond just HTML. This course was the best flow I guess I could say to content to cover per period of time given to cover it. The Introduction to Microsoft Office 2000 was really really tight to pull off all the content in that given period of time, and it assumed that the student would work on lab projects at home and bring them back with them on the 2nd day of each MS Office product week in which we went over it all, answered questions, and gave them a quick open book quiz. MS Word was easy as cake. MS Excel had its difficulties at times with either a student who worked with Lotus 123 all their life and is now working with MS Excel in which there are differences some of them cross supported and some not as well as anyone who stuggled with simple algebra it was apparent were going to really struggle and so I had to stay over once to explain simple algebra for them to understand the formulas. Power Point was a fun course that was pretty easy to instruct and very little problems here once they were familiar with how to work in the WYSIWYG environment. MS Access though was for about 90% of the students well beyond their grasp of knowledge but it had to be covered. It made them familiar with what MS Access was, and how to make the most simplest of databases, control the content that can be entered, and generate a simple report. The most simplest database I used was an Inventory where each item had a Stock Number, Description, Count on Hand, and Price etc. The other issue with this course was that only about 10% of the students owned MS Office 2000, and so some of them had to come to the community college throughout the week and work in their homework using the college computers because they couldnt afford or didnt want to buy the software that they were learning. Of the 10% that had outside use of MS Office 2000, most of them used their computers at work to do their homework. Then there was the issue of some people still using Office 97 and learning 2000 and working on projects and running into issues due to the changes as well as EXPLAINING to them that if they wish to work on this project at home that they will need to save their files as 97 format instead of 2000 to their 3.5" floppy disks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So my suggestion is possibly to get workshops going either at a community college or somewhere else that you can host them, and then if they are successful and you have the money to invest in creating a training facility, invest it then, however it may be better to tap into another facilities already existing resource for computers, software, and place/space to hold the trainings than it is to host them yourself. Lastly, I did have some students that asked me if I was available to tutor them 1 on 1. And while this may work out for some, I found this more difficult than training many at the same time. The biggest problem with 1 on 1 training is that you have to be paid for what you are worth, and many of the people who need 1 on 1 training cant afford to pay you say $20 an hour to train them which is what I charged 13 years ago. For some individuals it worked out well and they ran with the information and eventually got to a point that they didnt feel the need for me to guide them, while for others such as one woman who claimed took a promotion at her job, it was a bad situation. The bad situation started off with that she was promoted to a secretary job and this job required her to use MS Office, and prior to this she was an assembler for a manufacturing plant. While she knew how to turn a computer on and know how to check her AOL mail at home on her Windows 95 computer, the work computer she had was running Windows 2000 Professional and MS Office 2000, so she felt lost. To get the position the employer asked her if she had computer experience and she said YES because she had an Acer computer at her home that was on the internet with dial-up, and they asked her if she had worked with MS Office before and she said YES, when she told me that she said that because she wanted to land this job so badly for the $5 more per hour at $14 per hour from $9 an hour job, that she had to LIE to them to impress them and get the job. And now she is trying to cover up the lie by getting trained as fast as she could on this all and this way the lie disappears. I was shocked at what she was telling me since, most positions like this are ones that are awarded and then they drop stacks of paperwork on you do enter/file etc as a secretary position holds. She was hoping to master it within a week for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point. I had to explain to her that unless she is one of those people who see's something once and never forgets it and can speed read through books and retain the info, that she is not going to master it in a week. Long story way shortened, I instructed her for a week, 4 hours a NIGHT, by bringing over my laptop that I had Office 2000 on it since she didnt have Office 2000 and I gave her a crash course on mostly Word and Excel. She said that she understood it all and we agreed that at the end of the week when she was paid she would pay me for my time in which I gave her a discounted rate of $15 per hour $60 per night of 4 hrs of hands on training for the 5 nights I helped her. So she owed me $300 for my time. She said oh, I forgot this week is rent week, I will pay you next week instead if thats ok, and I being the nice guy that I am said ok, but I really need to be paid next friday. That next friday came and went and so I placed a phone call and her phone was disconnected now. I then knew where she worked and went to pay her a visit about the $300 bill and she wasnt there. She never worked for this place ever and they dont know who she is. I then go to visit her appartment and she is not there, and a neighbor heard me knocking and said that her and her room mate skipped out the one night and left the appartment with all their posessions and they dont know where she went. I said did she ever happen to state where she worked, and they said oh yeah she worked at this one company, and that one company was the same one that she told me that is a lie. So be sure your paid daily for 1 on 1 lessons vs allowing it to go a week before paid in which you could be out like $300 for your time. For workshops everyone had to pay up front, so it was a good deal, but for 1 on 1 tutoring its paid after the instruction and you have some risk in getting stiffed. While this is probably a rare situation, it happens. Quote from: dgreen on June 27, 2014, 07:18:33 AM I believe there are many people (particularly the over 50s and retirement age) who simply don't know the basics I am way over 50 and it really tees me off when younger people express surprise that I know anything about IT. Even when they are being nice and say things like "Hey, you know a lot for a guy your age!". Quote from: DaveLembke on June 27, 2014, 04:40:20 PM So be sure your paid daily for 1 on 1 lessonsWhile this is probably a rare situation, it happens. When I was repairing colour TVs and stereos I learned this lesson. Quote from: DaveLembke on June 27, 2014, 04:40:20 PM one woman who claimed took a promotion at her job The ones who burned me like that were always the pretty ones... Quote The ones who burned me like that were always the pretty ones... Yes, she acted nice and was pretty, but "Every Rose has its Thorn"... That's excellent advice Dave. I'm going to take all that on board. I've certainly experienced the scam merchants before when I was looking for a telesales person to make calls for my business, being the nice guy I am I let this 'older gentleman' do his own thing, use his own pitch and choose his own ours. What a mug I was. I came back to him a week later and he submitted his hours saying he did 70 hours of work. However he had not made any appointments and when I did a couple of spot check calls to see if he'd actually called these people he hadn't. I refused to pay him for 70 hours and compromised to 35 but he insisted on the 70. It got quite messy and when I went to his flat to collect my equipment etc he started whacking me with his walking stick because I only paid him for 35 hours which was actually 34 hours more than I should have paid for. He quite clearly hadn't done anything and was looking to rip me off. looking back on it I suppose it was my fault for letting him get on with it himself and for not being firmer in the structure he followed. I'm still too nice in business and I'm still chasing clients for payment. The one thing I do find useful now Is to always let everyone know that I'm half Sicilian on my father's side which seems to always help in collecting the cash ;-)

Answer» HI,
I want to set up a small IT business which will offer help in anything from setting up a laptop/desktop through to creating accounts on social media and such like.
It's basically something I've been thinking about for some time because I believe there are many people (particularly the over 50s and retirement age) who simply don't know the basics, especially with Social media like facebook, Twitter, etc but desperately want to be able to COMMUNICATE, make friends, stay in touch or simply keep themselves occupied.
What I'd like to know is, are there any courses or websites I could look at that would help me get some grounding and help put a plan together.
I have a reasonable IT knowledge but I just wanted to see if there was anything specific out there that could help me build something professionally with structure.
Any ideas would be grateful, no matter how trivial.
Thanks
DavidIf there are any community colleges in your area you could always propose a workshop or a course to instruct.

I have run a few workshops before where people pay as little as $25 per seat for a 1 day event for 4 hours of instruction and hands on, or $125 per seat for a 4 week ( 4 course day ) workshop which is more involved with homework and a final at the end for a certificate of completion.

Your are able to use the resources of the community college so you only need to bring the content to them, and the community college gets a portion of the take and you get the difference.

Best of all is that you do not need a teaching degree to run a workshop. You simply just have to put together a well structured presentation and then submit that to the community college to see if its something that they may be interested in allowing you to instruct there. As as in my case for my first workshop there, there was a mock demonstration which I performed with an overhead projector, and dry erase board and gave hand outs and had them follow along with it. This then sold them on it as a well structured workshop and so they agreed to promote this and I got 60% of the take and they got 40%. Following this workshop I also instructed others and it was a nice setup.

Workshops that I offered in the past were:

- Computer Basics ( 1 day, 4 hour workshop )

- Introduction to HTML ( 4 days, 1 day per week workshop 16 hours total )

- Introduction to Microsoft Office 2000 ( 8 days, 2 days per week, 4 hours per day, for a month workshop.. with MS Word, MS Excel, MS Power Point, and MS Access with 1 week for each as a bare minimum basic introduction )

The Computer Basics was a good one which wasnt too bad. Some people were totally lost sitting in front of a computer which was running Windows 98 at the time back in 1999. And it was mainly a follow along and questions answered as given.

The Introduction to HTML was the course I had the most fun with. While it did not cover Java Script, I allowed people to add it into their work if they wanted to go beyond just HTML. This course was the best flow I guess I could say to content to cover per period of time given to cover it.

The Introduction to Microsoft Office 2000 was really really tight to pull off all the content in that given period of time, and it assumed that the student would work on lab projects at home and bring them back with them on the 2nd day of each MS Office product week in which we went over it all, answered questions, and gave them a quick open book quiz. MS Word was easy as cake. MS Excel had its difficulties at times with either a student who worked with Lotus 123 all their life and is now working with MS Excel in which there are differences some of them cross supported and some not as well as anyone who stuggled with simple algebra it was apparent were going to really struggle and so I had to stay over once to explain simple algebra for them to understand the formulas. Power Point was a fun course that was pretty easy to instruct and very little problems here once they were familiar with how to work in the WYSIWYG environment. MS Access though was for about 90% of the students well beyond their grasp of knowledge but it had to be covered. It made them familiar with what MS Access was, and how to make the most simplest of databases, control the content that can be entered, and generate a simple report. The most simplest database I used was an Inventory where each item had a Stock Number, Description, Count on Hand, and Price etc. The other issue with this course was that only about 10% of the students owned MS Office 2000, and so some of them had to come to the community college throughout the week and work in their homework using the college computers because they couldnt afford or didnt want to buy the software that they were learning. Of the 10% that had outside use of MS Office 2000, most of them used their computers at work to do their homework. Then there was the issue of some people still using Office 97 and learning 2000 and working on projects and running into issues due to the changes as well as EXPLAINING to them that if they wish to work on this project at home that they will need to save their files as 97 format instead of 2000 to their 3.5" floppy disks.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So my suggestion is possibly to get workshops going either at a community college or somewhere else that you can host them, and then if they are successful and you have the money to invest in creating a training facility, invest it then, however it may be better to tap into another facilities already existing resource for computers, software, and place/space to hold the trainings than it is to host them yourself.

Lastly, I did have some students that asked me if I was available to tutor them 1 on 1. And while this may work out for some, I found this more difficult than training many at the same time. The biggest problem with 1 on 1 training is that you have to be paid for what you are worth, and many of the people who need 1 on 1 training cant afford to pay you say $20 an hour to train them which is what I charged 13 years ago. For some individuals it worked out well and they ran with the information and eventually got to a point that they didnt feel the need for me to guide them, while for others such as one woman who claimed took a promotion at her job, it was a bad situation. The bad situation started off with that she was promoted to a secretary job and this job required her to use MS Office, and prior to this she was an assembler for a manufacturing plant. While she knew how to turn a computer on and know how to check her AOL mail at home on her Windows 95 computer, the work computer she had was running Windows 2000 Professional and MS Office 2000, so she felt lost. To get the position the employer asked her if she had computer experience and she said YES because she had an Acer computer at her home that was on the internet with dial-up, and they asked her if she had worked with MS Office before and she said YES, when she told me that she said that because she wanted to land this job so badly for the $5 more per hour at $14 per hour from $9 an hour job, that she had to LIE to them to impress them and get the job. And now she is trying to cover up the lie by getting trained as fast as she could on this all and this way the lie disappears. I was shocked at what she was telling me since, most positions like this are ones that are awarded and then they drop stacks of paperwork on you do enter/file etc as a secretary position holds. She was hoping to master it within a week for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point. I had to explain to her that unless she is one of those people who see's something once and never forgets it and can speed read through books and retain the info, that she is not going to master it in a week. Long story way shortened, I instructed her for a week, 4 hours a NIGHT, by bringing over my laptop that I had Office 2000 on it since she didnt have Office 2000 and I gave her a crash course on mostly Word and Excel. She said that she understood it all and we agreed that at the end of the week when she was paid she would pay me for my time in which I gave her a discounted rate of $15 per hour $60 per night of 4 hrs of hands on training for the 5 nights I helped her. So she owed me $300 for my time. She said oh, I forgot this week is rent week, I will pay you next week instead if thats ok, and I being the nice guy that I am said ok, but I really need to be paid next friday. That next friday came and went and so I placed a phone call and her phone was disconnected now. I then knew where she worked and went to pay her a visit about the $300 bill and she wasnt there. She never worked for this place ever and they dont know who she is. I then go to visit her appartment and she is not there, and a neighbor heard me knocking and said that her and her room mate skipped out the one night and left the appartment with all their posessions and they dont know where she went. I said did she ever happen to state where she worked, and they said oh yeah she worked at this one company, and that one company was the same one that she told me that is a lie. So be sure your paid daily for 1 on 1 lessons vs allowing it to go a week before paid in which you could be out like $300 for your time. For workshops everyone had to pay up front, so it was a good deal, but for 1 on 1 tutoring its paid after the instruction and you have some risk in getting stiffed. While this is probably a rare situation, it happens. Quote from: dgreen on June 27, 2014, 07:18:33 AM

I believe there are many people (particularly the over 50s and retirement age) who simply don't know the basics

I am way over 50 and it really tees me off when younger people express surprise that I know anything about IT. Even when they are being nice and say things like "Hey, you know a lot for a guy your age!".
Quote from: DaveLembke on June 27, 2014, 04:40:20 PM

So be sure your paid daily for 1 on 1 lessonsWhile this is probably a rare situation, it happens.

When I was repairing colour TVs and stereos I learned this lesson.
Quote from: DaveLembke on June 27, 2014, 04:40:20 PM

one woman who claimed took a promotion at her job

The ones who burned me like that were always the pretty ones...
Quote

The ones who burned me like that were always the pretty ones...

Yes, she acted nice and was pretty, but "Every Rose has its Thorn"... That's excellent advice Dave.
I'm going to take all that on board.
I've certainly experienced the scam merchants before when I was looking for a telesales person to make calls for my business, being the nice guy I am I let this 'older gentleman' do his own thing, use his own pitch and choose his own ours. What a mug I was. I came back to him a week later and he submitted his hours saying he did 70 hours of work. However he had not made any appointments and when I did a couple of spot check calls to see if he'd actually called these people he hadn't.
I refused to pay him for 70 hours and compromised to 35 but he insisted on the 70.
It got quite messy and when I went to his flat to collect my equipment etc he started whacking me with his walking stick because I only paid him for 35 hours which was actually 34 hours more than I should have paid for.
He quite clearly hadn't done anything and was looking to rip me off.
looking back on it I suppose it was my fault for letting him get on with it himself and for not being firmer in the structure he followed.
I'm still too nice in business and I'm still chasing clients for payment.
The one thing I do find useful now Is to always let everyone know that I'm half Sicilian on my father's side which seems to always help in collecting the cash ;-)

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