I’ve been asked to do a six-hour version of my three-hour “Tech Support on the Fly” workshop for libraians (mostly rural) in Utah. The current version covers the following topics: (not in this order)
Dealing with temp files
Defrag
Scandisk
File associations
Computer’s frozen, now what
Registry basics
Finding your computer’s IP address
Paperclips
Ping
Traceroute
Whois
Windows/Microsoft Update
New storage media (Jumpdrives, memory sticks, etc.)
The last 45-min of the current class is me taking apart a computer, describing it all, passing the pieces around, then reassembling it. I’m attempting to get several computers to have the students work in a small group. This however, will not take up an additional three hours, and I can’t count on it happening.
So, I need topics. What else should I cover? (Sorry, but security-related issues such as anti-virus and spyware are covered in a different workshop.)
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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3 Replies to “I need your help”
Is printing out of scope? A huge amount of our on-the-fly computer help has to do with printing.
Microsoft Office annoyances? (How do I make it stop automatically doing X?)
If you’re not doing this already, but maybe go into talking about safe mode, showing it in action, and the limitations of safe mode.
Also make sure to show to show the network cable and jack and compare it with a phone cable and jack. I had an employee this morning plug in a phone cable into a laptop’s modem slot, but the other end went into a network jack.
Also be sure to show the Network Interface Card in action, particularly the blinking lights. It’s all about the blinking lights. 😉 That can be a good indication if things are working or not. There have been times where I had to go into the properties for the network connection and change the speed and duplex (10 half, 100 full, etc.) for the connection to work.
You might want to include a “tales of the bleeding obvious” session:
PC “not working?” * Try switching the screen on. * Check the screen brightness. *Check the contrast Power cables work best when they’re plugged in… …and when the fuse hasn’t been stolen from the plug. Changing the colours on the screen can be really cool but you probably don’t want the foreground and background colours to be the same. Change the settings as you may, if your printer only handles A4 paper you aren’t going to get an A3 print.
This should be almost insulting, but experience suggests otherwise. I’m sure others could share similar.
Is printing out of scope? A huge amount of our on-the-fly computer help has to do with printing.
Microsoft Office annoyances? (How do I make it stop automatically doing X?)
If you’re not doing this already, but maybe go into talking about safe mode, showing it in action, and the limitations of safe mode.
Also make sure to show to show the network cable and jack and compare it with a phone cable and jack. I had an employee this morning plug in a phone cable into a laptop’s modem slot, but the other end went into a network jack.
Also be sure to show the Network Interface Card in action, particularly the blinking lights. It’s all about the blinking lights. 😉 That can be a good indication if things are working or not. There have been times where I had to go into the properties for the network connection and change the speed and duplex (10 half, 100 full, etc.) for the connection to work.
You might want to include a “tales of the bleeding obvious” session:
PC “not working?”
* Try switching the screen on.
* Check the screen brightness.
*Check the contrast
Power cables work best when they’re plugged in…
…and when the fuse hasn’t been stolen from the plug.
Changing the colours on the screen can be really cool but you probably don’t want the foreground and background colours to be the same.
Change the settings as you may, if your printer only handles A4 paper you aren’t going to get an A3 print.
This should be almost insulting, but experience suggests otherwise. I’m sure others could share similar.