Under the heading of this category (learning) I will be showing you a few things, giving some (unsolicited) advice, and generally explaining some of the things you could be doing with your PC. I should probably state up front that this information is primarily focused for owners of PC’s with Windows Vista or Windows 7, but users of Macs could find much of value here since much of what I intend to be talking about will relate to internet usage versus some of the strange workings of PCs and Macs.

First off, there are some things to think about. The most important idea to get into your head will be to realize that for beginners there are many things fear in this topic area (PCs and the internet). I suppose I could paraphrase FDR in saying that there is nothing to fear but fear itself (whatever that really means…a freshman philosophy class might be a good place to delve into that murkiness…).

Regardless, I will explain what I mean about fear. There are things to think about here, big things… The world has changed profoundly since the ‘old days’ (and here the old days could be the 1980’s!). The pace of how we dealt with the things has increased, information is overflowing the old banks and there is literally too much to go through. Nowadays you can (using the internet) have free access to news sources and newspapers from all over the world, you have access to most of the same weather information that the TV weather man uses, and so on… This may be a bigger change in how we deal with information than the use of the printing press!

While this sounds like a great idea, it obviously imposes some new problems for us as users of information. Back in the day, we didn’t have enough real access to a lot of information to reliably find some sort of truth. Now, with so much at our fingertips we need to develop some new skills. And even then there is this broad sense of bewilderment that hits many beginners on the internet (and PCs in general); all of this can be quite overwhelming.

More on this later…

I want to show you some things that are easy to do, and MAY greatly increase your knowledge, your wellbeing and general awareness of current events, and finally allow you to start to develop some practical autonomy with your computer.

So…right now I will give you a quick overview of some of the things I will be covering:

· How to use a web browser.

· How to use a search engine.

· Why it is important to have a spare e-mail address.

· How to deal with passwords to make you life safe (and actually convenient!).

· How to use some of the social networking sites to your advantage (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Skype, IM’s, etc.)

· There will be quite a few more topics in the next couple of months, so I would humbly suggest that if you have a particular topic you want me to show you PLEASE write a comment to this post and I will try to answer your questions as quickly as I can.

Be Sociable, Share!

•