Home > Jan's CompLit 101

Jan's Illustrated
Computer Literacy 101

Do you feel confused, befuddled, & lost when it comes to computers?
Do you wish you had the time, and dollars, to take a real, live course on computers?

Then these lessons are for you!

Everyone picks up bits and pieces of information while using and working around computers. This can leave some pretty big gaps in your information landscape.

These lessons are an attempt to fill in the missing pieces and to tie it all together. The "Illustrated" part means there will be lots of pictures. Other sets of lecture notes I have seen online are pretty much bare text. While the writing is often great, such text-only notes do not take advantage of the possibilities of web pages. So you will see some animations and graphics that enhance the text and, hopefully, make it clearer.

New Material

April 29, 2017

Updated Working with Windows 10 to match ver. 1703, Creators Update (Win10 CU)

October 2016

Updated Working with Windows 10 to include the Anniversary Update (Win10 AU)

June 2016

Revised lessons to include Office 2016 and current browsers:
Working with the Web, Working with Words, Working with Numbers, Working with Presentations, Working with Databases

2015

Added Working with Windows 10

This site is free for personal use.
Links are welcome!

For other uses, please see the box below and the Permissions page.

Some archived lesson units are available in both English and Spanish (español) on this site, but not the newest material.

Translations: Use the Google Translate box at the top left of each page in the new layout to get an automatic translation, even for menus. For pages still in the old layout, go to http://translate.google.com and type or copy and paste the address of the page you want translated into the box on the left. Pick a language from the drop box.

I do a lot of revising and updating, but with computers, today's best is tomorrow's dinosaur. So, please accept my apologies in advance for outdated or incomplete information. Let me know when you spot something that has gotten stale or when something new needs to be added.

Learn a lot, or just polish what you already know. But have fun!

CompLit 101 available for download or on disc.

   Download Popular bundle: $26.95 US
         Contains all lessons except Working with Databases
    Download Working with Databases: $15.95 US
Disc copy of download = $11.90 US each when ordered with a download.
Disc only of Popular bundle=     $30.95 US each.
Disc only of Full bundle of ALL lessons = $54.95 US plus shipping.
License to burn student copies on disc = $5.00 US each. Must have the order ID from download order or disc purchase. Not for re-sale! Can charge students only enough to cover license and media used.

Why buy a download or a disc?
   - No ads.
   - Pages load faster from your own hard disk or a disc!
   - Saves connection time.
   - Use lessons on a computer that does not have an Internet connection.
   - No worries about the web server or Internet connection going down.
   - To help cover the costs of the web site!

How to order

Teachers: If you would like to use these materials in your class, please read the Permissions page and complete the Permissions Form. It's easy!

Icon: Treasure Chest Your incentive: A set of end-of-the-chapter questions/exercises for Computer Basics for any teacher who receives permission by using the Permissions form!

Final step: After you have used the site with your class, complete the Evaluation form to let me know how things went. (It's part of the deal!) Thanks!

Errors: Don't forget to tell me about errors that you and your students find. You may wind up in the Hall of Honor!

Ads: Too many clicks from the same IP address result in no payments for any of those clicks! Normal clicking because the student is interested in the advertised product, service, or school, is fine. But a whole classroom clicking on the same ad will backfire.

How These Lessons Work

Browsers: These lessons are formatted using style sheets. Most modern browsers show the pages as planned but one never knows what a new browser or new version of an old browser will do!
Menus: Most menus are created using JavaScript, so if you have turned JavaScript off for your browser, you won't see the menus.
Resolution: The layout was designed to look best and be the easiest to read at a resolution of at least 980 pixels wide, which would be a nice size window on most modern monitors.
Quizzes: After each lesson section, there is a review quiz. I'm not keeping score though. If your first choice of answer doesn't suit, keep on trying. You'll get a popup message after each choice.
Exercises: The hands-on Working with... units have student exercises at the end of each project. These exercises give you practice and add new skills, too. These are your "homework" exercises. Don't skip them! There are new skills in the exercises as well as useful practice.

Where did all of this come from?

The lessons started as homework! I was taking some of the first online courses, which were about writing web pages, in 1997-98. I had to create web pages about something. I started writing what is now Computer Basics, using my lecture notes and some old PowerPoint presentations from a college course I taught on computer literacy at Roane State Community College in Tennessee. So Computer Basics represents the core information from half of that course, the other half being the hands-on assignments with Microsoft Office software. If you master the materials contained in Computer Basics, you may consider yourself to have done half of that college computer literacy course. And for no fees! Aren't you smart!!

The other topics, Working with Windows, Working with the Web, Working with Words, Working with Numbers, Working with Presentations, and Working with Databases, are hands-on lessons that guide you as you actually work at the computer. Different courses would use different combinations and different amounts of these topics.