Ideas for improving the Earn-A-Computer program for both adults and children.

This page serves as just a scratchpad for improving existing programs.

There would be a 15-30 minute lecture on a specific topic with a 15 minute instructor lead exercise.

This means that the instructor leads the class for the first 15 minutes, then does a 15 minute demo for the students by herself for the next 15 minutes. This would give the students a chance to focus on the instructor's computer/screen.

This would seem to appeal to adult students. Kids get too impatient, and are more eager to figure out things for themselves.

All students could receive a three ring binder or paper folder, and a thumb drive so they can take their work home .

We could share the classroom printer to the other computers, so that at least a few students could print out their documents that they created in that day's class and have it for reference later on. We might want to extend this to the kids' class. It would be nice for the kids to print out at least one page of their work to show their parents at the end of the class.

All students should be encouraged to respond to the instructor via email. I really like this one. Of course, this would mean that for the kids' classes, we'll have to find out where to put the e-mail class.

Exercises should be made available to students in electronic and printed forms.

We could create exercises and put them on the USB keys that we give out. Students who do the exercises could be given an extra reward or credit. For example, we could give out a resume or document with spelling errors, and students would have to run the spell-checker on the document, correct it, and bring back their USB key with the corrected document.

This would be a really good idea for adult students, and perhaps children students.

We could give simple written assignments with multiple choice question / answer. This would need some ironing out, and would obviously consume more time from instructors.