Today was the final day of a three-part series in Microsoft Excel and the students were very different than the ones I’ve been seeing in our Computer Basics, Internet Basics, Email, and Word workshops. A couple of the regulars were there and had a hard time keeping up, but we fortunately had two floaters and one instructor and that made things go smoothly. There were three different instructors each day, but I floated through all of them and got to see some different approaches to teaching Excel. One instructor uses a pre-made budget that he sends to himself so that people can see what lots of formatted data can look like, including split panes and freeze panes, several different formulas and some inserted comments, images and graphs.
One gentleman had an idea for an interesting project that he wanted to do, which is a great way to approach Excel – having a goal can make the process stick, I think. And we used a personal budget as an example of what a simple formula can do, which was something everyone could relate to. I saw a lot of light bulbs go on, and people really got into the concept of Excel.
My father is a wizard in Excel and can safely be called a power user, so I admit to some serious fall-back when Excel shows up in my life. Hard to rely on his expertise, though, in a class 3,000 miles away. But he’ll be happy to hear that I’ve been paying attention and was able to answer some questions.
Next week is Powerpoint, which is the last workshop for the year. Everything starts up again in February, and I’ve signed on to volunteer for another round. I’ve gotten to know some of the other instructors and have been really impressed with how well they teach these classes.
