I recently watched a PowerPoint presentation in a night class of mine, and every time the presenter advanced the slides, she would right click, and click “Next Slide”. I wondered if she also hit the Ring Road to get to her neighbour’s house. This led me to question my role as a Business Educator. With computers, one of our main tools, there are often various ways to perform a certain task. For example, in most Microsoft Office programs, to start a new document, you can:
a) Click File, click New…
b) Click the “New file” button on the toolbar.
c) Hold CTRL, press N.
d) Open up an entire new instance of the program.
While all of these are acceptable, is it enough that teachers teach a student how to do something? Do we have a responsibility to teach students to not only be proficient while at a computer, but also efficient? I think we do. If you watch a Computer Master at work using the CTRL functions, and the SHIFT, end, and home keys, it is simply awe-inspiring.
For example, if it takes 0.5 seconds to use CTRL-N, and it takes 1.8 seconds to click file –> New, you save 1.3 seconds every time you create a new, for example, Word document. I estimate I have created 2500 Word documents in my 5 years of University. I saved 54 minutes at the computer, just by using that one CTRL-N function. Then there’s CTRL-B for bold, mouse-wheels to scroll, the possibilities for efficiency are endless.
I truly feel that in any subject, there are various efficient and inefficient ways of doing things, and both should be introduced if possible. Sometimes, it is nice to know how long somethings takes the inefficient way for one to truly appreciate how short it is using the alternative method.
Dan
2 responses so far ↓
1
Amanda
// Apr 7, 2007 at 3:35 am
You forgot the Alt functions.
The reasons I’m good with the keyboard is not actually to impress my CS friends, but rather because when I was younger and being punished, my parents would take away the mouse, theorizing that I would not be able to use the computer. Also, I often sit a few feet back from the computer with the keyboard on my lap where I can’t reach the mouse, so it’s handy to know how to get by without it.
As far as teaching effeciency, as a math teacher, I obviously see the same thing a lot. We teach the students how to do something the long way so they understand what they are doing, and then once they’ve spent two periods mastering how to do it, we can teach them the shortcut method that turns a 4 minute problem into a 20 second problem.
I am often guilty of only wanting to teach the shortcut, as doing something the long way always seems to me to be such a waste of time. I have a bad habit of wanted to simply teach a “recipe” for how to solve problems of a certain type. It’s hard for me to keep in mind that while this will help students pass the exam, it does little to nothing to increase their understanding of mathematics. Something for me to work on.
But I don’t consider this to be quite the same as your examples. I don’t think the student would understand what is was they were doing any less if they only knew to press “Ctrl+N” for a new document. In fact, off the top of my head, I can’t think of any computer shortcuts that decrease understanding of the concept. Can you?
2
mrbenesh
// Apr 7, 2007 at 7:14 am
Hmm… computer shortcuts – this might not be defined as such, but off the top of my head, I think of Microsoft FrontPage. It is an excellent tool for developing webpages that actually look half decent. However, for students to learn this before knowing the HTML that goes on behind the scenes can often leave them floundering when it comes to trying to fix a glitch that can not be seen in the WYSIWYG (wizz-ee-wig, what you see is what you get) editor.
By teaching them the long way in the beginning, they can really appreciate what Microsoft FrontPage is doing for them behind the scenes.
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