Some background information is required to take advantage of all these resources. This is an attempt at a primer on what you need to know to work with these tools.
How to get someone to help
No time and no interest in learning how to make a computer do somersaults? If your management skills are such that you can recruit someone else to help, fine. Do try to learn some of the lingo and be aware of what's possible, so you can be a more effective leader and the team can be more efficient. [See Technology Sanity Check for additional tips.]
But if you want to be more self-sufficient, read on for a checklist of what you need to know. Consider taking a class at a community college or other training facility, or finding someone to tutor you on your own system. Libraries may also have resources to help step you through learning these topics.
How to use your browser
The "browser" is the program you use to surf the web (e.g. Internet Explorer, Safari). You enter web addresses into an "address box," you can save web addresses as "bookmarks" or "favorites," and you may have other tools, like direct access to Google built into the program. A popular new browser that's not susceptible to the IE security problems is Firefox (www.mozilla.org). [See download section.]
How to use Adobe Acrobat Reader
Documents that are created for print, are usually posted to the web as PDF (Portable Document Format) files. To view them, you need the Adobe Acrobat reader, a free program that's available from www.adobe.com. For more information on using PDF files, see the discussion of Acrobat in the AAUW NC web. [See also download section.]
How to use your e-mail program
Aside from sending and receiving mail, you should investigate how to create a "list" in your address book, how to send and receive attachments, and how to forward just the key parts of messages.
How to use an Office Suite
A word processor and spreadsheet are key personal computer applications that can vastly improve your ability to manage documents and data. No matter what your job, you can communicate more effectively if you use the formatting tools once available only to typesetters to get good looking documents whose format supports their content and makes it easier to read. If you deal with any data (addresses, finances, lists of any kind), the time you spend learning to use a spreadsheet will be very worthwhile. When you combine the two (word processor and spreadsheet), you're well on your way to the magic of mail merge for producing labels, customizable form letters, and more! A "suite" can include a presentation program (e.g. PowerPoint), a drawing program and a database. But the word processor and spreadsheet are the two key items.
For most people, "Office Suite" means Microsoft Office. However, be aware that there is an open source suite, OpenOffice (see www.openoffice.org) that runs on Windows and Macs, and can be used to share files with Microsoft Office users -- and it's a free download. If you're having trouble opening or sharing Microsoft Word documents, and you don't want to purchase Office, consider OpenOffice as an alternative. One key feature of OpenOffice is that it can create PDF files without any added software.
How to use programs specific for your job
- Finance Officer: Quicken or similar bookkeeping software to make it much easier to generate reports
- Newsletter Editor: Microsoft Publisher or a better page layout program can make layout much simpler than trying to do the same things in, say, Microsoft Word.
- Anyone who needs to e-mail documents: Adobe Acrobat (or PDF995 or CutePDF or OpenOffice) to create PDF files. [Acrobat has additional features for manipulating these files, but is not worth the high price if all you need is to create PDF files from your documents.]
How to download and install a program
If you want to use any program that didn't come with your computer (Firefox, Acrobat Reader), you may be able to purchase it on CD, but it's often cheaper and quicker to download the software and install it. Whether you're using Windows or Macintosh, almost all programs have a fairly standard installation method and once you learn how to do it with one program the rest will usually go the same way.