Computer Literacy

This wikibook is a guide to teaching computer literacy, the ability to take full advantage of computers, software, Internet, and online resources. Computer literacy classes usually precede more advanced topics like programming, digital literacy, and information literacy.

Since computers are everywhere, people are usually introduced to them as little children. This book is therefore aimed at children aged 6-10 or more precisely the teachers and parents who lead them. This book can be nevertheless used for independent study by older children and adults. Style is suitable for young children with little text, lots of images, and short tasks.

Despite easy access to computers, children tend to use them in a very limited way to consume content like movies and games. This book aims to expand their horizons, to get their feet wet, so to speak. It focuses on discovery in the spirit of "ma, look what the computer can do!". There are no drills, tests, or deep dives in this book, because they would just drain time and patience that is better used to discover more of the seemingly infinite computing landscape.

Teachers and parents are advised to read the Foreword that gives more reasoning for structure and style of the book. Contributors should review Contributing chapter.

Table of Contents

This is an early outline draft.

• Foreword
• Hardware
• Software
• Operating system
• Mouse
• Keyboard - link to touch typing course
• On and off
• Apps - open and close apps, quick overview of some preinstalled apps, shown before everything else, so that we have material to practice on
• Desktop
• Calculator - a simple useful app to be introduced first
• Plaintext editor - already used when trying out keyboard, this is about all the things it can do
• Browser - offline until now to avoid the many distractions of the internet
• Files - needs to wait until we have something to see in it
• Contributing

Unsorted ideas for content:

• picture viewer
• video player
• music player
• gimp basics (or other photo editing)
• online dictionary
• maps (OpenStreetMap, satellite, street view)
• wolfram alpha
• Wikipedia, simple, interesting topics?
• weather
• formatted printable documents
• blender basics
• email
• instant messaging
• KeePassX
• virtual machine