Well yesterday was a bit frantic, so I never got a scribble done – or my
pivot tables, for that matter. I am hoping today will settle down, but in case
it doesn’t I will scribble a bit now before it starts.
Yesterday (Thursday) was another meeting, this time with farmer’s wives and
a local business group who want to provide classes for the community. The
community didn’t want the sort of classes they were offering. The farming
group wants tuition in the software applications they use in their business,
i.e. lessons on how to put a section of an Excel spreadsheet into a word
document to print an invoice, or how to do a business card, etc.
The business advisors want them to do NVQs and get a certificate.
Qualifications are not much good to a farmer who just wants an invoice
printing and posting. My baby (the Acer tablet) faithfully recorded all the
notes taken at the meeting, and both groups were impressed by her
performance. I think it is fair to say that, when the price comes down a bit,
all will be buying one. The fact that it is possible to write with one hand
whereas typing fast takes two hands is a major factor in its usefulness. A
few of the group can’t type anyway, and they were intrigued when they saw
that the character recognition software did a good job. Everyone had a
little go with it and signed their names and drew pictures. We also took a
digital photo and put that into the minutes. My alter ego (Baldric) will
have to come up with a cunning plan to get some tuition for the farmers from
somewhere else. In our rural area we don’t have access to broadband so
online lessons are not really an option, and farmers don’t have the time or
patience for long courses – they only want to learn the bits they need to
know.
I also think the manufacturers of tablets should pay me commission! There
are a lot of people ’round here who will be investing as soon as they have
saved up. The more I use it the more I learn about it. As a fairly illiterate computer
type person, I am not ‘au fait’ with things geeky, so each thing I discover
is quite a thrill. I found yesterday that a few seconds of steady pressure with
the stylus is the same as a right click, which is very handy. I also tried
recording without a microphone, but the playback was very quiet. I will have
to save up for a mike.
I attached the CD drive and loaded software last night with no problems.
So far the only glitch I have had with it is the catch – it is sometimes
tricky to fasten down as a tablet.
Well, I had better get on with the work and today might see me turn a page in
my book and hopefully by the end of the weekend I will know more about pivot tables… TWSEB awaits.
