Learning to Learn

The title’s dumb. I know. But it makes its point.

Learning how to work Windows, or a word processor, or surf the Internet are all very important but they do all flow from the same basic idea. That is the keyboard and the mouse. Once you get what a function key and a double-click are you can quickly learn how to use any piece of software yourself, really!

There are several points of interest that we have covered so far that you need to remember, once those are clearly in your mind as you go to tackle New Piece of Kit 2004 then without too much help you should be able to learn how to do it all by yourself.

Item 1 – How to click

This is probably the most important factor in Windows to learn, how to click and where, try to remember the following:

· On a menu (shown under item 2 on the left) or on your Start Menu you single left click on an item. Example, single left click on “Help”, then single left click “Help Topics”.

· On a toolbar (shown under item 3) you single left click on any of the buttons.

· On an icon (on your desktop or in Explorer) you double left click by standard (you can change this, but more on that later).

Once you have this memorised you can start to use the following skills to get your software to work with you.

Item 2 – Help Software

The inbuilt help of a piece of Windows software	The help toolbar icon

The best way to get out of a sticky situation in any software is to hit F1, your local friendly help key. This key allows you to call up a comprehensive help system for your software. This is no substitute for a wonderfully plain English book, such as this (what a plug!) but it will help you. Help can also be accessed from either the help menu (shown above) or a help button on a toolbar (also above).

Item 3 – The toolbar

A toolbar, these icons are: New, open, save, print, print preview, spell check, cut, copy, paste

Here you can see a toolbar, in this case from Microsoft Office Word, not all toolbars look alike, they all have different buttons on. Toolbars are used as a quick way of performing an action that is also available on a menu, for example the second button on this toolbar is “Open File…”, this can also be achieved by going on the menu to File > Open… but as a quick action you can use the button. Learning what icons do what (the ones shown above are the same in all applications) will help you to start getting to grips with new software. It is worth noting that putting your mouse cursor over an icon without clicking for a second or two will bring up a caption telling you what that button does.

Item 4 - The menu

A menu, shown here is its toolbar icon, the action it performs, and the keyboard shortcut

Menus are in almost all programs, they start with the top level menu, where you click on the title (File, Edit, View etc) then you pick on an action (New, Open, Close etc) they can even go deeper if they have an arrow at the right (Send To for example). Learning where menu options are will help you to be more comfortable with the software as well as learn what functions the software has.

Item 5 - Reading your screen!

A dumb point but one that most people don’t always follow which is when panic sets in I’m afraid. When you open a piece of software you are not familiar with you should always move your cursor over the toolbar icons (if there is one) to see what they all do, then look through the menu (if there is one) at what options are available.

The software may not let you do this if there is some screen in front stopping you, a welcome screen or a registration screen for example. Simply read everything, software will always tell you what to do these days, the trick is to read what is currently been given to you.

Once you can use a menu, a toolbar, read what is in a window, and call up help on those difficult topics you are well on your way to using any piece of software.