Jumping In

Today I'm jumping in and joining the world of blog. Creating a blog means making a commitment to put my thoughts into words and communicate them on a daily basis. I have a lot of thoughts when it comes to computing.

I've been teaching people how to use the computer for 22 years. Probably longer than that if you count the summer jobs I had during college. I've taught in a classroom environment for most of those years teaching mostly adults from corporations and school districts.

Of course I can't leave out the many family rooms and dens in people's homes where I've sat beside someone eager to learn how to print a document or spreadsheet so that the columns line up and title is centered. In the last five years the questions turned to multimedia and the internet. Lately the common questions are how to manage email attachments, what's a PDF, how to get the pictures from the camera to the computer, and what does "I'm Feeling Lucky" mean in regards to the Google homepage.

In class last week at The PC Teacher classroom (www.thepcteacher.com), the topic was Efficiently Searching The Internet. During this class I teach a variety of techniques about how to define search criteria in order to narrow search results. One way is using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button:

1. From the Google homepage, single click in the search box and type your keyword. For instance, if you want to search the internet to find a museum of art in New York City, then in the search box type museum art new york city
2. Click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and Google will return the website that it finds as the best match to your search criteria.
3. Try these other combinations to get to your website quickly (type what is in bold then click "I'm Feeling Lucky"):

intrepid - Intrepid; Sea, Air & Space Museum

tenement - Tenement Museum

nycwax - Madame Tussuad's New York

whitney - Whitney Museum of American Art

sonywondertechlab - The Sony Wonder Technology Lab

imdb - Internet Movie Database

nyt - New York Times

cnn

msnbc

Continental

Usair – Us Airways / America West

Jetblue - Jet Blue Airline

Amer air - American Airlines

Delta - Delta Airlines

Southwest - Southwest Airlines

For those of you who live in northern NJ:

Allendale - The Borough of Allendale, NJ

Allendale schools - Allendale NJ School District

Ramsey.k12 - Ramsey NJ School District

Ramsey nj - The Borough of Ramsey, NJ

Mahwah - The Borough of Mahwah, NJ

Mahwah.k12 - Mahwah NJ School District

Bccls - Bergen County Cooperative Library System

Main catalog - Morris Automated Information Network Library Catalog

Pthsd - Parsippany/Troy Hills School District