I work as a program director for a non-profit devoted to mentoring and tech literacy in low income 7-12 graders. As such, I am often looking for useful curriculum related to a wide variety of programs, tasks and skills. I am often in debate with myself and others if it is better to provide the students with practical skills related to secretarial-type work or to explore the outer boundaries with projects in graphics, animation and web design. Our approach is to focus on allowing students to explore and produce with the more creative software while providing auxiliary work with students who see the value of learning the more practical Office suite.
Not wishing to reinvent the wheel, I regularly look for clear, self-directed lessons suited for my students. Oh, and free or cheap, because we're a non-profit. I've looked at Microsoft's Digital Literacy Curriculum several times to see if we can use it to demonstrate proficiency. Now I can hear some of my techie friends slapping themselves in the head, about to eviscerate me because I even mention the Evil Empire. Let me introduce you to the real world outside of your basement and Silicon Valley. Most people out here in the light, don't care or know about Open Source. They are just grateful that they can reliably turn on their computer and spit out some information. Their focus is on their work, not arguing about the benefits of Ubuntu versus Morphix.
Back to the Digital Literacy Curriculum, it sucks. No surprise there, it is a Microsoft product. Now I know I am late to the bandwagon, but I've still got to pile on. Everything about Microsoft sucks. I am a native proud Mac user, but practicality has required me to have a fairly good working knowledge of the Windows world. I work with Microsoft as a recipient of donated software and OSs as part of our non-profit work. Each month when I need to report our usage I curse in my head. It's almost as though they take pride in having an interface that is clunky and unusable. For a company that's flush with capital they sure are stingy with any ease of use or follow through to their systems. The Digital Literacy Curriculum reflects this attitude. It's almost as though Microsoft is full of idea-men with no one to come back to ensure quality control. hmmmm....
I've looked at it before at work, but I wanted to give it a more detailed fish eye if I was going to record my impressions. Here on my mac computer I cannot even log into their curriculum because I don't have Internet Explorer. Really, I mean, really? Can Microsoft not see the writing on the wall. Nevermind that I'm on a Mac. What about all those people out there who are using Firefox or Chrome? (Too bad I can't round out that list with Netscape... I like 3s.) Why is it that they are so dead set on protecting their product that they cannot break their walls of paranoia and protectionism to become more welcoming and user friendly?
24 hours later...I had to reinstall IE, or maybe I didn't. It had been set to "work offline" which took a while to find. They have two tools pulldown menus that do not have the same functionality. It would be cooler to pretend like I don't have "user error" issues. Everyone has user error issues; those of us with healthy self-image can own it. Anyway, accessed the curriculum at long last.
I was disappointed. After all my sturm und drang getting it set up, it wasn't horrible, it was just typically boring. A metallic voice read some prose to me; the sound screeched through my veins like fingernails on chalkboard. There was a lot of tasteful blue and gray on white. It was just dull. And basic. Now, I do have to consider the fact that this is designed for neophytes, people who still need basic computer skills. Just because people are ignorant shouldn't mean that they should get bad training; that's perhaps one reason that they are ignorant in the first place.
This material is clearly not current, and likely I shouldn't even be wasting breath on it. The last update was October 2007 which is so last century in Internet terms. Except it's not. I get emails regularly from Microsoft touting this curriculum. They just sent me another disk encouraging me to use it with my clients. More of the same didactic lecture and demonstration that is already failing learners all over.
--Dolly
Suck Quotient-- 2
| usability | 1 the actual content was fine, getting to it was an exercise in perseverance and patience. |
| aesthetics | 2 non offensive |
| innovation | 1 no |
| accuracy | 4 the content was correct, just dull |
| fun | 0 none |
**Note
I was going to look at version 2 to be all fair and
balanced, but while it worked when I first accessed it, once I
installed the add ons that Microsoft recommended, I ended up with a
black screen, no content. You win Microsoft!
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