In particular, and maybe beyond/apart from that, I am curious to know how each babbler learned to use a computer and then the specific programs that s/he needs to earn an income - ie, did you learn at school? at college? from friends or family? just by banging around and messing up a few early machines? And who paid for the computer you learned on?

I think this survey belongs in this forum because of what it might tell us about the stratification of job training in Canada and the U.S. (and Clog-boy and others, please chip in from wherever).

Me: for most of the work I've done, I had to be literate first of all, and I got there through publicly funded education. I began picking up the craft skills of book and magazine editing on the job in summer jobs as a teenager, but I consider that the first book publisher I worked for heavily subsidized that training by employing me while I taught myself more fast.

No work-related training ever. A few years of university, funded by work and what they used to call bursaries (your family had to be low-income to get them - no problem there!). Reading all the time - that's how I learned to understand and write. Still learning how to understand things.

Computers: Bought my first one (TX-81) in 1979 for $39. Couldn't do much with it, which forced me to learn assembly language. Second one (Commodore 64) in 1982 for $70 U.S. Used it for many years for all possible purposes, including word-processing, databases, etc. Bought a modem in 1985 (I think) and used it for electronic bulletin boards. Graduated to PCs in 1989, at work (not mine). All computer skills (such as they are) self-taught from books and magazines and playing around.

As for computer training, I was already pretty computer literate when I came on, but the administrative assistant in my department has already taken courses on HTML to move to a web publisher position. I would think basic computer training would be a prerequisite to come in, because even the most junior customer level positions need to use them daily.

Mine was the last senior class at my prep school that was able to graduate without taking a mandatory Computer Science course. I availed myself of that privilege to opt out. I had, however, been taught by Dad to use the word-processing 'VDTs' at the newspaper where he worked. That was as early as 6th grade.

First computer: Commodore VIC-20 round about 1982.I played games on it mostly. I had a friend who was into Apples, and so I had farted around with an Apple IIe-- again mostly to play games.

In my two and a half years of parent-financed college work, the most saleable skill I learned was to use a control-track videotape editor to pirate rented movies. I got my first job in television as a production assistant because I could run one of those dealies well enough.

The actual journalism I learnt was osmotic: from my father growing up, and in the trenches at that first TV job as I quickly progressed from PA to Producer. I had studied a bit photojournalism in college, but mostly I made it up as I went along.

I took a community college computer class round about 1990 and had to be the dork who asked, 'what's a mouse?' and similar idiocies.

So then, I suppose I am a testament to lucky birth, a certain amount of quasi-nepotism, an irresistable impulse toward copyright infringement, and a willingness to fake knowledge until it actually presents itself to me.

[ 09 April 2006: Message edited by: Crippled_Newsie ]

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Originally posted by skdadl:
In particular, and maybe beyond/apart from that, I am curious to know how each babbler learned to use a computer and then the specific programs that s/he needs to earn an income - ie, did you learn at school? at college? from friends or family? just by banging around and messing up a few early machines? And who paid for the computer you learned on?

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First computer - an Apple //c in 1984/85; my dad got it for me. Learned some BASIC from the books provided by Apple, and then got some other books and slowly started learning that language. Got into assembly in 1988 or so, and by then I also had quite a few games and utilities and such. Magazines - definitely magazines. Compute! and the like helped a lot.

So, since then I've been using one kind of computer or another, all my learning except for a few desultory courses in college and uni has been self-directed.

As for my general education and training? Public school all the way, and I've been heavily government-assisted one way or another for higher education. My technical school Chemical Engineering certificate was paid for entirely with the assistance of the Ministry of Skills, Training and Labour (Now Advanced Education), and my college and uni since 2001 have been paid for with government student loans as well as university-administered bursaries.

[ 09 April 2006: Message edited by: DrConway ]

My first introduction was in about 1984, in a high school computers class - after the excitement of learning how to turn the thing on, it was a definite letdown. I found typing class to be a lot more useful in teaching concrete skills. They were electric typewriters, after all.

About six years later, I was learning how to use an Apple computer - mostly by trial and error, a little bit by the book, and with a lot of troubleshooting help from computer lab people at the university. I stuck with Mac as long as was necessary - that is, until Windows caught on. I never bothered to learn DOS language - it all seemed to be very counter-intuitive.

I'm pretty much completely self-taught either learned at home or to some extent on the job...but mostly at home. I buy alot of computer books and magazines and use Google alot.

I find that most of the "geeky" type folks learned their computer skills in the "pre-Windows" era. Getting devices to work like modems, sound cards, etc. was a whole lot harder to do back then. You had to worry about IRQ conflicts and all that sort of thing. By comparison, its relatively easy now.

I find that folks who've learned how to use a computer in the "post Win95" era don't have a really good understanding of basic things like file and directory tree structures.

Employers more or less expect in-house geeks to "know everything" about how to get something to work without having spent a single cent on training.

[ 09 April 2006: Message edited by: radiorahim ]

I grew up in a home which had many books, a daily newspaper, and numerous magazines and local weeklies; two of us became avid bookworms, buying books in stores and through school by mail-order, and our parents would take us to the big library in the city in self-defense, as it were. So I evolved basic reading and writing skills; and my writing was honed by teachers who expected students to read and to write stories, essays, plays, etc. Two of the best were junior high Social Studies teachers who found themselves teaching us English as well.

We also had the World Book Encyclopedia at home; plenty of interesting pictures and articles to browse through; for me a precursor of the Internet.

Typing class in high school, with none of your elite electric machines; we had big clunky Underwoods with pink nailpolish on the keys to discourage students from looking at our hands while we typed; and tests of our typing speed. I was not very fast, but have since become much faster. At a school reunion, our typing teacher was gratified by her former students saying we were so glad we learned to type, since we used computers so much.

In university I typed many papers on my non-electric portable typewriter (once all night on the floor of the laundry room so my roommate could get some sleep). At one point I did take an introduction to computers course, spending a couple of hours learning how to use a mouse and Paintbox.

I wrote my MA thesis on a Macintosh, one of several available to grad students in the History Department. I wished then that I had learned to use a computer sooner, for all the undergrad papers I had typed and retyped (or even written by hand sometimes).

My sister loaned me a computer for my first research job and showed me how to use it. I forget what it was called; a white box incorporating a screen maybe 7 inches square, with a black background with green letters, and DOS. It printed on a slimy kind of fax paper, until I bought a dot-matrix printer (which I still have in the garage; anyone have a use for it?) The DOS experience has proved useful from time to time.

With the proceeds of that job I bought a computer with Windows; I forget the brand; and WordPerfect software which I have used ever since in various versions. (I have to use Word some these days and it has irritating differences.)

The next quantum leap for me was a long term contract in litigation support. The employers had purchased a state of the art [for the time] computer system; and I was allowed the time to figure out how to use a scanner to scan and OCR documents; how to save data on a CD; how to use a laser printer, and how to use a database. This last is especially useful for dealing with large numbers of documents. The computer had a small database made in Filemake Pro 2; and I took it apart like you would an old-fashioned watch, to figure out how it worked. Now Filemaker Pro is in version 8, but still works on the same principles, with more bells and whistles. I don't think I ever took a class on it, but Filemaker always produced good guidebooks. Eventually I got my first taste of the internet on that job, as well.

Since then I have bought my own laser printer, inkjet printer, scanner, a computer with a CD burner and Internet connections, and Filemaker Pro software. The next useful thing I want to get is a laptop, which would have made some research jobs easier; and the next fun thing is a digital camera.

So most of my computer education was informal, self-teaching with help and advice from those around me, and latterly from the internet (including babblers).

I have found that while there have been massive improvements in computers and peripherals, newer is not always better; and I could do without the tendency of software to do things automatically, when I would rather make the adjustments myself.

[ 09 April 2006: Message edited by: Contrarian ]

I got a job that required almost constant computer work and I learned on the job. Whenever I couldn't figure out how to do something, I would ask someone I figured would know. Now I am very good at Excell and Outlook, okay at Word and Access, and passable at Visio and Powerpoint.

[ 09 April 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

As to computers, I'm mostly self taught. In college, a lifetime ago, I took some Fortran, using a computer as big as a car. Anybody remember punch cards?

My various employers only taught what they needed, and no more. Most of the employers that I came in contact with expected employees to learn computers on their own time.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
I am curious to know where various babblers got the specific training that they use to earn an income.

In particular, and maybe beyond/apart from that, I am curious to know how each babbler learned to use a computer and then the specific programs that s/he needs to earn an income - ie, did you learn at school? at college? from friends or family? just by banging around and messing up a few early machines? And who paid for the computer you learned on?

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I first learned how to use a computer when I was very young and my father brought home a personal computer powerhouse- the IBM XT. One day he even brought home a 100 MB HDD- it was about the size of a shoebox.

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Originally posted by Contrarian:
My sister loaned me a computer for my first research job and showed me how to use it. I forget what it was called; a white box incorporating a screen maybe 7 inches square, with a black background with green letters, and DOS. It printed on a slimy kind of fax paper, until I bought a dot-matrix printer (which I still have in the garage; anyone have a use for it?) The DOS experience has proved useful from time to time.

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(Digression)

The printer you had was a thermal transfer printer. Nasty buggers, those. Every computer geek book I read trashed the things.

Today, I use MSN Messenger, Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Firefox, and SAS (a statistical software package). I also use a bunch of other plug-ins and web-based apps, but they're less important. I spend 8-12 hours per day on the computer about 6-7 days per week. Even if I'm watching television, I'm usually surfing during commercials and slow points. I'm in a long distance relationship and we video chat online every night to keep our sanity.

Except for the early days, I have been self-trained, or learned by looking over others' shoulders. For SAS, I had to resort to asking for help and or buying several books on the topic. In my brain, there's sort of a gestalt that runs across all computer programs and platforms that makes it relatively easy to get up to speed on a new program via intuition, trial and error, web searches, and built-in help functions.

As a prof, my research is done on computer, and an ever-higher portion of teaching is computer-based as well: assignments are submitted online, grades updated and tallied online, notes posted online, communication with students is probably 80% by email (although that wasn't the case at my last school; this one is a commuter school), lectures are PowerPoint presentations.

Although I may be lampooned for saying this, I think computer literacy is just as important as reading, writing, and mathematical literacy in terms of a well-rounded education and potential success in a modern society.

oops. added a space to DrC and didn't capitalize Contrarian. Sorry!

[ 09 April 2006: Message edited by: Dex ]

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Originally posted by Dex:
Although I may be lampooned for saying this, I think computer literacy is just as important as reading, writing, and mathematical literacy in terms of a well-rounded education and potential success in a modern society.

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Public schooling, and my own initiative loving to read everything I could get my hands on in our poor community. Grade 9 Underwoods. Selectrics after that. Home Row. Lord, I embraced the german contribution to typewriters after that. Because without knowing anything about sex I wrote about Blue Veined Throbbers for a lady down the street, in exchange for dollars. She was happy!

Don't remember what kind of puter it was. Just that my daughter and I loved games.

What I do remember a few years earlier was a friend who just graduated from Theatre Arts at Ryerson. She then decided to take Computer Language ?? at York. Very early stuff, as has been mentioned above. One day she emerged from her room (shared apartment at Spadina/Bloor) and immediately went into hysterics (as theatre arts majors tend to do) about missing the MOST IMPORTANT EXAM OF THE YEAR! How could she get to York from Spadina/Bloor in a half hour? I had to Bitch Slap her and shove a twenty in her hand to just get into a taxi immediately. She took it, made it, wrote it, and then went on to be Hired by (whatever firm, always a secret) that went on to build the Canada Arm (in Montreal).

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much!

Dex:

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In my brain, there's sort of a gestalt that runs across all computer programs and platforms that makes it relatively easy to get up to speed on a new program via intuition, trial and error, web searches, and built-in help functions.

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I dimly perceive that such a gestalt should be forming in my brain, and every once in a while I get wee hints of it, but for an oldie such as I who started so late and learned so haphazardly, I fear that gestalt is always going to be just a little bit beyond my grasp.