Know your Home Keys.

[Great Unknown]

Sounds like the instructor needs a gentle round of percussive maintenance. Preferably with a Dvorak keyboard, perhaps Das Keyboard itself.

Argh.

[Gurndigarn]

Preferably with a Dvorak keyboard, perhaps Das Keyboard itself.

Well, that would be a way to freak out the "expert" instructor. Change the settings so that her keyboard is remapped to Dvorak, if you can still do that. (Newer macs query the keyboard to find out how it's mapped, so you can't just change the system settings any more. Not sure what the windos world is like now.)

[repsac]

I think what he was referring to is a program called BYKI, or Before You Know It. You can learn just about any language there, but it comes with a problem that can mix you up if you're not paying attention.

The program will remap your keys at one point (displaying a small keyboard on your screen so you can learn where the various letters are) and try to teach you that way. Later, when it feels you're proficient enough, it remaps the keys again, but doesn't show you that it's done this. Meaning the keyboard on your screen vanishes.

At that point, it doesn't matter what kind of keyboard you have, unless you've paid attention to your classes (which I never did enough) you're screwed. you quickly learn that FDSA mean something else entirely and you keep turning up weird letters in places that weren't there when you last took the course.

That or it's the program conspiring to make you look foolish. I never sorted that out.

Getting the program and poking around with it is fun. www.BYKI.com

[gunsage]

That is GREAT. Honestly, I tend to get confused when people "within the industry" (well, I guess I'm technically in the industry too) tend to flip-flop terms or just plain use them incorrectly. Sometimes it doesn't matter (interchanging RAM for memory, for example), but other times, such as this, it gets lovely.

For some reason, I feel like I have a story about a teacher doing the same thing, but I can't quite recall why. Maybe I'll be back to comment further on this one.

[Imogene]

Okay, one of the first few classes we Game Designers (let that roll around your head a bit... People, in the computing side of life, who decided to go to school to learn to make video games) were forced (no, seriously, forced, it was a prereq to everything!) to take was Intro to Computers (or some other ungodly named course) Taught to us by, of all people, the head of the business department. Oh, kay... He told us, first day, that he was going to hand out a short quiz, and anyone who got above an 80 didn't need to take the course, we could 'test out'. Huzzah. Twenty minutes into this three hour short test, I'm finished, turned the test in, went home. Next day, prof comes looking for us in our other class (Investment in Success, with perhaps my favorite teacher ever. Sadly, he died of cancer a few semesters after this) and asks where I was. Now, I had followed the prof into the room, cause he had a stern determination in his eye, so I figured he had our grades. "Behind you."
"Ah, you got a 95. Congrats. You don't have to take the class."
Someone else in the class asks who passed, Prof turns and points at me. "Just Juwl."
...
*blink, blink* So, a class of students who were into computers, and I was the only one who knew enough to not have to take the class? Hell, I know at least one of my classmates knew more about computers than I did. Oh well.

[protege]

*blink, blink* So, a class of students who were into computers, and I was the only one who knew enough to not have to take the class? Hell, I know at least one of my classmates knew more about computers than I did. Oh well.

Gotta love classes like that My prof for my 'computer business' class actually told me that I didn't have to show up for class at all, mainly because it wasn't much of a challenge. It was simply too easy! It was mostly Access and Lotus (yawn!)...both of which I'd had before. I mean, I rarely paid attention, and was usually surfing the web, or playing Quake in class. One night, some of us even had a deathmatch game going on Even though I didn't have to go, I still did--Quake wouldn't run on the 486 I had at the time. That class was an easy A

[Emrld]

In High School I took a business Computer Class. This was more years back then I would like to think about . . .one of the programs we used I wanna say was Word Star. It was the Word/ writing program that required you to use the function keys in combination with Alt, Shift, Ctrl etc. (pre windows)
Well, my freshman year of collage in a small private University we had to write term papers in the computer lab. My English teacher had no clue about the program or the commands. He asked if anyone knew anything and I raised my hand. He made me a deal . . .my papers could be half the length of the rest of the class if during class time in the lab I would help the other students with the commands needed to make the paper look right. Since this teacher was quite the fan of five or more single spaced pages in a 12 font required . . . .sounded good to me.

Now for the funny at my expense. I was looking at cell phones the other day. They were mentioning a QWERT keyboard. I had no clue what they were talking about . . . .then I slid my keyboard out TA DA right there at the top QWERT. (please feel free to giggle with me at that one)

[protege]

*is giggling away*

But seriously, I had to take the 'intro' class in high school. Don't remember much about it, other than Basic, DOS, etc. WordPerfect was a separate class, which was rather boring--the previous year, I'd spend my lunch hour in the lab playing games. Picked up quite a bit

WordStar was OK, but it was pretty crude. I knew quite a bit of it, since it was on my father's computers at work...but 20 years on, I've forgotten all of it. Can't blame time, since Word is easier to use