new+arrivals

I'm working with new arrivals from Africa, many of them have had very limited contact with computers

I am teaching year 11s web applications and design this semester. There are new arrivals and ESL students in the class. My introductory sheet is about e commerce. The first question on the sheet asks: "What is e commerce? Name two ecommerce sites" One student said to me, "The sheet has an error, it should say 'What is **a** commerce' "!! I was also noticing how easy it was for those "digital natives" who had bought stuff through EBay or who had family members who used EBay. Compared with some new arrivals from Africa who had never heard of e commerce or EBay. (Bill June 30)

It's very difficult teaching these students to format images or use the draw tools in MSWord or MSPublisher

The student has to have this knowledge:
 * click on (select) the image before you can manipulate it
 * be aware that when you move the mouse over the image then the icon changes
 * 4 headed arrow means you can move the image
 * 2 headed arrow means you can resize the image
 * to move or resize requires clicking in correct place with left button and dragging mouse
 * it requires manual dexterity to resize the image in the way that might be required
 * some images (draw tools) have other icons, eg. green circles for rotation and yellow diamonds for shape alteration
 * at other times to format the shape you need to click with right button

Much of this is very hard for students who have not grown up with computers. I have watched some student trying to rotate and resize a shape and they can be painfully slow at achieving success.

It's a combination of skills that is required to achieve success, eg. I need a two headed arrow, I need to click on this particular circle and I need to drag the mouse in order to make this rectangle wider - using the left mouse button for these features (Bill 10th June)