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What Should a Community Computer Lab Offer?
Ballresin asks: "A local computer company is expanding and including a computer lab in their setup, and they want me to come in as its Administrator. I am supposed to be giving them input on what to teach/host. What does Slashdot think a medium sized tourist town (Okoboji, Spirit Lake, Arnolds Park, Iowa) should have to offer to the locals? I was thinking something along the lines of 'How to Use Windows 101' and 'How to Use Office 101'. My compatriots want to offer some off-the-wall classes such as 'Hacker Ethics: Why and How' and a few other odd classes. I have polled people in the area, which resulted the discovery that 80% of them are from out of town, so don't really care. What you guys think; What kind of classes or what games/LAN party setups should a new, small business offer? Any ideas/input is greatly appreciated."
There's just 2 things that most users will want - the same 2 that made the internet what it is today:
Email
WWW
Email do's and don'ts would be good - including handling of spam and crap (the junk your father-in-law sends you that is either urban legend, or ancient, or both).
Web browsing, security (don't tell folks your passwords), and virii are all important things to know about.
Whatever you do, don't name your subjects "blah blah 101" the 101 just makes you look like a tosser. Everyone knows its not a university :P
We offer our locals a variety of courses and are always taking suggestions. When an interesting idea is submitted we usually set up a sign-up sheet and post a notice in the paper to test the interest levels. Our regular classes include:
Building a Webpage
Intro. to Windows
Intro to Macs
Office 101
Using E-Mail
Finances and Bills with Your Computer
An Introduction to Digital Photography
And depending on your community...We have a lot of immigrants in ours and we offer a lot of computer-based ESL programs/courses
Good Luck!
Why not spend $0 and install an operating system that doesn't need to be reimaged (network boot), or locked down because of proper user permissions. KDE actually includes a "kiosk" mode, that does not permit any desktop configuration changes. Administration is about 100x easier because you can do it remotely in your underwear at home.