whoâd never had occasion even to switch one on. Peter somehow had to teach the basics, while retaining the youngstersâ interest so that they didnât disrupt the class with their chatter. He empathised naturally with Jonathan, who loved computers and who could converse in technical language. And Peterâs three sons were Man U supporters!
Both Evelyn and I knew how to switch on a computer and dabble in Word, but anything more complex required our undivided attention. If we got stuck, we asked Angela or Joy for help. Both girls were bright and understood new concepts easily. Jonathan would also help, if you could drag him away from his own screen for a few seconds. Though they were generous with their assistance, they all tended to want to âfixâ rather than to explain.
Evelyn, the eldest in a large family, had left school when she was fifteen. She was a delightful fun-loving girl, whose gurgling laughter was infectious. I admired her determination to succeed. She was attending evening classes so that she could sit her Leaving Certificate in 2008.
Arthur, the oldest member of the class, was a talented artist and an amusing raconteur. He was on the course with us because he wanted to learn how to catalogue his paintings efficiently. There were often times when he wondered whether the stress was worth it. Particularly after an exam.
âThatâs it,â heâd say. âIâm not coming back on Monday. I must be mad. Why am I putting myself through this? Itâs not as if I need a job...â
After I saw a brochure of his work, I knew that I had to have one of his paintings.
From Word Processing, we moved on to Excel. I was dreading this, as maths had always been my weakest subject. We worked with spreadsheets, grappled with formulae and battled with such concepts as the MIN and MAX functions. Poor Peter had a torrid time trying to get the logic of the IF function across to some of us oldies.
âUse the IF function to check if the value in a cell or range of cells satisfies the criteria you specify,â he told us several times. âYou can also specify what values are returned if the criteria are met (TRUE) or not met (FALSE).â
A number of us had to retake the Excel exam.
We all loved PowerPoint, which we found a welcome diversion from Excel. Peter announced that he didnât plan to spend much time on this module.
âSome of my classes manage to grasp PowerPoint in a couple of hours,â he said. âWe discuss the concepts in the morning, work on a few practice exercises and write the exam in the afternoon. You lot are going to need at least a couple of days, unfortunately.â
Our son, Sean, used to design PowerPoint presentations for each new calendar range we produced at Alfa. Now I was learning how to use âtransitionâ so that one slide replaced another by appearing to drop down from the top of the screen, while the previous slide dissolved. Animated slides revealed information gradually. If Iâd been presenting the calendars for 2008, I could have revealed each category separately, discussing specific designs, before going on to the next section.
After PowerPoint, weâd be moving on to databases, which weâd find VERY difficult. If we were going to fail any of the modules, it would be this one, Peter warned us. We would be studying Microsoft Access. Not the database he would choose, there were better ones... We were to think of databases as being structured collections of facts about a particular topic. Address books, card indexes and telephone directories were all examples of databases.
I could tell that we were beginning to bore Peter. He was losing his sense of humour and becoming irritable, especially with Ray. If Ray wasnât talking to Elizabeth, he was away with the fairies somewhere. When Peter asked him to repeat what he had just explained, Ray usually hadnât a clue what he was talking about.
I was