Computer Maintenance Training

By Anthony:

Both Sara and I know a lot about computers just by virtue of being Americans and using them in our daily lives since we were children.  But throughout the years, as I played computer games with friends, took computer classes in school, and learned tricks from friends who work with IT, I have become quite knowledgeable about computers and general computer maintenance.

We knew that computer knowledge is very needed in Uganda, but we both tried to hide our knowledge to some extent because neither of us feel called to teach about computers, and we don't really enjoy it.  But when we saw that the Ugandan development staff of the partner organizations we work with could greatly increase their productivity were they trained on how to use their computers to the fullest potential and take care of them well, we finally were willing to let God use us to teach a bit about computers.

I put together a training about computer maintenance, both physical maintenance and software maintenance.  Sara then prepared a little teaching about how to use certain features in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. 

I'm so glad Sara agreed to lead this training with me because I could not have done it on my own.  We spent one full day doing the training, and while I was up front teaching and demonstrating on the screen, Sara was even more busy constantly moving around to everyone's computers helping them install programs, know where to click, and follow the steps I was explaining.

It was a difficult training as computer stuff can be tricky to learn, and we had a diverse crowd.  Some of the people at the training were still pretty new with computers and some were very proficient already.  But overall, it went really well and people appreciated it.

When we taught them how to use disk cleanup to remove junk files taking up their computer space, one person was able to delete 10 gigabytes of junk files, and another person 13 gigabytes!  90% of the computers had never installed Windows updates before.  When we did scans to fix registry errors, it was very fulfilling for them to be able to find and quickly fix 300 errors here, 600 errors there.  Those little moments were very fun.

It's hard to do computer maintenance in Uganda because internet airtime is very expensive.  Even I wait until we are at guesthouses to do much of my downloading.  In the US, we take for granted being constantly connected to the internet to download Windows updates, programs, antivirus definitions, etc.  But for some of these people who had never done Windows updates before, it would take the money they normally would use for a few months of internet time just to download the updates.  But they are going to try to do at least some of our recommendations.

Here are some pictures of Sara teaching her parts about Microsoft Office.  For people who have to write project proposals and reports, it brightens your day to learn about a feature like spell check if you never knew it existed!