The first thing Sandra Aylsworth tells her computer students is, “Don’t touch.”
Odd advice for a computer class when students need to tap the keys to learn.
What she means is, don’t touch another person’s keyboard.
“If you’re having trouble, I’ll point to the screen, direct you through a sequence,” Aylsworth said, who is a full-time instructor at the Institute of Computer Technology in Sunnyvale.
“But if I simply go ‘click click click’ on your keyboard, the problem may be solved, but you haven’t learned a thing. So – don’t touch anyone else’s keyboard. And I won’t be touching yours.”
This year ICT will be touching lives as it offers classes in computer skills to more than 10,000 students. Since the public non-profit agency was founded in 1982 by the California State Legislature, more than 100,000 students will have learned about computers and software at the Sunnyvale facility.
“Our main mission,” said executive director Bob Nolan, “is to help schools, teachers and students to use technology effectively.”
Nolan said that 60 percent of their students are adults, 35 percent are teachers and educators and 5 percent are “K to grade 12” students below the age of 18.
The adult students at ICT typically are employed full time and come to “learn or upgrade their computer skills,” Nolan said.
The current summer calendar includes 300 classes offered at six sites around Silicon Valley, “from turning on the computer to programming language,” Nolan said.
“We try to be very responsive to the market,” Nolan said. The ICT teachers are from the computer industry.
At a recent QuarkXPress class, held at the ICT facilities that are located in the Fremont Union High School District offices on Fremont Avenue, six adult students each paid $150 for a two-day eight-hour class.
The class ran on a consecutive Tuesday-Wednesday from 1 to 5 p.m. The short, intense class works well for students who may be able to take two afternoons off but cannot commit to an hour a week for eight weeks.
Course costs range from $90 for one four-hour session on “Moving from Microsoft Windows 3.1 to Windows NT 4 ” up to $225 for a two-day seven-hour per day class on “Adobe Illustrator 5.5 for the Macintosh.”
For those just getting started with a computer, ICT offers a two- or three-day class on “Microsoft Windows 95: Introduction” 22 different times between May and Sept. 18.
Some sessions run on two consecutive days from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. or 1 to 5 p.m.; others may be three evenings from 6:30 to 9:10 p.m. Almost all are on weekdays.
The school has “an official relationship” with both Claris and Microsoft to be a Claris training center and a Microsoft Solution Provider.
The best thing about ICT, Bob Nolan said, are “our links with the high-tech industry. The market is telling us they want what we do.”
The Institute of Computer Techology is located at 589 W. Fremont Ave., in Sunnyvale. For more information, call (408) 736-4291.
