Part of my role in OneCommunity's BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program) project (called Connect Your Community) is to figure out the curricululm for the participants. Having assisted community technology centers for so many years and seeing how each center seemed to create their own curriculum, I was certain we could keep the cost down by finding bit and pieces of existing curriclulum. I was partially correct. There is A LOT of curriculum available for free, either posted online or for the asking. The challenge we encountered is that some of what we wanted to teach was so new, either the curriculum didn't exist at the level we needed it (for beginners) or what we found was outdated. The easy ones to find were the topics that didn't change much and are super popular - such as Microsoft Word for Beginners or Keyboard Basics. Viruses and Spyware had to be created from scratch, as did Online Identity.
We discovered three libraries with particularly well thought out training materials posted online for new computer users. I contacted them and 2 of the 3 not only gave me permission to revise their materials but also emailed me original files to make the editing much easier. I promised to send them the revisions for their use. (We won't talk about the 3rd library.)
Hibbing Public Library in Minnesota - Provides lesson plans online as PDFs including slide presentations and handouts. All are available under a Creative Commons License.
Indian Prairie Public Library in Illinois - Provides lesson plans online as PDFs including slide presentations, quick reference cards and exercises.
We will be posting all the Connect Your Community training materials with a Creative Commons license. Since the funding is from the federal government (stimulus money), seems like making the materials freely available is the right thing to do.
