===================================================================== EDUCATIONAL COLUMNS:Gerry Austin. ===================================================================== WELCOME to the Education column. I've worked in Training & Development and Adult Education all my life, with differing caps on various occasions. From Line Management through Training & Development Management and Consultant to the small business sector. I've always been at the sharp end of the business, in the Commercial sector where you have to justify your existence. Or you are out! And you have to be worth your crust to survive. A colleague (Dr.Ph D) once confided in me, having just joined us from the Civil Service, "This is like baptism in fire and brimstone! Everything is so 'fast' I don't know if I can keep pace." He didn't! We shall be taking a more sedate course through the Educational topics in the coming issues of your PCW File. I shall be looking at the value of using your computer as a Teacher - Computerised Learning Techniques - and surveying the available software. We shall be looking at the merits of handing your PCW over to Junior, and what benefits are there for the youngsters. Commercial Training Courses and what they have to offer will be coming under my spotlight as well. I will also focus my attention on the wider issues of Education so if you have some particular hobby-horse you want to ride, then why not drop me a line. I am being reminded how heavily I rely upon my trusty PCW. The printer was misbehaving - missing the ascenders (tops) off all the letters - so had to return it to my dealer. It's into the sixth week of absence and the discs are starting to gather waiting to be printed (A drive, not B). All my correspondence has had to be handwritten. Having just ordered a 5©" Mitsubishi double sided disc drive to upgrade my PCW8256 I am beginning to wish I had bought a second printer instead. Now if computer manufacturers had conformed to a uniform disc format I could correspond with business associates on 3" or 5©" floppies and bypass the printer altogether. Fortunately PCW File welcomes copy on disc. MAGNETIC BOOKS When the PCW was born it was fortunate to have BASIC, a beginners language, and DR LOGO, which has been entrenched as the classroom language. PCW owners that want to use their machine as an educational tool are fortunate that these two extra languages are provided. Commercial programs are aplenty, but how many of them are educational? Apart from the LocoScript tutorials the number of Companies that produce good educational software are very few, and can just about be counted on one hand. We are now entering a new era where an author can 'publish' his own work on disc without the middleman, the Publisher. Just last month David Axford reviewed John Evans' 'Designer Stubble' in PCW File. Is this the first PCW booklet to be published on disc? It is of a specialised content aimed directly at a market that needs to learn how to improve its Desktop Publishing. How many of us have specialised skills or knowledge that could be usefully recorded in a similar format and made available to the public? Recently a group of academics at Manchester Polytechnic started a business called Information Education Limited. For #15 each their 'Viewbooks' can be bought covering a variety of specialised subjects. If you need to know about: - Science in Society. - Cinema in View. - Disappearing Forests. - Atmospheric Pollution. - Men's Work. Women's Work. - Health, Medicine and Society. - Keynes: An introduction. - The Hidden Economy. - Marx: An Introduction. - Punishing Poverty. - The Factory Acts. then there is a specialised magnetic book available for you. The beauty of these books is that they can be interrogated like a database or worked upon like a word processor. If you find it all a bit much you can print it out and read it like a conventional book.