A number of prospective students have asked if they could take a look at some Lesson Plans before they enrolled. I think that is a good idea, so I have chosen six Lesson Plans for you to review in order to get an idea of what you will find in the Students Only section of our campus.

The first Lesson Plan example shown below is taken from the Computer Section and discusses creative use of The Clock Gadget if you have Windows 7.

After you have reviewed the Lesson Plan, go back to the menu on the left side of this webpage and take a look at the Word 2007 Border Art Lesson Plan as well as, Water Coloring in Photoshop Elements 8 from our Computer Section. Sorting Data in Excel is an example of a Lesson Plan for advanced students. Also from the Computer Department is a Lesson Plan for beginners that deals with how to use the color box in Microsoft Paint. I'm using this one because everyone who has Windows has Paint and this one is for people who have Vista or XP--Microsoft Paint looks quite a bit different in Windows 7. There is also a Lesson Plan for Creating an Online Greeting Card from the Get Connected Section of our learning center.

If you would like to get a feel for everything we offer in our online learning center, click on the Campus Guide link at the top of the page.

Ok, let's get started by having some fun with the Windows 7 Clock Gadget.

The Windows 7 Clock Gadget

For a quick and easy way to see the time, you can add a clock to your desktop. If a friend or relative is traveling somewhere that creates a time change, you can put two (or more if you wish) clocks out there and set each one on a different time zone.

To see how the Clock works:

1. Right-click on an empty area of the Desktop and when the dropdown menu appears click on Gadgets.

2. When the Gadgets dialog box appears, double-click on the Clock icon. The clock will appear on the Desktop. You can close the Gadgets dialog box now.

3. To see a list of things you can do with this gadget, right-click the clock face. As you can see in the menu in Fig. 1, you can close the Clock, keep it on top of your open windows, and change the Clock's options which is what we will do in this exercise.

4. Choose Options from the menu (next to red arrow in Fig. 1):

Fig. 1

5. Scroll through the eight clock face options to see which one you like best. Check the option to Show the second hand on the clock if you would like to have that feature available.

Fig. 2

5. Click OK to make your changes.

6. Click, hold and drag the clock to any location on your Desktop.

7. If you right-click on the clock and select Always on top it will keep the gadget in view no matter what window you have open.

8. To remove the clock from your desktop move your pointer over the clock face and click on the “X” that appears in the small menu to the right (see Fig. 3 in the example below).

9. If you click on the wrench , the Clock Options dialog box appears again.

Fig. 3

10. You can put more than one clock on your desktop. Right-click on an empty area of the Desktop and when the dropdown menu appears click on Gadgets to reopen the Gadgets dialog box. Double-click on the clock icon. Say you have a friend spending some time in London and you want to know what time it is there compared to what time it is here.

11. After you get your second clock on the desktop, click on the wrench ( in Fig. 3 above) to get the Clock Options dialog open. Then click the down arrow for the Time Zone textbox:

Fig. 4

12. Find London, click on it and your second clock will tell London time.

Now you can compare the two at a glance: