GCFGlobal

I do not like the new set up. Can someone tell me what happened to all the classes you all used to offer. No way to tell when classes start.

Awesome FREE e-learning site, run by a non-profit organization to teach basic computer and internet skills, MS office 2007, math, and other basic everyday skills such as learning how to go shopping or handle things in the kitchen. The style is casual and welcoming and there are more than 200 video courses here.

Although this training in life skills is basic, there's no patronization and no penalties if you want to take it slowly. Topics are as varied as how to set yourself up with a Facebook page or use FireFox, through how to collect a prescription or operate a vending machine, to writing a job application. In other words, all areas in which literacy may be required to cope with everyday life and more than just cope, but make life easier and more pleasurable for you.

Flash is used throughout in a highly interactive way, and courses are just sufficiently difficult as to make you think, rather than just delivering information you could be reading from a book. The course in learning to read a bus map, for example, is very simple but still involves you in having to click and drag things and make decisions based on what you see and what the instructor on the audio track is telling you. Once you've planned your route, the scene switches to a first-person view and you have to walk up that street to the bus stop itself. It's all beautifully drawn and colored in a hand-made style that is very easy on the eye.

Some of the courses here are accredited, so you may earn credits from completing them, and you'll get a certificate when you complete them too.

If you or someone you know need a higher standard of literacy and life skills than you have, in order to get a job or simply make your way through everyday adult life, this is an outstanding resource.