SPCC Instructor Writes Software Manual

South Piedmont Community College Computer Information Technology Instructor Chris A. Johnson of Polkton has written a training manual for OpenOffice.org, a free office software suite. Johnson has been teaching for 12 years and says he realized SPCC students had a need for inexpensive software in computer classes.

After SPCC’s faculty advisory committee supported the decision to teach OpenOffice.org, Johnson saw that students would need training material to learn to use the software that is similar to Microsoft Office. He began writing a training manual to help his students work with OpenOffice.org.

A Prentice Hall representative was meeting with a group of SPCC faculty about using Prentice Hall textbooks. After the meeting, Johnson showed the representative the manual he had written for the OpenOffice.org software suite. Prentice Hall picked up the manual, OpenOffice.org Applications: An Introduction, for publication.

“Prentice Hall is promoting the training manual to other colleges and businesses,” Johnson says. “I believe that businesses will start adopting the training manual as their awareness of OpenOffice.org grows.”

This semester, SPCC has a custom-made textbook, Introduction to Computers: Custom Edition for South Piedmont Community College, for the Introduction to Computers course. The book contains all of Johnson’s training manual and excerpts from two of Prentice Hall’s textbooks. As other colleges adopt the OpenOffice.org suite, they will be able to use Johnson’s training manual as a teaching aid in their computer courses.