Course Description: This endeavor is a revival of the original CLL Computer Club that flourished for many years with Jim Cooper in charge. Unfortunately, COVID came along in 2020 and stopped all in-person meetings. As before, the Club’s focus is strictly on Windows PCs, not Macs.

The purpose of clubs like ours is to provide a friendly and supportive environment where our members can share their experiences, ask questions, learn new skills, and solve computer problems as they are encountered. Our problem-solving approach will be analogous to the old cliché, “To feed a person, don’t give him fish, teach him how to fish.” The “how to” in our case is being able to use AI (Artificial Intelligence). We believe that users can often solve problems themselves by using AI. We suspect members will also find that using AI is more productive than using old-style search methods.

During our initial meeting, please be prepared to tell us about your computer experience level and specific equipment. This will help establish topics of interest for future meetings. Subsequent meetings will begin with a discussion of whatever problems attendees are experiencing and then continue with a presentation about a specific topic.

For our very first  meeting, the presentation will be about free AI resources and their capabilities. ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing/CoPilot, and Google’s Bard system are the three programs most readily available. We’ll use one or more of them to demonstrate some features generally available. As you will see, all require well-constructed inputs to get satisfactory outputs.

Notes:  The Computer Club will meet monthy on the 3rd Thursday of every month at 10:00 in Rm 357 the UWF Campus. These monthly club meetings will continue throughout the year (unless campus is closed for weather or scheduled breaks).

Class Leader Bio(s): The head honchos for the club will be Hal Pruett and Jim Cooper. Both are Korean War veterans and long-time computer hobbyists. Hal is a retired physicist. Back in 1996, at the request of founder Ed Dennery, he computerized the paper-and-pencil registration process that had been used since the beginning of our organization. He continued to maintain and update the registration process until COVID forced us to quit in-person registration. Over the years he has instructed numerous computer related CLL classes. Jim Cooper has taught computer and other classes for CLL for over 20 years. He retired from the Air Force as a Chief Master Sargent and then from DOD Civil Service where he was Fire Chief at Eglin Air Force Base.