Files practice: a pretend computer to learn on

Files and folders, in plain words

• A file is one thing kept under a name: a letter, a form, a photo, a resume. A folder is a place that holds files, and can hold other folders.
• The ending of a name, after the last period, usually says what kind of file it is: .pdf is a page meant to look the same everywhere, .jpg is a picture, .txt is plain words. Some computers hide the endings. Changing the ending does not change what kind of file it is.
• The program that shows your files has a different name on each kind of device: “File Explorer” on Windows, “Finder” on a Mac, “Files” on many phones and tablets.
• A file that comes from a web page or an email usually lands in a folder named “Downloads”, unless another place is chosen. That is the first place to look when a file seems to be gone.
• Saving is what keeps your work. The first time, the program usually asks for a name and a place. Work that was never saved is often lost when the program closes.
• A name you will know next week says what the file is: “resume” tells more than “document 1”. Two files in one folder cannot have the same name.
• Moving a file takes it out of one folder and puts it in another. Copying, on real computers, leaves the first one where it was and makes a second.
• A deleted file usually goes to the Trash first (some computers say “Recycle Bin”), and can be put back from there until the Trash is emptied. After that it is usually gone. Files deleted from a small plug-in drive often skip the Trash.
• Opening a file on many computers takes a double click: two quick clicks. On a phone, and on this page, it is one. Mouse and trackpad practice has a lesson on the double click.
• On a computer other people use, such as one at a library, a file you leave behind may be seen by the next person, and many such computers erase everything when you finish. Before you get up: take your file with you, on a small plug-in drive or by sending it to your own email, and delete the one on the computer.
• A file from someone you do not know, or one you were not expecting, is best left unopened. Scam check is our page for messages and pages that ask for too much.
• Sending a file to someone is done by attaching it to an email. Email practice has a lesson on that.

How the lessons work

• The pretend computer is the light-colored box. The strip at its top says where you are: which folder, and which file. The rest is the pretend screen.
• The pretend files are a resume, a letter, a form and a photo, in the folders “Documents”, “Downloads” and “Pictures”. The Trash starts empty. None of it is anyone’s.
• The pretend web page of lessons 2 and 8 is drawn by this page. Its address ends in .example, a name set aside for examples, which no real site has.
• Only the step at hand answers. The step is written above the pretend computer. If something else is clicked or typed, the page says what it was, and the pretend files stay as they were. Nothing can be broken.
• The box the step asks for has a blue edge, and what to type is written once more right under it. The box is done the moment it holds what the step asks for, and the words of the step change to the next one. Capital letters and extra spaces are forgiven; every letter counts.
• What there is to type is short: a name of a few words. The ending of the name is added for you.
• “Download the file” downloads nothing, and “Save the file” saves nothing on your device. The pretend file goes to a pretend folder and nowhere else.
• Lesson 7 deletes a file, finds it in the Trash and puts it back where it was.
• The page waits. There is no countdown, and taking a long time costs nothing. At the end it says how long the lesson took, from the first time the pointer went into the pretend computer, and how many times something else was clicked or typed.
• “Start this lesson again” makes other names to type.

Every time the page is built, a program makes 32,000 lessons, half in English and half in Spanish, and walks through their 204,000 steps on a pretend computer of its own, written apart from this page’s: that the thing each step asks for is on the screen when it is asked for, that using it changes something, that no file is lost or ends up in two places, that the step is said in full, and that nothing but the step’s own thing answers.

What this page does not do

• It is not a real computer. No file is made, saved, moved or deleted anywhere, and the pretend files are gone when the lesson ends.
• It does not look like every computer. Real ones differ: folders are often shown as small pictures at the side, a file is often moved by dragging it, and “Rename”, “Move” and “Delete” are often in a list that opens with the right button of the mouse or a long press.
• It does not teach copying a file, folders inside folders, searching for a file by name, a small plug-in drive, files kept on the internet, emptying the Trash, printing, or opening a file in a program of your choice.
• It does not teach how to tell a safe file from a harmful one beyond the line above.
• It is not practice for the hand: Mouse and trackpad practice and Typing practice are.
• It does not keep your times or which lessons you have done, gives no certificate and makes no promise about how fast anyone will learn.
• It can be worked by keyboard (Tab, Enter and the space bar), but it has not been tried with a screen reader, a switch or an eye tracker.