What is the difference between CLAIT and ECDL ??

[CrackerOfNuts]

Local adult education centre are offering both courses (well the clait is certain modules not whole course), and I was wondering what the difference is, and which would be best to do if I wanted to look for a office job in a school or hospital.

I did CLAIT and ECDL and CLAIT is more about how to use the packages on a computer ie word, excel etc. ECDL takes it right back to basics and shows oyu how to basically take a computer aprt and re build it and use it effectively. The ECDL is becoming more widely recognised although its taking time. When i did CLAIT and transferred to ECDL i was told ECDL would be preferrable in a few years!

Ah right ok. I think I will do the Clait then.

The centre aren't currently offering it as a full course, but you can do seperate modules.

I was thinking of doing the word processing and file management unit along with Database unit.

Do you think those would be suitable wrt what sort of job I am after ?

This is the sort of job I want.

Wish I could apply for it now, it's perfect hours for me.

yes think CLAIT would be good. Maybe oyu should ring them and enquire about what they would view more positively!

ECDL covers more topics than CLAIT - 8 modules altogether, but you can get a level 1 by doing some of them and level 2 by doing a different combination.

I taught it until last year, and found that even people who worked with a computer at work all day found it hard work to fit it all into our course - 2.5 hours per week for 34 weeks.

CLAIT is a good place to start though, it is a bit gentler than ECDL. A couple of people on the ECDL course had done CLAIT first and they definitely had an advantage! The database unit is probably a bit grim - it is worth asking them which software they are using to teach it. If it's Access it's worth seeing if you have it on your home computer as my students often found they didn't which made it harder to practice.

I am having a clearout, having stopped teaching at Christmas and have just put a pile of old manuals to one side to recycle, if you think they might come in handy email me and I'll stick them in the post - [email protected]

Thanks alienears, will do that now.