Over the Christmas break thousands of people will have been opening Christmas presents and seeing a computer or laptop or a mobile phone. Amongst all of those people how many of them will know how to use them?

I helped buy a laptop for a family member this year. As a computer user since I can remember I didn’t really think of the fact that it came with no instructions. Nothing. Just a laptop and a power cable. Once I completed the windows setup I then had to update the computer with 44 updates. Yes - 44 updates. Sold as new and then I needed to spend an hour updating it. I can’t imagine many other shops getting away with that.

Another family member had a mobile phone, a fantastic piece of technology with a 5mp camera. Not set up to receive or send images. On the supplier website the phone was no longer listed so it was a trawl across the web to update the settings.

I read that apple have sold 50 iphone since 2007. Walk into the local apple store and see the number of people who are taking classes (old and young). Here is all our equipment - try it, don’t worry if it breaks and if you want we have training sessions.

I bought a new digital camera from canon - amazing value, but I needed to get on the website to download the manual to actually how to take pictures. You might think that I could use the manual settings but sometimes you just need to know the most basic features.

We sometimes wonder why we can’t get people interested in using computing, the internet or technology but after this Christmas I think we need to make it a little easy for people who are coming along to the technology party for the first time.

Writing in the Guardian, Julie Ferry has looked at the increasing number of students who are choosing to study and travel at the same time. The article looks at 3 people who have successufully combined their studies and travel. With a number of companies offering paid sabaticals to try to avoid redundancy and an increasing number of training grants on offer could we see more people escaping the british winter to travel and study online overseas?

Liverpool University already offers an online MBA and there are many other online courses on offer. E-learning and learning technologies allow learning and academic institutions to offer online courses and open up their courses to a whole new audience.

Norfolk County Council has already implemented an e-learning programme that lets children who are not able to get to a school to sit their exams at home. The programme allowed nearly 100 children to sit their GCSE’s in 2007.

The technology and programmes have fantastic potential to help a wide range of organisations from hospitals, schools and colleges to businesses.