Teach Your Grandma Computers

A friend told me that he plans to teach his parents how to use computers during this vacation. A worthy gift. I taught a few laypersons how to use computers over the last couple of years and it was tougher than expected. While I’m proud that my mom is my best pupil — she can use the word processor, browse the Internet, and is about to start her own blog — the complexity of the new gadgets and technologies coupled with my own impatience and inexperience with teaching made her teary-eyed more than once.

So here are my thoughts about “teaching computers” .

Know What They Want
They may not want to write programs, tweak with the internals to improve PC performance, or even try out new applications. They might not even be interested in what the operating system and the hardware parts are capable of and they don’t need to know more than their names about them. My guess is that they would want to play media, browse the web, and connect with you through mail or chat as a start. It is good to ask and find out exactly what it is that they want.

Windows Games
The input devices are what one needs to learn well to move any further. The older generations are usually more adept in using the keyboard; they know typewriters better than you. But the mouse is an entirely novel idea unless they played arcade games in their childhood. I think the Windows Games like Solitaire or Minesweeper will come in handy in mastering the clicks. See if they might like one of these games and let them play awhile. Forget the middle-click and concentrate on the double-click because it can be especially troublesome and is essential.

Basic Operations
How to start and shutdown a computer; how to maximize, minimize, resize and close windows; how to create a new document or folder; how to open documents or media files or applications; how to navigate through the Windows Start and open various applications. Let your pupil perform these repetitively in various sequences. It helps if you can organize your program files beforehand to avoid any unintended uninstallations and use a separate folder for all the exercises while learning the copy, cut, paste, move, save operations. Discourage using cut and delete operations for the time being.

Explore One Application
Pick one application of their choice: word processor, paint brush, or media player, e.g. Help them explore all the features in it while making use of the tool tips more than your direct assistance. The basic menu structure and menu items within them largely overalp among most applications and this familiarity will make them more prepared when they ever encounter another application. Try moving to a second application to see how quickly they can correlate between the two.

Getting Help
Get them into the habit of trying various options in the Help menu, trying F1, browsing through the contents, index and searching for a string. That will help them with the next big thing as well.

The Internet
The first thing you might want them to learn about the Internet is Google, through which most of what they want can be gotten to. After learning to open the browser, that is. It is also a good idea to have shortcuts to various frequently visited websites, in case bookmarks seem tedious and the address bar is definitely more complicated. Create any account that they might need for the time being and show them how to use them: how to sign in, check mail, compose and send mail, sign out. Beginners might find it easier to sign into a chat client and open mail through the notifications. Let them search their own beginner websites through Google (or any other search engine) apart from using it for general browsing purposes.

Make sure you have a good anti-virus and firewall in place. And back up all your important files. Just in case.

Despite all your initial assurances, they are going to panic after every tiny mistake, afraid that accidentally dragging and dropping an icon into another might have caused something irrevocably faulty. Oftentimes, this clams them up bringing the course to a screeching halt or even a retrograde. I can’t advise you how, but you must make sure they understand that Windows is already goofy enough and no goof-up is big enough to screw it any further. They don’t know “format c:” yet, do they?

Have you taught anybody before? What have I missed? What would you do?