October 08, 2008
CyberSeniors
This month I started teaching a class at my local library designed to familiarize seniors with the basics of using a computer and the Internet. Today was our second class and we covered a lot. First everyone did mouserobics which turned out to be a great exercise in manipulating the mouse which can be especially hard for seniors. Highlighting to copy and paste was a tough maneuver but everyone was able to do it. Then my co-instructor and I had our seven students sign up for Gmail accounts. This went pretty smoothly until we got to the word verification part. I could barely read these letters and many students couldn't at all. What I thought was most telling is not one person asked why they were asked to do that! Makes me think they do not question the meaning behind most of what they are doing on the computer but simply memorize the steps. The only other hang-up was someone wanted to print out the entire Acceptable Use document before clicking the I Accept button which runs twenty pages in case you were wondering. In the end everyone created a new Gmail account which we will help them use in next week's class.
Posted by Dave at October 8, 2008 12:15 PM
Comments
That's really cool, Dave!
Posted by: Meredith at October 9, 2008 01:39 PM