> I told him that the first step was to get him comfortable
> enough with a computer and the internet to be able to send
> emails back and forth with his children. I didn't think this
> was going to be too much to ask.
my immediate response is hysterical laughter.. not at you, but
at the memories your situation conjures up. i think anyone
who's got both computer skills and relatives has been in the
same situation at one time or another. ;-)
the main thing you need is a whole lot of patience. based on
my own experiences teaching my parents and sister HTML (one PhD,
one MS, one MA), you'll be far better off if you abandon the
premise that you're dealing with someone even marginally
intelligent. you *will* have to repeat the same thing at least
twenty times before the little light goes on in some cases, and
it's not worth your time trying to find a more accessible
explanation. just keep repeating the same things over and
over, and eventually they'll acquire the operational context
which allows them to understand it.
the real problem of learning computers isn't mechanical.. the
sequences of mouse-clicks and menu items and so forth.. it's
metaphorical. the combination of an operating system and a
piece of software comprise an environment which has a
surprisingly large number of basic assumptions you have to grasp
before any of it makes sense.
i committed mental genocide while trying to teach my mother that
the words "file", "folder", and "program" were *not*, in fact,
interchangeable. she'd tell me that "there was a problem with
her HTML program, because when she opened the file, it wasn't
there." after a great deal of frustration, i'd learn that the
"program" was actually a webpage, and that the "file" was the
directory where she thought it had been saved. the real
problem was that she was looking in the wrong directory.
it takes people time to absorb the precepts we eventually take
for granted, and one of the biggest problems is that people
start by wanting to learn calculus before they learn to count.
volume-discount patience, and a great deal of therapeutic
ranting are about the best you can do.
> My little six-year-old brother has no problems playing Thomas
> The Tank Engine Match-em on the machine, how much harder could
> Eudora be, right?
again.. laughter. the *software* isn't the primary source of
trouble. small children have a phenomenal ability to absorb
and assimilate new information.. heck, who else do you know who
can learn a language from scratch just by listening to the kind
of babble adults inflict on babies? ;-)
there's a study out there somewhere which correlates level of
formal education with ability to absorb technical information.
twelve-year-olds score highest, and people with PhD.s score
lowest. it has to do with the "chunk size" of information
people choose. a twelve-year-old will look up the instructions
for the specific thing they want to do at the moment, and have
done with it. someone with a doctorate will try to read and
comprehend the entire manual before ever touching the mouse.
given that computer technology is pretty much a cick-and-observe
position, the latter strategy doesn't work very well.
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 'net geek..
been there, done that, have network, will travel.
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