Today my dad asked to show him how to send himself a youtube link. Before we started he asked for steps so he can jott them down for future reference. Not listening I asked him to start off finding the video that he wants to send. He speaks out the process as he attempts to access Youtube and these were the words I hear: "So I will goto Youtube and copy and paste the video to my google."
Hearing this I then tried to explain that he has to understand the difference between a website like youtube, google, and gmail. After hearing that he started to get confused. I kept insisting he had to understand the "basics". It got frustrating for him and myself. Looking at the situation from a third person perspective, it was going to be like driving After laughing out loud, I had to hear my dad out.
He explained to me how he learned in his computer class. After a quick breakdown, today I learned that the generation X and above have to learn in a different way even simpler than googling "how to do __(Fill in the blank) ."
It was humbling to listen to him, because sending youtube link to yourself is beyond preschool. We have to understand that it's not the case with everyone else. One of the things the younger generations of X,Y, Z, and beyond should know is not all the boomers had access to the latest technological goods that were being sold in the consumer markets from 1960-2000 in their lives. This reigns true if they came from a third world country, or had to focus on making a living for a family. What I've learned from being born and raised in the US is that there are no excuses. But some people are at this foreign state with tech and computers so the least we can do is to help them become competent in communicating online in an already simplified connected world.
This is a philosophy I carry for myself, if you're parents raised you, provided you a home to grow up in, the least you can do is be patient when teaching them anything. When they brought you into the world, you knew NOTHING.
Onto the solution, while this is no quick fix, it's a building block to help the older generations with or without a grasp of the tech/internet/computer language let alone the English language. This may not apply to everyone, but it's a start.
So to start it off, you have to be very elementary in any explanations. My dad works for a city job as a park maintenance professional and is good at everything, and really wants to put computer exposure under his expertise. His team consists of people young and old and has a good number of 50 and up.
Their tech class was simple as f*ck. The instructor didn't go explaining what anything was or the history of anything, except to just do what she says. She gave them a process list to press this button, click this bar, type in this word, and so on.
You're probably thinking what I was thinking, "how will they learn and know what they exactly are doing for future references?" The process was simple, they rinsed and repeated(practiced) a few times and once they were familiar the instructor started to explain what they just did. First you give a group a target, task, or goal, they perform the steps and practice it then it gets broken down to them.
This is not how everyone learns(everyone learns differently), but it's a start. My dad's group learned how to take care of email faster than asking an impatient person to teach one person. They can attest to this process, and I will be using it more to help my parents understanding computers and tech.
If you guys have better and effective ways to teach the generation X and above folks to engage with technology please email me at thetopramen@gmail.com
Thanks for reading this, and hope we can help the other generations enjoy what we enjoy with today's simplistic technologies.
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