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Teaching YahooGroups to older people
Rogue Six | Aug 5 2006
I wasn't sure where to put this, so I figured here was as good as any... I'm a new Advisor for my local Writers' Guild, and happened to build a YahooGroups site for the Guild. I figured this would be a good way to speed up the distributing of information, would allow members to post pieces they'd written for review by fellow members, and also allow us to reach out to other Guilds in the state and the country as well...heck, even the world! But like the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished... There's about a quarter to a third of the Guild -- older people -- who have been constantly badgering me with questions like "I can't post a file that I wrote -- what's wrong with the site?" or "It won't let me post photos -- what's going on?" As if I'd rigged the site so they couldn't use it. I went and found some tutorials as well as the various Help sections and made some "tutorial disks" to pass out at meetings. Now I'm scheduled to hold a workshop on YahooGroups in November to teach how to use the various functions -- and explain just why this site is a good thing to boot! Can anyone offer me any suggestions as to how best to teach older people to use YahooGroups? I could use some help. 8 Comments
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 The thing with older people...Submitted by solidsnot on August 7, 2006 - 5:00am.
The thing with older people is that we forget that they didn't grow up with computers. The only analogy I can come up with is I don't text message that much but have you seen a 14 year old girl with a cell phone? I think their texting speed is almost as fast as my typing speed. The thing is that I didn't (and still don't) use text messaging. The same is of older people and computers. Most of them can figure out word processing programs but when you throw "advanced" features of the internet on there (although message boards aren't really advanced and are ancient in internet terms) they get a bit lost. I remember trying to explain what the desktop was to an older lady once and thought I was going to pull my hair out because, to me, it was such an intuitive thing. They don't get the idioms of the computing world as well as someone who grew up or learned them and has been around them for years and years. You must assume they know nothing and when you start to sound condescending or when they give you the look that says "Hey, I'm not stupid" step up your lingo a bit and see if they keep pace. Most of all, patience is the key. » POSTED IN:
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