Today we had another great lesson. Right on time, mom called on the computer and we were off.

It was time to update her OS, there was a period of about three weeks between the time we sent the computer and today, so I knew there must be a lot of them. I update at least three times a week. Now, this little matter of updating: it’s too cool to believe. In the Open Source world, there are computer enthusiasts who are dedicated to developing and improving Operating Systems. Every day there are improvements and bug-fixes to software and OSs and the ones that work well are added to the Repositories. In all cases the programs you find in your repository will work with your OS. If you’re geekier than that, you can install ‘from Source’ but I doubt I’ll ever need to go there. When you update, nearly all the updates are improvements to the software on your computer. You do not have to go to the website of a particular program, see if there are updates and do them one-by-one. It’s all done for you, quickly and effectively by the Package Manager.

On to email. She learned to spot an unopened email by the fact that the text was bolder than the others, clicked once on it and I explained that the message showing in the preview pane was just that, a preview. An email can also be opened in a new window with a double-click. I had her right-click on the photo I sent, select Save Image and directed her to her Home/Pictures folder. She needed a folder within that one to hold the picture I sent her of a nice skillet dinner I made. I told her to name the folder something obvious like ‘food’ and save the picture to it. At the top of the Save window, the path to the pictures is clearly shown. A nice feature in Linux OSs is the obvious way in which the path is displayed, we explored that and she’s beginning to get the idea that the computer is logical, not mystical. Once files are stored, there really is a way to find them again.

In several instances, I’ve had her go to her personal files (Home) button in the Taskbar. In PCLinuxOS, the local browser-the browser that shows what’s in your computer, is called Konqueror. It is also an Internet browser and an FTP client, but for now I’d like to keep things simple and keep the file browser and the internet browser (Firefox) completely seperate to be sure she understands the difference between local and internet. For her, local browsing is via Konqueror and internet is via Firefox. I was very pleased when she asked today, “OK, I’ve got Firefox, so what’s Konqueror?” Yes! There’s a difference and she understood it.

She’s interested in music, so I had her go to Pandora, an Internet radio station that takes your preferences in music and finds the same style of music from a vast library. We signed her up and that taught her a lot of things. She got more practice putting the cursor in each entry box, making and typing in her own passwords, tabbing to the next box, and the frustration of getting a screen that says, “I’m sorry, you forgot to fill out a very important detail…”. Several times. So we got her all signed up, typed in her musical preferences…and nothing happened. She can hear my voice and I can hear hers, we can play games with music and she can hear the music and my voice, but so far she’s gotten no sound from either YouTube or Pandora. Ah well, there’s enough to learn, so we decided to let it go for another day and move on.

Now, since she has been subjected to the annoyance of typing in passwords that she can’t see as she types, there was another thing she needed to know. She has to be able to create documents and save them anyway so copy/pasting was next. She opened the KWrite program, a simple text editor, and typed in the programs she uses, the user names and the passwords. We practiced selecting, copying and pasting the same information over and over again, then selected the whole block of practice text and deleted it. Voila! A simple document with some rudimentary text editing. Now, to find a logical place to save it. We went to her Home folder, to Documents and created a new folder, appropriately named, and saved it. Closed out the Konqueror window, went searching for the document and there it was, right where she put it.

One more thing before we finished, she wanted to be reminded how to access her games. I took her through the Start menu and we found them, and then I showed her how to place a shortcut on the desktop. One more little trick to make life easier.

We did some Googling, talked some more, got some reminders on how to shut down and boot up again and said goodnight. She’s on the fast track to computer literacy and she’s up to the task.

I’m really proud of her.

Today was the first day we didn’t begin our lessons with a preliminary phone call to give her instructions on how to call me on Skype. Mom and I had made a date; she would call via Skype at a specified time. I opened the program prior to that and left it open. On the Media Hub, I left the buttons in the “up” position so that I could hear the computer ring when she called. OK, I’m something of a newbie too, but it was very cool to hear my computer ringing. She had turned on and booted up her computer, brought up the Start menu, navigated to Skype and opened it, clicked on my name which brought up a “call” window and she phoned me. I pressed down the buttons on the Media Hub to transfer the sound to my headset and answered the call.

We said hi, what have you been up to and all that and-then got to work. First things first; email of course. I had her open Thunderbird, which Brad had installed but there was nothing in the window that should have shown her identity. So it was installed but not configured. We talked her through it and got her GMail account set up on Thunderbird. It was so easy and they work together beautifully. She opened an email I had sent and we practised replying to emails, back and forth a few times. I asked if she had any email addresses for friends. She replied that she did but didn’t want to start trading email until she felt more comfortable with it. Onward.

Then she had questions about games. Ah ha! The PCLinuxOS repository has thousands of games, just waiting for you to go and pick them up for free. I directed her to her Package Manager icon in the taskbar and a window came up asking for the ‘root’ password.

That’s the beauty and the inherant security of Linux systems. No one can significantly change important settings or download programs without ‘root’ priveleges, meaning you are the administrator, with complete control of the system. As administrator, you can even protect files on your system from other users by controlling the permissions on the file/folders. It’s an inherantly secure system, which helps protect against viruses and other bad stuff. So far there are no viruses that attack Linux desktop systems. There are anti-virus programs available for Linux, but but most users simply don’t bother.

She typed in her password and went to Synaptic, the Package Manager and navigated to Games. I suggested that since she had just started playing Sudoku, she might like KSudoko, so we went through the process of downloading it, then finding it on her Start menu and firing it up. What a thrill! A game she really liked, free and totally compatible with her computer. We went on to get her Frozen Bubble, a horribly addictive game, and a package of Solitaire games.

We were both yawning like crazy and beat after our three-hour lesson, time to make another date and say goodnight.

Goodnight…

The computer tech, a nice (and handsome, by all accounts) young man named Brad went to my mother’s house, whereupon she called to have Don confer with him. The reason the computer wouldn’t turn on was because the plug had been slightly dislodged from the socket. When that was corrected, the tech found that the fan in the power supply wasn’t running. Don had him replace the power supply and it fixed the computer.

Brad commented that he was currently using Fedora and taking a Linux class so, knowing he was familiar with Linux we had him install Thunderbird (via Synaptic) before he left. Synaptic, in case you weren’t aware, is an incredible Package Manager which makes it extremely easy to find, install and/or remove software, all of which is free. Synaptic is a wonderful tool for a newbie, it will not allow you to install software that won’t work or is incompatible with your OS.

Some of the major stumbling blocks to becoming comfortable with computers is the fear that you will break this extremely expensive piece of equipment. By using older, slower, refurbished equipment you haven’t invested a lot. Today there are many more people who are able to service computers, either from a shop or in your home; that wasn’t true just a few short years ago. There’s a good bit of competition so the rates are reasonable and service is getting much better. Nearly everyone has a family geek and hopefully can be lured into visiting and tutoring. Generally, people love to share their knowledge with an appreciative audience. I’ve found home-cooked meals and cookies work well, too.

So, the computer was fixed. Then she got busy, (or timid, but that’s OK) and didn’t turn the computer on for a day-and-a-half.

The oddest thing happened. She sat down, turned on the computer and my Skype program-that I had turned on just on a whim-informed me she was online. I had just sat down at the computer myself! I gave her a call on Skype and she answered. We spent the next couple of hours talking, surfing, learning and generally having a great time. She visited Don’s and my website, the site that I made for the local Master Gardener Association, and did some Googling. Now she’s beginning to ask questions about specific things that she wonders about, she’s getting a good foundation of knowledge to build upon. We made a date for the next lesson and said goodbye.

The most valuable part of the problem with the power supply was the fact that she learned anything is fixable, it’s just a machine. Early on in her computer adventure, she found out how to do some rudimentary troubleshooting, poking around, checking to see if everything’s plugged in, finding out the name of various parts of the computer so she can describe things over the phone. When there’s a problem, whether it’s hardware or software, there’s a solution. With a tutor or a computer-savvy person to help, it’s usually not a big deal.

Stay tuned…

Yesterday my mom’s tutoring session involved mostly fun stuff. She had just been on a short trip to Crystal River in Florida and was impressed once again with how beautiful the area is. I had her tell me about it, then said, “Wanna have some fun?” What was I thinking? Of course she was up for some fun.

I had her go to Google Maps and type in the location of the place she had been and she was thrilled. Remember seeing MapQuest or Google Maps for the first time? How about getting driving directions from your house to anywhere? Of course, everything she does makes her look in the right places for clues as to what she can do with that site. Describing how to use the scrollbar was exasperating on both ends. But that little hand that clenches and releases on the map was a perfect example of “drag and drop” and also taught her what I meant by “hold the left mouse button down and drag it around, then release”. When you’re dragging a map around to see what’s above and below, it’s downright fun.

We checked her email via GMail online, I showed her how to open, reply and close the program. The GMail interface is crowded and confusing, though. I’m going to have to get her set up with Thunderbird, it’s so easy to configure with a GMail account, perhaps she can do it. It has a simple, pleasing look, too, much better for a beginner.

OK, so we do have a real problem, her computer crashed after being on for 1 1/2 hours, the last time it was 2 1/2 hours. Time for her to call her computer guy. Don has a good idea what the problem is by its behavior; it’s probably the power supply. Mom says when it crashes, the back of the computer is very hot. She made the appointment, we called him and Don told him what kind of power supply to bring along, it would probably save him a trip.

The adventure continues…

It was important to me to present my mom’s lessons in a logical, progressive manner. I was trying to remember what it was that made me the most motivated when I was learning computing. Of course! It was email. Communication is one of the basic human needs. Like most everyone else, I did whatever was required to learn to do email; that taught me to understand what a program is and most importantly, how to use help files.

It’s possible we didn’t configure the POP3 access into my mom’s computer, but that actually proved to be an asset. I taught her to pick up her email online with GMail, now she can pick up her mail from any computer. She understands the difference between checking her email online and checking it with her email client, KMail. It helps that we set her homepage to the Google search page, where she can click on Gmail, sign in and check her mail.

In one two-hour session, she learned to go to GMail, place the cursor in the form box, enter her email address and password, go to her Inbox, open her emails, reply and send. She learned to highlight, copy and paste from a document so that later she can learn to copy/paste relevant data from documents into forms.

We went to YouTube where I showed her around and experimented to see if I could play a video while talking to her on Skype. It worked for a few minutes, so I encouraged her to do the same thing. My computer froze up and I had a little trouble closing the programs, but it worked out. Her computer crashed..for the second time. Of course our Skype call was terminated, but I called her right back on the phone. If she keeps crashing, it’s no big deal, we can send her another CPU, everything else is working properly.

We closed the evening with a promise to make a date for the same time tomorrow.

The adventure continues…

Well, we did it! Or more to the point, she did it. This morning my mom put together a computer desk, unpacked her boxes of computer hardware and this afternoon she called, ready to rock.

Here’s the set-up we sent her;

1. 1.3 GHz P4 with 384 MB of RAM, equipped with PCLinuxOS 2007
2. Mouse
3. Keyboard
4. Printer
5. 15″ LCD monitor
6. Headset
7. Headset/Speaker switch-box
8. Speakers
9. Router for sharing existing connection
10. UPS
11. Power distribution box

With no idea of the name of each component, she learned as she went along. On the phone, she got the whole system together, plugged her computer and my nephew’s into the router and… nothing happened. She looked at it as Don talked her through what should be plugged into what, spotted the mis-plugged power cord on her own, corrected the error and the whole works lit up like Christmas. Yeehaw!

I talked her through a basic understanding of PCLinuxOS, the various parts of the KDE desktop and had her open a tutorial (simple text file which I wrote) in KWrite on how to open some of the programs on her computer. Then I told her how to open the Skype program which was already configured with my Skype identity as a contact. After a couple of fumbled attempts, all of a sudden it worked. Now we could talk without paying long-distance charges. Spent the next hour-plus learning how to open her Firefox browser and use Google to search the web. This is a woman who didn’t know what a monitor was yesterday.

That’s my mom. I’m so proud of her. By the time we wrapped it up, she had brain burn. Tomorrow evening we’ll have another session. We couldn’t get her KMail program to pick up her mail, so I have to check the settings in her gMail account to see if we set it up for pop3 access.

She’s on her way to computer literacy and I’m thrilled. It’s been a wonderful day.

Don got a really nice dinner.