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.

New project! My husband Don Crowder (aka eldergeek) and I are so excited.

My mother is in her late 70s and has never owned or operated a computer. Over the last couple of years we’ve been encouraging her to consider learning and since she’s been a lifelong learner, she decided she’d like to. We live in Central Texas and she lives in Central Florida, a bit of a logistics challenge, but not insurmountable, as you’ll see.

For some time now Don has been refurbishing old computers, installing Linux OSs in them and giving them to people who want a computer but have limited resources. This was the perfect opportunity to really do something tangible for my mom, get her started on the road to computer literacy. We sent her a working system, tested and tweaked in our home, last week.

Can any of you remember first placing your hands on a computer? I can, it’s only been 4+ years since I bought my first computer and it’s changed my life. I remember quite well setting it up, sitting down in front of this mysterious, expensive mechanism wondering what to do first, and what to do next, and please please please don’t let me break it. Fortunately, I learn well from books so with a couple of good ones in hand I was on my way. Things accelerated dramatically when I signed up for as many helpful ezines as possible. Don was the writer of an ezine I subscribed to and when I asked him some newbie questions he responded generously and we became friends. The rest, as they say, is another story.

Wouldn’t it be a great thing if my mother could receive real-time tutoring from the very beginning? Don installed PCLinuxOS on both computers so we’d be working with the same system. PCLOS 2007 is absolutely the prettiest, sleekest, most newbie- and intermediate- friendly OS we’ve ever seen (can you say plug-n-play?). I wrote a very basic tutorial and saved it on the desktop with the title “Hi, Mom! Double-click me!” We installed Skype on both computers and with the headsets we both have we’ll be able to talk to each other, long-distance, for free. A computer with built-in live tech support, how’s that for newbie-dream-come-true? I’d be interested to know if anyone else is doing this or plans to and how it works out.

Now-the adventure begins…