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…

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.

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…