Computer Answer Man

Steve Feinberg

      Computer Help for the Non-Expert

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"Older people can't learn computers as fast or as well as young people." If anyone ever tells you that bit of nonsense, ask them "Which older person?  Which young person?"  because EVERYONE who gets stuck gets stuck in exactly the same way!

Walkies

It was over ten years ago that I saw Barbara Woodhouse (then in her seventies), the English dog obedience training expert, calling "Walkies" to her canine students at her obedience training school.  As I watched, I saw her have the most intractable of dogs following her commands in a matter of seconds.  She knew exactly what to do to get the dogs to respond.  Her human students didn't fare so well with their canine charges.

What astounded me was that seconds after Woodhouse demonstrated to the disgruntled, then surprised, dog owner that Fido can behave just fine, Fido's master would perform exactly the same unproductive behaviors as before Woodhouse's demonstration! Fido had learned, but the owner had not!

It was very simple to train a dog as Ms. Woodhouse demonstrated.  What was difficult, and what she really was attempting was TRAINING HER HUMANS to train their dogs, although not a word was explicitly spoken about that fact.

Does what it is told

The computer, like the dog, will always do what you want it to do.  It is the human owner who reacts, "This is the way my computer always behaves no matter what I do," and continues to do the same unproductive things that caused the lamentation!

I can just imagine all the computer trainers, and those people who create training materials saying, "Big deal! We knew this all along, it's obvious."  Yes, of course it's obvious that the student is really the human, not the dog (computer).  What's less obvious, and the real "secret," is that even though the students saw and heard Woodhouse's instructions, they CONTINUED to use old patterns of reacting, old patterns of learning.  What is more important, Woodhouse ALSO fell back on her own old patterns of teaching and continued to get the same unproductive results with her HUMAN students.

Eventually her human students learned, but they never learned thesimple techniques as well as the master herself, and took much longer than their dogs to learn them!  Even though she demonstrated new behaviors to both the dogs and to the humans, only the dogs were able to respond to Woodhouse directly.

The challenge for Woodhouse was to teach her human students her own excellent patterns for working with dogs rather than merely teaching information ABOUT computers.

The Hands of Time

One spring day in 1981, Dorothy, a friend in her seventies, asked me if I would show her how to operate her digital watch.  She had to use a digital watch because her arthritic fingers prevented her from operating a watch stem.  A digital watch is essentially a small computer with easy to press buttons.

Minutes later after "experimenting" and "playing" with the watch I had figured it out.  When I began teaching her I told her, "First you press this button, then this happens, then you press this button twice and this happens..." It was obvious Dorothy was getting confused because of this Simon Says Do This teaching, so I excused myself and wondered.

I wondered about what I did mentally that allowed me to operate the watch so quickly. I was fortunate that I was beginning to learn a new communications model called NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) which gave me some clues as to what I was doing internally.  I realized that as I played with the buttons, I was observing the screens, the watch face, as they changed.  The most important piece of how I did what I did was to remember the screens visually and create a visual model of what was happening.

When I handed her four drawings of what each screen looked like, how to manipulate the screen once there, then how to get to another screen, she was delighted. Minutes later she had mastered the use of her watch using the pictures as reference.  Dorothy passed away in 1990 at the age of 80, but I still have those drawings with Dorothy's steno comments on the back.

When the teacher uses Simon Says, only some students will get the "picture" of how the computer works.  When the student temporarily forgets how to play and experiment, learning is a scary process of "avoiding mistakes."

Dow Corning

In 1987 at Dow Corning, I conducted videotaped interviews to test my ideas about the differences between computer literates and those who weren't.  The computer literates said they would "experiment" or "play" with the computer to "see possibilities," and they told stories about their "adventures."  On the other hand, less adept learners said they wanted to be "told exactly what to do" to avoid making mistakes.  I call this group Simon Says trainees.

Age is No Barrier

In 1982 when I first started teaching novices, I always had the entire class play a computer adventure game together.  This idea was based on some research that IBM did that suggested playing computer adventure games can lead to enhanced computer learning afterwards.

The kids always picked up on the adventure game fastest, but once the adults got the idea there was no stopping them.  The adults' greater knowledge and experience began to show.  Eventually the adults solved the game while the kids marveled at the "older people's" transformation.

I've also used computer adventure games with learning disabled individuals with excellent learning results and with psychiatric patients with excellent therapeutic results.  My experience has always been that if I can encourage students to be curious and experimental, they will learn rapidly even if they start out as Simon Says trainees or have learning and emotional impediments.

A computer is just an opportunity to become a kid again, but with the accumulated experience of an adult.  All seniors need is a teaching environment where experimentation and play are encouraged.

Just as I once managed to break through stereotype barriers regarding the learning disabled and psychiatric patients, we may have to step aside as senior learning stereotypes crumble as well!