How to help someone use a computer

This article gives advice to help computer savvy people help computer newbies. The advice is broken up into two lists; "Things you need to tell yourself" and "Important rules." The thing I need to remind myself most often is to tell whoever I'm helping to actually read and pay attention to messages and prompts that appear on the screen. When a computer prompts you or asks you to do something, it's important to carefully read the message and not dismiss it because it's an interruption. By now, I'm very familiar with the prompts that come up on my Mac and can tell which ones they are just by the shape of the text on the screen. But just because I know them doesn't mean the newbie does, and I shouldn't just tell them what to click, but ask them to read it and help them get in the habit of doing so.
The important rule that really jumped out at me was "don't take the keyboard. Let them do all the typing, even if it's slower that way, and even if you have to point them to every key they need to type. That's the only way they're going to learn from the interaction." This really stuck with me because when I help my mom on the computer, I get frustrated because she is so slow and types with only two fingers and never does what I'm asking her to do right away. It's frustrating and often I try to take the keyboard and just do it for her. But she always demands I give it back because she wants to do it herself. Which is the only way she will truly learn.

I can use the information in my presentation by letting the class test out the Smartboard for themselves and not hijack it and try to show them how it's done.


Agre, Phil. "How to Help Someone Use a Computer." UCLA Department of Information Studies. Web. 04 Mar. 2010. .