As a library assistant in his late 20s (and a trainee librarian), I find
the most effective way of getting to grips with users with new gadgets is
to go over and try and help them there and then. (Provided a basic level of
IT training, like ECDL.)
This happened, for instance, with a lad who wanted to copy music to his MP3
player from a (legal) download site. I'm not bothered about getting an MP3
player, and don't know much about them, but managed to learn quickly enough
what we needed to do; repeating the process to show the user exactly what
he needed to do by himself reinforced it in my mind, and I could manage it
again.
The only reason I am reasonably computer literate is because I worked in an
office for a year or so, and had to use them day in, day out. Once the
basic procedure has been learnt, it's all a matter of practice - and that's
the same for doing a memo in Word, to finding the MySpace website for
someone, to copying files to an unfamiliar application...
Staff need to be encouraged to see computers as the jumped-up calculators
they are (so they don't distrust/fear them so much), then be encouraged to
realise that once they know the underlying principle of an operation (like
copying a file) they can apply it wherever necessary, even in an initially
unfamiliar situation.
I notice regularly that some of my colleagues (who sometimes ask me to do
the troubleshooting, "because I'm good with these things") are more than
capable of understanding the problem and the solution when I tell them what
I did afterwards...they just don't have enough confidence in their own
abilities to go out there and try to help by themselves. (And they think
I'm better than I am...!)
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