The Power of (Learning) Focus

One of my computer students (a friendly and lively woman in her mid 80s) is interested in learning how to scan her old family photographs so that she can organize them into libraries, print them, email them to other people, make adjustments to the photos, preserve the originals, etc.

This procedure involves many steps and can certainly be overwhelming when a computer novice tries to take it in all at once.

Whenever one of my computer students wants to undertake such an ambitious task, I write down each of the steps involved in the procedure.

We then discuss each step to make sure that the adult learner / senior understands (at least conceptually) what we are about to do before we perform the individual task on the computer.

Photo Scanning Procedure

Buy a USB Scanner
Install the Scanner's software onto your computer
Connect the scanner to your computer
Buy a USB Photo Printer and some photo paper if you want to produce high quality "prints" of your photos.
Install the Printer's software onto your computer
Connect the printer to your computer
Load the printer with your photo paper
If necessary, download a photo software (such as the Google Picasa) program that will enable you to "Find, organize and share your photos."
Place the photo that you wish to scan face down in the scanner
Use your computer's photo program to "scan" the photo into your computer
Remove the photo from the scanner
If you wish, you can use your Photo program to edit the scanned photo (adjust its color, crop it, add "effects" to it, etc.)
If you wish, you can make a "print" of your scanned photo by sending it to your printer
You can also use the Photo program to organize your photos into "libraries" or "albums"

The Divide and Conquer Approach

This photo scanning / editing procedure will almost certainly be overwhelming to the adult computer learner if they try to learn the whole thing at once.

But I've had great success with first putting each step of a major computer operation into a step-by-step outline for the adult computer learner to see "the big picture" (and to give them something to refer to when I'm not there).

In my experience, seniors often seem to feel greatly relieved when computer procedures are put into writing for them.

After the printer and scanner were connected to the adult learner's computer and the necessary software was installed, we discussed each step in the scanning and photo editing procedure before actually performing that step on the computer --- several times!

The "divide and conquer" approach works equally well for non-teaching tasks. I use it to create the computer help for the computer shy manuals and DVDs.

Recommended Computer Teaching Procedure

Discuss the individual step in a computer procedure with the adult learner (without being too technical)
Have the student watch you perform that computer step
Have the student practice that step herself --- several times
When the student is comfortable with that individual computer step (such as starting the Photo program), move onto the next step in the computer procedure