Technology is challenging enough when we really know what is going on. The situation deteriorates rapidly as we progress through only thinking we know what is going on to being completely clueless. My step-mother just started using a computer, the first computer that has been solely hers, the first one where she can do whatever she likes with it and no one is going to tell her to keep out of their work. It is also her first computer (other than a WebTV) on which she can get to the world wide web.
She bought a copy of The Internet for Dummies and that has been helpful but even this book assumes she knows too much. She has had questions for me like, “When do I press on the right side of the bar?” She is using a touch pad on an Asus Eee PC so her question translates to, “When should I right-click?” That’s a good question and the answer, “When you want a pop-up or context menu” means nothing to her.
Then she asked, “When do I click twice on the left side of the bar?” This was a little easier. To be non-technical, I advised her to single click and, if that does not do what she wants, try double-clicking. The jury is still out on whether this helps.
Finally, she described a real corker of a problem. Neither Candy nor I had any real advice for her, other than to check her manual for a Num-Lock key. The problem, as she described it, was that whenever she typed the “3” key, she would see an asterisk. Since she lives 850 miles away, I cannot see her screen. I am dependent on her descriptions. I assume she accurately describes what she is seeing and she assumes that I understand what she tells me.
Bad assumptions all around.
At first, it sounds like she is getting shifted characters, or at least the asterisk, all the time. Then it develops that the problem only happens in Firefox, not in OpenOffice.org. Then she tells me that it only happens when trying to enter her password into a new web site, not when doing anything else in Firefox. Ah ha! It turned out that she was typing her password and the browser was obfuscating it, completely correct behavior. But she is so new to the whole computer “thing” that even this behavior, which we take as much for granted as getting water from a sink when we turn the tap on, was baffling.
It’s easy to forget how much we know. That forgetfulness makes teaching all the more difficult.
I had good success with remote access to people’s desktop using VNC and the call-out function. In short, you start a VNC client in listener mode (you need a public address) and you instruct the end that is behind the NAT to do a VNC server in call-out mode.
Good instructions were found at: http://www.plenz.com/reverse-vnc/
That works on Windows but not on Linux. On Linux, the new vncserver gets its own X windows session rather than showing the existing desktop.
— Art Z.