This fall, the Community Access Program hired me to help improve public computer literacy. A large part of the job is answering the questions of people who come in to use the computers; I also book lessons for people who want more focussed training. The first such lesson taught me as much as the student.

Plan was to give her a quick tour of the desktop and start menu, explain how to work in multiple windows at once using the taskbar and clipboard, and spend the rest of the time getting her comfortable online. We spent the hour in Notepad, editing Mary had a Little Lamb.

We covered the difference between single and double clicking, moving around with the arrow keys, what happens when you press enter in the middle of a line, and the difference between delete and backspace. I explained that bringing the mouse cursor to the text you want to edit isn't enough - you have to actually click so the blinking cursor goes there too. Right near the end, we got to selecting text, copying, cutting, and pasting.

I should emphasize that this was a very intelligent and attentive woman; she'd simply never, ever, used a computer before.

Anyway, my intent had been to make online tutorials & resources for people who need to get basic computer skills - in other words, the exact people who can't access online tutorials and resources. They need someone to sit down with them; but every third training session, the person says, "it's that simple? When my boyfriend/sister/friend tried to explain it to me I couldn't understand a word they said." And I've been surprised at how little information I could find online about effectively teaching computer basics.

So, I decided to make a webpage to help computer types become more effective teachers. Given the minimal teaching I've actually done so far, this feels kind of presumptuous - but it's mostly stuff I would've benefitted from reading at the outset, so hopefully others will find it useful as well.