 So, Jessica, I don't know, Jessica, I don't know what you're doing. I don't know what you're saying. I don't speak English. But actually, except I think you're paying for students, right? Jessica has been helping people to become more technologically literate from the time now, and she's going to give us the benefit of some of her experience. So we really appreciate it. And thanks. Great. Thanks for having me. Can we turn these lights back on? I know it's kind of hot and you don't have your internet, so if anybody wants to take it out, I just want to feel that. So there's handouts on the back table. If anybody did have the internet, my slides and links to a lot of the stuff that I'm talking about are there. So it's kind of like what we would call an e-handout back when we were practicing everything. You just think of it as a website with links to the stuff that I'm going to be talking about. And that includes all the slides and links to stuff. And this handout, which basically when they ask me to come here and explain what you guys were doing, which is super exciting, and I really wish to say to Vermont, whatever, do anything like this at all. I say, you know, I'm happy to come and I love Nebraska, and it's the house. But what I would do is I would just print out this handout and just give it to everybody and basically just read it. Because Phil Agri was a professor in California. He was known for doing this mailing list in California back in 1996 when we were communicating with the electronic mail called Red Rock Eater Digest. And it was stuff that other people had written, and sent it to friends of his. And he was very good at putting in very plain talk some fairly sophisticated ideas, both about physics and other things that he did for his job. But also stuff like this. I don't know if you saw it, you can grab it later on your way out. It's on the internet also. But basically some of the things that we take for granted when we're working with novice users, and I don't know about you guys, but I've kind of had computers since there were computers. Not because I'm super gadget free, but because my father worked in technology. So my father worked in technology, so we had computers in the home. Which doesn't really, I mean we didn't, I didn't have all the computers as a kid, but they were just around, and the big thing was they were normal. It was normal to have a computer. It was normal to have a connection to another computer. It was normal to have a network. None of that, I really thought that much about it. I didn't do computers. I didn't do computers in college. But then when I went to library school, which was in 1993, which was when computers were just starting to be a thing people thought about, suddenly the fact that computers were normal for me separated me from a lot of my peers who were going to library school not only computers weren't normal, but they were potentially a horrible threat and everything goes wrong with the profession, which, you know, it's fine. It's fine. One of my favorite things about the Obama administration is he's introduced this. This is a topic on which reasonable people can disagree. I think there are threats to our traditional way of life on computers. I also think there's untold, unforeseen opportunities most of the time and both of those things can exist now in the state. So the fact that I was comfortable with computers and enjoyed using them and loved the library and the public spaces and all that stuff meant that it was kind of a natural for me to do sort of technology, education as part of what I did. And over time, I went to library school in Seattle and I was doing kind of my first email classes in 1999 and we were teaching people how to get on Yahoo and excited. Whatever hot mail whatever the free email program was at the time and I sort of figured the way everything was going to work in my life was that I was going to teach everyone how to get email, me and my colleagues and then everyone was going to get email and then we were going to move on and teach people how to do more sophisticated things and that didn't happen for a number of reasons. One, I moved to the east coast which lags behind the west coast and technological innovation. I don't know how the west sort of factors into it. I assume you're kind of like us in that way. I moved to places more rural so definitely a lot less uptake in various things which is the good news baggage, right? Like I have farmers in my town. They are awesome. It is great to eat food that be the people in your community make. However, sometimes that can go hand in hand with and we do things the way we've always done it and the fact machine is fine. Or the post. I'm a big fan of post. So long story short I'm still teaching my first email classes which it now is almost 20 years later and email has changed and the internet has changed but the fact that there's still a big group of people who still don't have that information and who now kind of as Americans need it whereas they didn't before. When I was giving somebody an email address in 1996 they were cutting edge, kind of. I mean they didn't even think that because they knew other people who would have email addresses before that. But nowadays if you're getting an email address you're kind of a lame adopter with all the kind of baggage that comes along with that which is challenging and in fact one of the biggest struggles I think of doing technology instruction nowadays. The computer stuff is not to be good kind of the same but the cultural shift is very very different and that's a lot of what I'm going to be talking about because I think anybody who knows how to use a computer has at least some of the reference skills to be able to pass on that information but understanding what people are bringing to the table is complex and I think a little maybe not what people are talking about so with that said that's what I'm not going to be talking about and so the other thing is digital literacy itself like feeling digital literate feeling digital literate feeling capable with your literacy stuff I was really naive in library school and I was like we're just going to get there and then we're all going to together go somewhere else and you know I had to kind of calm down personally but also for my work and realize it's a lot more of kind of a journey partly the reason that's important is because the technology changes and one of the things that we see all the time teaching people you know I use Gmail now Gmail users in the room have you all gotten forced to use the new compose window that make you crazy no see that's a good attitude me I have a terrible attitude because I'm like why do they keep changing these things and yet like I'm a computer lady and I teach people how to use computers I should be able of all people to handle the fact that I'm using something that is free I'm using it specifically because it allows Google to send advertisements to me and a bunch of other things but I use it, it's important to me and the world will change around me as I am going on this journey and I need to be ready for that our students are going to need to be ready for that and we're going to need to be setting expectations for that that are sort of appropriate so the good news and bad news is I think anyone who can use a computer can teach people how to use a computer which is cool the bad news is a lot of the money that's available and it's one of the things I love about this program but a lot of the money that's available you see people who get a lot of money and what they're going to do is build another website that's going to teach not as users how to use computers and the whole point obviously it's like having to take off your glasses to fix your glasses but if you can't use a computer already you're not going to be able to use the computer to teach you how to use a computer with some, I know right with some caveats and I'll talk about that a little bit so the good news is there's lots of people who will take your money to sell you computer information the bad news is that doesn't always help and for a lot of the people who are going to be working with that doesn't is not helpful for them specifically and it kind of makes you look like you don't know what they want so this model which I love is like we provide the resources through a website for you all who know how to use a website and we're here to help you use it and then you can do the one on one face to face we're going to be together with this with live human beings who may not be entirely comfortable being given a URL and said good luck so I think that's great so I'm going to sort of break down what some of the hurdles are and then towards the end I'm going to talk about some of the techniques and whatever that have worked for me this is not going to be so much how to teach but the lay of the land of novice users and technology instruction generally and I hope that's okay and I'm around all day too so I'll be here sitting in the back being like speak up or whatever when you guys are doing your thing so getting started one of the things about libraries of course that we know is you're working with people who are local I think what people would love to be a website and everybody on the planet can go to the website and they'd all learn the same things because we all need the same whatever totally not true there's not a lot of good top-down solutions for technology instruction we have the Gates Foundation for a long time they come through Nebraska they plow through Nebraska and give you guys computers and say good luck because that's what they did in underlying and some of our libraries our teeny-meeny libraries are still using the computers that the Gates Foundation gave them yes, yes, okay I thought it was just us like I love Vermont so much and I would never want to be anywhere else but our local control of libraries means that we have some little independent libraries who just kind of do things their own way and I'm always like they're like we're not having money so we use the computers from 8, 9, 10 years ago and if they still work we're still using them good but and so that's great Gates Foundation I appreciate their efforts but it was a partial solution because in many ways there was not the human solution the trainers blew in and blew out and the portal websites like I've said click here to get on the internet and learn everything and don't really help the needs of the divided and so one of the things that I think is an important strategy which you guys do in Nebraska in a good way is making sure you're collecting the data on these kinds of things because nothing helps get more people interested in what you're doing than explaining how many people are helping than explaining how many people need this help explaining whatever your little numbers are we got six computers and we had 270 people using them in the last month people understand or they think they understand numbers and they respond to that in a way that they don't always respond to you know we got this 80 year old lady in an email account and as much as that's awesome and it plays really good on the radio you kind of need both things to approach people to explain why this is important so one of the reasons you guys have this kind of awesome grant is because your people put together compelling stories but also compelling data to make that work so one of the things moving forward that you're going to be able to do is not just do the work that you're doing but make a case for why this work is important moving forward which is very exciting I'm very excited for it all my pictures by the way are Flickr creative commons and they link the sources every time I make my wife look at my slides and I'm like how are they it gets caught up I love that guy with the books that's all I want to be doing and I'm like this is about computers he should be using a computer but the illustration here is in America if you don't know how to read for example there's literacy programs that will help you learn how to read and they're usually small scale but kind of top down in the country but done locally on kind of a small scale you can get someone usually to teach you for free not all this if you don't know how to drive in the United States you can take a driving class you can pay a person who will teach you how to drive or more likely to get your friends to take you to the Walmart parking lot the big thing about both of these skills and the reason that I bring them both up is if you're an American who doesn't know how to drive or you don't know how to read you're kind of aware that there's a thing that you can't do that other people can do that gets them places that you can't go either figuratively or literally you're aware that there's a social cost to not being able to do those things even if I mean my sister has epilepsy and she couldn't drive for a long time like it's not her fault she just couldn't and so she was aware that she had to move to a place called transportation or do the other things you have to do in order to get where you need to go nobody would be able to choose time people would read a little bit none of them can read educated things one of the things that I think is a real problem with novice users and technology is that they're not aware of the world through the screen and in fact they think they're aware of the world through the screen because they've seen the internet on TV you know it's all like this like very excited to be internet on television or it's all like this I've come for your children now you know I'm wearing a t-shirt this is creep like you see very kind of like everything on TV which you know about after a while it's a very kind of two dimensional stereotypical thing it's either like scary news the internet where the creeps hang out or selling you something the internet where the party is that you're not invited to or something like that and you're not really sure you're like well I don't have any children and I don't want to go to that party so I guess I don't need the internet and I think for a lot of people they're not really aware of all the other junk that you can get I mean the example that I always use in my little town we have a little department store in my little town which is great it's great having a little department store you go there and buy ink for your printer which is great and if everybody knows about printer ink, printer ink like printers are basically free so that they can sell you very expensive printer ink which costs more than gasoline house for house which whatever it's fine that's how the marketplace works right but so if you're in my town and you're not on the internet you go to Belmains who appreciates your business and you buy your printer ink from there and it costs a fortune and so your whole view of printing the world whatever is printer ink is expensive printing is precious and et cetera et cetera I buy my printer ink from some I'm not even sure where they are company on the internet that sells them in bulk and it's really cheap but it turns out it's pretty much the same printer ink although sometimes it's not but for me prints are cheap they are free they are inexpensive the printer ink comes to my door I don't even need to go outside and the winner you guys are winner right we have winter too it's smaller winter but it's still winter and yeah when I got on the highway and saw that big big did they close apparently when you're not allowed on the highway in the winter it's not just for cows right it's for you I was like this is serious like we have animals we don't have gates they keep you off the highway but so our two views of the world are completely different we view printing completely differently just because of our access to resources and they don't even and I feel like it's like some invisible secret garden with cheap printer ink but that's basically what the internet is to me you know I can shop for things I can interact with people I can do a whole bunch of stuff and so people aren't aware of what they're missing out on and in fact they're incorrect assumptions seeing you know stolen children party a lot of people stay offline because they believe things that aren't true they would be like they're not stupid they just have misunderstanding based on bad information so the reason we know this actually is that the internal revenue service everybody's favorite federal organization they have a mandate to and there's a link to this study if you're nerdy about studies they have a mandate to get I think their goal was like 80% of people e-filing by like 20 see this is when I quote real numbers and I don't remember them 2015 I think but anyhow they want you to file your taxes online the reason they want you to file your taxes online is they save $2 for every single one of you guys that doesn't mail in a paper form because I just I trust the computer with my information I just kind of like knowing they have it if I put it in mail I hate myself because it costs the IRS $2 but they it's my little way to write it but they so they really want to save this money plus the error account way way down right because in the past you send them your form and then they either put it through a computer or pay someone a person with a terrible job to type these numbers in you type one number wrong you've ruined somebody's life or made their life right I don't know my sister got a couch delivered once and the person had to type the information from the order form and instead of typing the number for brown they typed the number for seafoam green and the couch guys came in and they're like and she was like oh my god but it was just you know it's an error errors totally happen but they affect people's lives and my sister did grow up and get over it but the IRS would like you to type your own numbers basically so to this end they did a big study of what is keeping these people from e-filing because one of the things the IRS can't do is they can't make you they're not allowed to force you to get on the internet to file your taxes they would really love to force you to get on the internet but they can't number one because they're not allowed to compete with turbo tax and all those other people laws, rules but number two they just can't make you they're not allowed to have a law that says Americans need to use the internet you'll notice states have done that like in Nebraska do you have to file taxes? do you have to do that online? no you can call the IRS and request them to send a paper form yeah but otherwise otherwise they're not gonna be available you can't make them up to force you they're starting to do that and for a lot everybody's like losing their minds like taking the screaming out because they're you know they're comfortable and like taxes make them uncomfortable and computers make them uncomfortable every time I'm like with a group of people too I always ask like what's the thing that made your people get on the internet like when I talked to a group of Maine like the thing that you now have to do online that you didn't have to do for when I talked to a group of Maine they were like oh noose licenses like if you want to get a license to shoot a noose in Maine you have to get it on the internet you don't want to use the internet I don't care I'm not the killer unemployment in Vermont same thing that enforce that's when the drafts get to do that online and people they run me isn't it right and on the one hand I super sympathize for those people because they're already frustrated in dealing with frustrated situations and then they're also dealing with computer on the other hand I sympathize for our government workers who we have to also pay for who don't want I wish we were in a future where everybody was comfortable using this. So the IRS needed a big study. What's everyone's problem? Like, why can't we get people E5? Basically. And it's not what's everyone's problem. The IRS is very chill about this. And they studied basically non-adopters and did a big study. So it's not just like Pew where they call a thousand people on the phone and do a survey and they're like, we know this about the world. I mean, I love Pew. But they do little surveys. I mean, kind of, more wide-banded surveys. We found four different types of people, basically. One, don't have a computer. Don't have a computer. Okay. Two, internet. No internet. Okay. All right. Three, don't care about the internet. Don't, you know, brrr, shut up about the internet, basically. Seriously, like the internet has nothing that interests me. It's kind of one of the answers that people have. I mean, I take that as like a challenge acceptance. I bet I could find something on the internet that you're interested in. You just haven't been on the right internet. But the third group, and these are about 25, 25, 25 percent of it. The last group was basically afraid. Or they needed help. Or they needed a person to help them. And now, let's be clear. That's their impression. They may be, you know, if you sat them down, maybe they don't need a person. They know how to do stuff just right, but they're uncomfortable. And that discomfort, regardless of whether it's real, imagined, who knows. You know, a lot of people, a lot of people I see in classes, you know, they had a partner, their partner died, their partner ran the checkbook and the computer. And they're kind of fighting it out with the checkbook. And they're like, no, just forget it, the computer. They're like, I won't do it. And those people are real. And the thing that's so interesting about them in my world, like I'm not checking my email while I'm talking to you guys, is that there's tons of people. You know, the IRS found that this was 20 percent-ish of the people. Why won't you be five hours early? And so a lot of what you guys are going to be working with is not just, oh, computers, you said. How do they work? They're interested, excited. Oh, I just never got around to it. People, there are people who have concerns. They are frightened. They are nervous. Or they're angry at the computer. I had one lady who came to drop in time, and I'll talk a little bit about dropping time in a second. She came to drop in time. She had a laptop. It was her laptop. They're trying to use it. And she's having trouble with this, that, and the other. And every time something doesn't do the right thing, which happens to me, she was always like, ugh, like, super angry. And I was just, you know, worried and making sure I knew where my panic button was. But it turns out, we talked a little bit. A lot of what I did was talk in a little time. And we talked a little bit. It turns out this was her ex-husband's computer, who met his new girlfriend somewhere on the internet. And she didn't know enough about computers to even know what that meant. But the computer was essentially hers now and as well, her enemy. And so a lot of what we did, she's been coming to drop in time for like seven years. And she's now got her own altered network and she uses it for work. It wasn't my thought. You know, but it turned a long time. But a lot of what we had to do was kind of talk through. And I'm not a very good therapist. Like, I'm kind of like, wow. Making sure that she didn't project feelings that weren't appropriate onto the computer, which had done nothing to her. But we did have to kind of talk through it. Like, the computer's not mad at you. It's a robot. Robots aren't mad. Sorry you're mad. The computer's not mad. So, talking a little bit more about that. And so the IRS's big takeaway is the technology, actually, what they found is secondary to the motivating behavior of getting people online. That the computer part is not the hard part anymore for most people. If we can get a person a computer and we've got them in lockers, if we can get them to internet, then what we need to worry about is motivating these people. So your job is kind of being different from what you've done. Which is like the good news bad news. Like, I'm cheery and I like talking to people. But if all you want to do is teach a person how to use e-mail and you wind up with these digressions about their ex-boyfriend, one of the things you'll be learning is how to manage people's expectations because that's going to be a big part of the people you wind up seeing in what they do. So, backing it up a little bit, one of the things about the tech literacy problem also, we talk a lot in the rural areas where I'm about institutionalized poverty. So poverty isn't just like I don't have any money right now. Poverty is like, and my family doesn't have any money, my friends don't have any money, and we've been living this way for a really long time seeing a way to do anything like this. And that's the problem. The problem is if it was just someone's poor and you're like, here's $20, now you're not poor, you're all being solved. But with institutionalized poverty, of course, you have to address the systems that are broken and how to fix them. So, technology and literacy is kind of the same thing. You can't just throw money at it and have it miraculously go away because the big problem is there's a lot of compound factors. There's a lot of people who you may look at and you're like, why don't you know how to use a computer? You should. It's easy to blame the people who are stuck in it, which is hard to work your way around it. And a lot of the people now who don't know how to use computers, the wacky thing about them is that they also don't know people who use computers. They're stuck in a group of technologically illiterate people and there may be a vast amount of overlap with institutionalized poverty at the same time. But one of the things the Pew studies found is that these people have multiple challenges. Either they have low education, they may be disabled. Using a computer when you're disabled, there's tons of assistive technology, which is terrific. If you know about it, which many people don't. They may not speak English very well. The internet is great with English and it's a little more challenging in other languages. I'm just trying to figure out how to type the little N with the little word. I know how to do almost everything on this and I can't type an accent in E without googling how to type an accent. In fact, I just googled the word café and then I copied the letter. Which works. But I don't know how to do that and if Spanish or French was my language, upgrade. Upgrade. So not surprising people have these challenges. They're an ethnic minority in their area. They've been persecuted for some reason. They're in a divided family. There's all sorts of challenges that usually they co-present, as we like to say, with technological leaders. So there's a lot of debate about what's working nowadays for teaching technology. The debate continues because we don't have enough data, which is why I'm very excited about this program because numbers are really helpful instead of just being like, everybody's off the internet, we don't know why they don't answer our online survey. No. But seriously. But in short, if you don't know how to use a computer and it's 2013, there is probably a reason that isn't just never got around to it. In fact, you may think the answer is never got around to it. But really it's probably not. You know, if you don't drive an automobile now, that's a conscious choice that normal people can make. But there's probably a reason and it's worth understanding that reason to help those people. You know, I'm not judging, I'm just saying, really, you get around by unicycling. That's just for no reason. Okay. So it might be a good reason, it might be what you consider a bad reason, but it's worth sort of knowing what that is and that'll help you help the person. So in the United States, this is one of my favorite things, Bloome County used to have this fake computer that they made up that Oliver, the little nerdy kid, would have and had feet and would walk around. They made fake ads for this fake computer that was too smart and would follow Oliver around. In the United States, if you don't adopt technology, there's very few things that will force you online. We talked about a little bit before. Some government forms, some things you might want. And job applications are weird because they fall into the kind of that you want them. How do you need them? You know, depending on where you are. But things like unemployment, that's the government just being like, you can't get on the internet? Kind of tough. And I think that puts people in a difficult place. I also understand where it comes from because of the IRS. We all pay that. So most of the people that I see getting online for the first time this year, last year, two years ago, whatever, is either because they're forced to through not really awesome circumstances. I'm unemployed. I just got divorced. I got to look up my healthcare information online, etc. Or good things. Like, I got grandkids. They say they're on Facebook. What do I do? And that's fun and also kind of challenging because teaching somebody how to get on Facebook to live with grandkids, there's a whole lot of steps to that. So have you ever used a mouse before? Now, what we used to do back in the day, teaching people how to use computers, was we'd take them apart and be like, actually, you think the screen is the computer, but really, the computer lives in this box. Let's open it up and people would be like, and we're like, no, no, I'm really smart with computers. I know what this part does, if you would be like, and they would never come back and you'd be like, I don't understand. I'm clearly smart with computers and they're like, grand children. Where are the grand children? I'm sitting here like this until you show me grand children. And so part of one of my steps, one of the things I talk about is early on having successes with your students, even if it just means, look, I'm going to show you your grandkids and then we're going to back it up and we're going to step forward or I'm going to show you my grandkids or whatever and then we're going to step it forward or I'm going to show you my dog and you can imagine your grand children and then you have to be careful of this. But something like that. So you show them Facebook, you don't make them, this is a motive, which is a thing we used to use back in your computer. We'd make a telephone call. The fact that you're bright with computers and understand this stuff, sometimes it becomes really challenging to not want to share that because I'm very excited that I understand how HTML works, but it doesn't matter to somebody using Facebook. I don't want to show off at home with my friends. I developed a new way to do unoverd lists, which I did for my notes and I'm very excited about it, but you don't care. It's not part of this conversation. So sometimes people in my town mailing lists for groups, there's a community garden, there's a mailing list with eight people, there's an 80-year-old gentleman named Fred, and he comes in and drop in time and he wants to add a person to the mailing list or take a person off the mailing list. He's learning to do it himself. He's happy. He could have an assistant. He could tell me to do it. Fred's wife could be like, I can't watch you anymore. But he's got a level of competency that allows him to run the things you really want to run, which is the garden. And we're all sort of the better for it. I don't know about you guys in natural disasters, but in Vermont, many of our people got online the first time after Hurricane Irene and we saw a lot of it in New Jersey and New York with people getting online with Hurricane Sandy. We kind of had Hurricane Sandy, but we really hurricaneed the roads in a lot of Vermont. FEMA, our Federal Emergency Management Agency in Vermont, had their servers in a ground floor room in a building on a floodplain. No, she doesn't. So, what they wound up doing because whatever, I mean, that was a bad decision and it's kind of a funny joke, but they're still FEMA and so what they wound up doing was getting a Facebook page immediately and posting PDFs of all their updates. So it was a little awkward because literally their website was just damp because they were hosting it themselves which is actually not a terrible idea. It's easy to morning after quarterback everybody's student technology decisions, but they wound up going to Facebook and what that meant was the people who were just accessing the internet through their phone could actually interact with FEMA either talking to them about there was a big problem, read the updates, our state library could push those updates out to people. It was a remarkably flexible response to the whole thing and for a lot of people who didn't have electricity at home but could come to a library or another place to charge their telephone that turned out to be a really good way to get people in touch. And I use that as an example where people are like nothing there for me and I'm like as long as your hour is on and you can talk to your neighbors and the roads go to your town and you don't need medicine, but maybe, so for a lot of people I actually talk about this like an emergency preparedness thing. I don't really care if you want to use it, you're allowed to hate it. I hate Facebook, I use it all the time it's just, you don't ask to love it I think a lot of people look at people like me and in fact even people like us as true believers like you just jack the pool and I heard that you come here. Do you guys know any big statue or something that I can go see? Where's me? This thing's out by me It's over two hours Over two hours It's over two hours Over two hours Over two hours But they think that you're some like Z-Lock who is like, whew, computers I am breakwashed into thinking they make my life better and it's like, God, God, God, God They solve problems for me Your people are going to want people to solve problems for them and you probably get this too I think there's a lot of people who think they're keeping it real by not using technology I'll argue about how much we don't care about our cell phones and I have a lot of friends without cell phones which is kind of great because it means we don't have cell phones as part of our social interactions It's bad when I need to contact them for any reason But there is a sense in which people think they're hard getting back to an earlier time by not using technology and I often ask them how they feel about smallpox but there's all sorts of other things that the similar times had that were not so great lack of access to technology as well as smallpox but the same kind of thing or they mistrusted or they mistrusted us which one of the things that I think is great about you guys people already kind of know you hopefully and so they can trust where the message is coming from it's not coming from who's your big telco here like ours is Verizon and Fairpoint If I was going to get DSL in my heart and I lived in Lincoln but like anytime those people tell you a thing you're always kind of like I'm not really sure because they're also a company who wants to sell these things but you know if somebody in your library is like no I really think this will help you for a measured small amount good news so this is where I work I just work in a computer lab with 18 computers that run Windows XP and shut up you have about 200 more days of support you think we need support more security update yeah that's the problem well I don't know actually because I'm going back I started again in two weeks and I was telling Michael before that all the computers are broken like that's how my boss who herself is not particularly tech literate gets information across to me who is tech literate and so I had to just leave it because I didn't want to spend money but I am curious what she means when you say all 150 computers are broken does it mean that they're broke that's what I mean now does it mean that network isn't working does it mean you turn them on and nothing happens you can try turning it off and turning it on again basically what I do I have a couple jobs but my main sort of computer teacher job is we have a vocational high school in my town so it's 11th and 12th grade for kids who are learning trades basically 8th sending town, send kids there and then the kids go home at 2.30 and there's a building full of hurting computers and a fairly speedy network it was just being empty so I started out there as a VISTA volunteer two years ago and have graduated from work two days a week I'm the lady just three to six, I sit in a room you got a question, you come in and ask I also teach classes dropping time is not a class it's a different thing and people have to have a question they don't have a question, I'm not going to what do you want to learn oh I don't know come back when you want to look at pictures of puppies on the internet would you like to read our state governor's news reports usually it's one of those things like when I would say I was bored and my mom would be like clean your room and I was like just remember what I'm going to do similar time so Randolph where I live is about 4,000 people and people come from 8 or 10 tinier towns and we sit in the classroom there's wireless people bringing their laptops people were using the desktop machine all of a sudden it seemed like people had laptops people had kindles I didn't know anything about kindles let's look on the web people had netbooks people had all sorts of crazy stuff iPods, not my iPods so in addition to this job I teach built education classes I fill in at my local public library it's easy to say I'm a librarian but most of the time I work with communities this job and I work at the public library and then I run a big website called medicalter.com which is the job that comfort health insurance so three categories and so a lot of this is like basic skills although people can ask any question they want so if they're every now and again actually not every now and again every November Diane Briggs comes in with a thumb drive with her access database full of addresses and we remember again how to print mailing labels from that like we never write it down some November I always would be here she's gonna stop asking and learn herself but she forgets and I forget and so then we do it again every November so it's high tech it's high tech and low tech right now this is my friend Marion Marion's in her late 70's she uses Facebook she's kind of interested in Facebook I like Marion because she's like excited about the internet she's fun she's also deaf and so it's challenging to kind of well we've been trying to work with her to find like bluetooth things she can get like a bluetooth thing that'll connect around her neck that connects to her hearing aids that the computer can send the sound to a thing she wears that'll send it right to her because we were watching Gail and Abby together and it's really difficult to watch television with somebody who doesn't hear very well and doesn't have any assistive technology and you can't talk to each other and whatever so this little bluetooth thing solved the problem for her but it was a little computer-y and so she was a little a little hesitant person so now that works which is kind of cool so she's on Facebook and then this is Joyce behind her Joyce is also interested in these really in the garden club honestly I think comes to a drop in time because she wants to talk but also learns a thing Joyce is not on Facebook but is curious about Facebook and I think she actually enjoys this situation looking over Marion's shoulder as Marion kind of then she would have a navy like you know it's like the thing the other thing no it's a menu a little triangle it's a menu I'm pretty nice but she knows I know all the stuff and so we're not usually on a journey of exploration together and so one of the things that I do the most in what I do and it seems really weird to say it is what I call benign neglect like we'll get people started on the thing and then I'll kind of wander off and be a little bit in my own world for a bit and then I'll come back again how are we doing and most people will kind of and I'll always tell them you can't break it like you cannot break it you can't break it you can try to break it and you couldn't break it so don't even think you can break it and so I encourage them to explore 75% of my students will 25% will be sitting exactly where I left them when I want to but like that's that's how it works you know and those people are real people who need to learn how to use computer and so they may need some more structured you know steps that are shorter closer together than other so benign neglect and you guys probably know I wrote this book but I also made this website and if you pop out the related websites who get a list of a lot of the training sites that I use I mean the handouts you guys got which I also got are terrific they have a lot of links to stuff that I'm either already using or interested in a couple things that I hadn't learned before you can never underestimate the importance of handouts because we like today people talk and talk and talk and you remember what you remember and you remember what you wrote down but having a piece of paper later you know oh right very helpful and people really like the other thing I use a lot in a drop in time is I have like a bookshelf with dummies guys which is weird right because dummies guys are kind of like hey you would like this so you got to really best explaining why you're handing a thing that says for dummies to somebody but the books are really good like they have really helpful clear instructions and the best thing they have which I think a lot of people really grab on to is they've got an index an alphabetical list of stuff which is why everybody's meant that the yellow pages don't exist anymore where they can find the things that they know what they're called and so we just have a shelf of books there that people can look at and they can interlibrary loan them from their library like they can go to the library again if they want but these are just free and they can look at them because I think a lot of people can tell them I want one of them dummy books I'm not going to do that why would they do that? I wouldn't do that but if they can see them and see that they're helpful that can sort of be really helpful so the book's got a companion website if you're good at stealing things from the internet the PDF is always zipping around the dark nets somewhere I gave another talk on like fair use and sort of open source stuff and I was like googling my book to try and like download the ebook version from my library and I found it was actually easier to steal my own book in PDF format from the internet and it was to check it out by overdrive surprise, surprise so this page has a lot of resources and also you can totally get tons of them so this was a very long introduction to what's more sort of specific stuff so specific things you need to think about many of these are going to be second knowledge for you but it's worth kind of bullet pointing them out understanding your local situation and being a local advocate I think all of us think the library is mostly awesome I think in our communities there are a lot of people who share that view and then the people who don't share that view for whatever reason those people may change their mind if they find out libraries are doing computer stuff but they may not and so it's worth being able to get that message across to people who may not already be sold on the library which is challenging and so every content is really different right? Is your community highly connected? Not really connected older, younger, big local employer no big local employer tight knit, commuter community older, your approaches are going to vary depending on who the people are and that's totally appropriate and a good idea you may find that you've got lots of teenagers who don't know anything about the internet and approaching them is actually a better way to talk ultimately to their parents than talking to parents in New York so you don't know the internet I know the internet, shut up so for instance, this kind of messy math I live here in Randolph the darker the color, this is the middle of Vermont the darker the color the more connected people live there so the kind of dark brownish almost blackish that's where 90-100% of the people in the community have access to the internet broadband and as you get lighter you get less and less when you get down to basically the sort of tan part here that's 15% or less of the people in the community are connected to the internet so I live on a little island of internet in a vast desert of nothing that's changing a little bit in fact we have these adorable front page pictures in the paper of the guy with the draft horses bringing the internet table through the mountains but I'm not lying we have mountains and rivers we have many geographical reasons why we don't have more and better internet makes it harder to get satellite makes it harder to get tables, you know, terrestrial stuff that stays in place and this is actually two years old so it may actually be a little bit different but it's pretty and so William Gibson's big quote is like the future is already here it's just not evenly distributed I live in the future I have a little pocket computer where I can look something up I have a blue dot that makes me never lost anywhere I am in America that's a real privilege that's an amazing thing I pay some money for it but not what you would think you would pay for that and one of the things I find with this institutionalized divide thing is it can be invisible to people that there's people in your community or right next door who do not have this like a stupid example but my boyfriend doesn't have GPS doesn't have smartphone whatever we still date but if we have to meet somewhere he has to print a map and I can't just be like oh man place is closed key and ease new numbers and if we're both on the way I have to sort of talk to him and be like okay you gotta turn the thing on the thing and then the other thing on the thing and I can just retool and get there is that a huge deal is that a real big inconvenience it doesn't need a GPS I don't think he's dumb because he doesn't have it but I have this privilege that he doesn't have by benefit of understanding this little machine that you wouldn't think was a case but we're still in America looking at 35% of people don't have broadband at home 32, 30 that number which you would think would be going like this is like going like this like more and more people are getting broadband through their phones but fewer and fewer people are getting any other internet at their home so those numbers are kind of weird and then we're still looking at 1918% of Americans who have no broadband at home at all including their phones and so when I talk to people who live in big cities about this they're like nah there's no one who isn't on the internet my neighbors aren't on the internet my friends don't have cell phones this is really true but it's kind of invisible because especially the social networking I got one which I love you see the people who are networked you don't see the people who aren't networked or you only see the aren't networked people when they're in the library on the Facebook we don't tweak into the fact that there's tons and tons of people like that I don't mean you guys but your other people in your communities may not know and they may need that information so part of the job is just telling people stories so you guys all know what Nebraska looks like this is the Nebraska broadband map where the colors so red those people like DSL purple those people have vibrant access to not necessarily have it orange is cable which I guess is not very popular except along the highways and then tan nothing those people have nothing I mean I understand there's not a ton of people there it's all cows there's no people up there and a whole bunch of really offended people that you've forgotten about there are no people out there that's why it has they have nothing before people can wind up learning about technology they need to figure out how to get connected and then Michael put this together I think this is you John John but basically saying like hey you know that 82% libraries are providing the only free access that are not made for you and this is a Nebraska it's an infographic concept but that helps explain why you're doing what you're doing and why it's you who are doing what you're doing can't we just pay someone to not exactly and then my favorite thing American libraries this just because I'm like nervous but like every year when the report comes out it has a lot of information not just about the individual states but about how the states are lining up with other states does Nebraska have a rivalry with any other state cause like for a lot of New Hampshire everyone they like fight because they're different and so everyone's like New Hampshire's really good you're a bunch of libertarians you're a bunch of anarchists Nebraska's big enough it doesn't fight we fight amongst ourselves well you can use these statistics to figure out sort of how your stuff is going versus other stuff they just they collect a lot of information about libraries about how libraries are using their technologies and about what they have and so you can figure out how what you're offering measures up whether it's better worse or whatever this is how I know that the things I say about the state of Vermont are true because the number supporting and so as much as I love Vermont and I would never live anywhere else we could be doing better in certain library topics according to not me because I'm crabby and this is sort of helpful so you know as an example the end of everything is a little bubble thing so you guys we have 270 public libraries in the state trying to teach everyone how to use computers start from this message and we need your help so moving forward you want of course more partnerships both with the things you're doing but also see who else is doing what you're doing because it's too easy I think sometimes to want everyone to come to you and when I first started talking about teaching technology and sort of programmatically one of the things that I have to say that it's a little I don't know and he's not the right word but like we maybe can't teach everybody everything and you have to figure out where you're going to draw your lines and set expectations and this is much much easier to do when you know who the other people are in your community who can sort of fill in the gaps and fill in the pipes it used to be that anybody who had a computer problem would wind up at the library which is great but some of the things they would sometimes need would be things that we weren't prepared or set up to be able to help them with but if we could appropriately refer them we didn't feel like we had to just be like I guess you'll just never learn it which you know sort of nobody wants but not everybody needs one on one attention at the moment what else is available on the region and I found that libraries in my neck of the woods who are the most effective at this are often the ones who are good at being like we do this other people do this other people do this let's figure out where you need to be for what you need so like for instance AARP does classes in the world it's a really basic kind of thing if you were in the Omaha area maybe someone needs a nine week fifteen dollar class at AARP and not two hours of your time every week when they could be doing something else and maybe they don't it's entirely possible that this isn't correct it's just good to know what your options are like the drop in time we have a great relationship with the library so that when people are showing up more than once or twice being like I really need someone to handle all of this the librarians don't have to be like I don't have time to drive me crazy they can just be like Jessamine would love to help you with this you know and then they say well thank you for your time but because there's a person that can help them it's appropriate of them to send them to me not just I don't want to deal with this even though they're not set up so like local tutors in more populated areas Craigslist a lot of times has computer tutors one of the things that we don't do at all that you may see people asking for is come to my house and we had to draw a line really early that was like we can't like come to the house I'm sorry like it doesn't work in fact if somebody wants to write another big grant to get somebody to drive around in a little truck and come to people's houses huge unbending but the problem is once you touch somebody's computer then you become the person who last touched the computer and then it started doing that thing and now you gotta come back and so difficult so Craigslist senior centers whatever the good news is people are coming to the library first terrific the next good news is you can appropriately tree out to those people and see if what they need to do is be with you the other thing is don't assume everybody is broke though many people are and that's totally okay but like this was a thing a program that Geek Squad was doing in conjunction with AARP like oh buy a computer and if you chip in an extra hundred bucks whatever you get unlimited dude comes to your house sets up your computer tech support you call them maybe not for everybody but I think we also assume I often assume that the people who I'm helping don't have the resources to get other kinds of help and I'm not always correct in that assumption I think it's a good place to start but it is worth being like you know if you can pay someone to do some of this stuff that might be a good way of getting your problem dealt with not always but like for instance if computers got a warranty I had some kid come in maybe I had some hardware problem with the computer and we were troubleshooting I'm like I have no idea why it's doing that thing and ultimately it turned out after much he's like well I just got it like 30 days ago I was like oh it's still under warranty like get out of here call them they fix I don't fix it when it's under warranty he hasn't started and so figuring out that kind of assessment important one of the other things that I do is when I'm looking at resources online found a good website found a good handout this was in not around here St. Paul I'm like oh that's a nice website oh that's set up really nice who gives them money and how is that project funded and do they fund other projects and do they have handouts and other material that I can have they set up classes and a nice website with a state literacy council funded by the America Connects Consortium that I really know anything about but I can click through to learn more about it and figure out if they were a good fit or if they did anything sort of local local with me a couple other examples of people who were doing really good stuff I think these people were the model this was in the UK I think these people were the model for some of the ad council things that we were looking at this morning so we're looking website but basically they are computer centers in the UK they have computer centers that are different from libraries and they have computer centers that basically you can get a computer buddy where you just meet with a person from your community who maybe knows a little bit more about technology than you do who isn't even a teacher and they make a date to just hang out on a library computer or in this case an online center computer in our week it's one of those things where it actually helps with they call these people they call this, we call it the digital divide they talk about digital exclusion like their whole issue is you're being kept from the world of online that you need to be connected to so let's figure out how to keep you from being excluded which I actually find to be very helpful from kind of a phraseology perspective and it also solves some other social problems because it gets other people out of the house talking to each other hanging out with each other I don't know about you guys but especially in wintertime we have a lot of seniors who could get a little bit more socialization in the wintertime because they're a little nervous about going out and they don't go out at night and a whole bunch of other stuff and have it a little thing to do drop in time is a little thing to do going to the library is a little thing to do super helpful and so asking yourself who else should we be working with who else is out there and what are they doing this is my favorite section which is talking about thievery the greatest thing about being in the library is that it's okay that we give things away to people for free but also that if we take other people's things they are unlikely to come after us and a lot of this stuff handouts and stuff like that people tend to not mind if you want to take that so maybe there isn't anything to buy or it's not good or it's too expensive and you guys are making your own classes and you've got a whole bunch of handouts that are available and you're going to learn to make new handouts but one of the things that we probably don't need is yet another teach the novices website although man I look at that the one that you showed up earlier normally because they're not that good I was looking at it on my phone like it looks good on your phone too but it never happens and so making handouts or stealing some things and here are some ideas that other people are doing that I have fact so this is a terrible picture because I wasn't planning on putting it up here this is surprise Arizona Arizona is a really interesting state in a lot of ways because their libraries have a lot of funding and their schools don't for whatever reason and I don't know why and so they have a lot of stuff going on at libraries which is exciting there's typos in this too I just I didn't make this but basically they have a thing that asks that says hey do you need help with your thing come to the special help thing that's on a special day at a special time and the special person will help you with it I'm a spell expert how do you do it but the font is so unreadable anyhow it almost doesn't matter but so the thing that I like about this program is three four one three we know how to help you with computer things two we care about that and so we've got a guy or a lady to help three it's on Thursday which means if you come in on Wednesday and you're like where are my kindle and we're all really busy we can be like hey come in tomorrow and we'll totally set you up with Kevin but you can also then appropriately you'll hear me just hammer hammer hammer set expectations we have a special time for doing this which means everything isn't I need this now well we have jobs and we need to appropriately fit you into where we're doing so it's a great program and it's also really good at having set times and places of difference I'm a librarian and I would like to give everything away to everybody all the time and I think the library should be open 24 hours a day and everyone should have the key but the reasons that is not realistic are the same ones which is why you shouldn't drop everything at the reference desk and help a person who can't get their thing to do the thing I mean if your stuff is broken I can't get on the computer you told me to use because it is broken it's one thing if their stuff is broken or even if they're confused it's totally okay to help them at an appropriate time remember how I said everybody who isn't on a computer isn't on a computer for a reason sometimes those reasons are people don't prioritize whatever the stuff is and they're not prioritizing your time and it's totally okay I'm here telling them I'll write you a note to be like hey Kevin's here to borrow can it wait till tomorrow if not so it's a good way to say we don't do that right now check it out oh sorry National Tennessee around holiday time they make this amazing display oh are you getting somebody a gadget did you get a gadget because I know for a lot of us I've got a ukulele for my birthday I'm like I don't play music I just don't amount and I'm a little bad with hands like I have one hand that's really good and one hand that I don't know what this is and you have to use both to play a ukulele my boyfriend's a musician and he's like now we can play music together and I'm like you have given me a terrible project and I eat he's got a happy ending and he's got a accordion and so that's a happy ending but I have these audio cleaning realizations where I'm like oh my gosh thank you so much for getting me a terrible project and I think that's what a lot of people and I'm like grandma it's a kindle and you don't understand why they're not delighted and so having things that go along with it that aren't just how to use it because you know how Amazon is they're like plug it in and start shopping and they don't tell you you can get thousands of books for free you don't have to give all your personal details over to Amazon you don't want to if you care about your privacy you might want to read some stuff and so you might want to go to somebody that you trust like the library these things are not only instructions on how to get started but they're also like and we have classes you know because gift giving time and gift receiving time is always a stressful time for a number of reasons having ways to make the library help you with that super good and they're going to come in anyhow it's good if you have kind of a measured approach and response as opposed to like oh it's the way with kindles remember when tax time used to be that way people were like farms now it's like you know it all it's very simple here's another one that I love from this just local Cranston, Rhode Island if there's the library in there and if you're nerding around in the genealogy books like you do you get to the end of the thing you're like hey wait a second and they have a little thing that's kind of bookend looks like a little book and by the way we have a database that you can look stuff up on at the reference desk and if you're interested in this kind of thing who might be interested in that so I'm all about finding ways to make technology a genuine option for people genealogists are happier with the internet it's just true if they don't know about the internet you're going to blow their mind however they're not quite sure that's true and so you have to find a way to like kind of nudge it nudge it over like maybe you're just talking about a different thing you know because otherwise you're like oh let's go search the census on the internet that's a pain but like being like oh we have this little database one thing I didn't know about novice users when I started and still have a hard time believing you don't know what a database is at all like the word database is just blah blah blah ginger to that and so trying to sort of start with we've got databases not helpful feels like it would be helpful I feel like that's English a lot of them are like you have to them it sounds like we have spreadsheets and that doesn't sound like fun at all so try to figure out ways to make that happen so I kind of love this it's just in the stacks just a little thing it's got little handouts in it and it's kind of a trade back to other things you can steal master size if you know anything about me personally you know that master size is my favorite website on the internet I like it better than Google you should never teach someone how to use a mouse again you should take them to master size which is basically like this it's got a I mean you show them the mouse hey it's a mouse I know it's stupid there's two buttons but you use this one all the time you never use this one rollerball don't touch it for now if your fingers work now we have people that are like shaking hands and a whole bunch of other reasons that that might not be great for them and that's a different thing people with working fingers you can click through it's got like 30 pages click here now click over here now you've got a scroll to get to this button click this, click this number see how it's got an underline it's the nicest thing it's written in very straightforward English doesn't use a bunch of funny words it's not a very exciting website but it's also not a very exciting website and you can go through and if I sit people down with this about 15 minutes not that long they can usually get through it themselves and at the end there's like a little confetti thing and they're like wait a minute you can put it on as you took it awesome but also they've learned 20 things about mousing that they might only kind of learn over time and they happenstantly and they have kind of an idea of what mouser I actually interviewed the guy who made up mouser size from the Palm Beach County Library in Florida why did you do this wonderful thing he's just like some nerdy IT guy who knew how to build a website he didn't go on to greater things he just he's still working in libraries this was the pinnacle of his amazing user he's just an IT guy he does stuff that's his website but like that kind of thing having a link to that or showing people how to do that makes people feel taken care of saves you 15 minutes of time and it works so it's not like you're like I'm just going to let the computer run mind the baby it's actually solving the problem other websites that are really good Milwaukee Public Library they teach classes every single handout that Milwaukee Public Library uses for every single class is available on the internet um I love this they have a class on calculator I'd love to be a client because clearly people take it and clearly they get a lot out of it calculator but it's genius and so they only like to take a class once a month one of the things that I found that's also fine is that people come back and you got to figure out what you want to do if people come back if you've got limits to classes or whatever you know I had one lady who came to my basic email class like an email class that was so basic we taught it on the chalkboard this is what a CC line let's just talk about it for a while I'm not going to type and she come back every month every month I get a little bit more out of it great but you may need to sort of think about that so in the meantime if you're teaching class on any of these take these handouts or at least look at them and see if they work for you and if you could use them or repurpose them for what you're doing every minute you spend typing up a new handout is probably time that you could spend teaching their class I was born thinking watching Downton Abbey but similar I was thinking like what do I like to do that I would make a dinner so ask yourself what are other people doing that works, can we do it setting the expectations for everybody the other thing is I don't know how many of you guys are going to be doing any teaching versus kind of managing a bunch of teachers but one of the things that's really challenging is to remember that the digitally divided among us or the digitally excluded or whatever at least where I am can often include the people who work in our libraries and the people who do the things when I originally started doing my VISTA job they were like train the trainer you'll take novice people who have never used a computer before and you'll teach them how to teach other people to use a computer I was like I'll try and that wasn't a realistic goal I mean I think the buddy system works really well but it's really different just fairly knowing how to do a thing and being able to help a person who really doesn't know who might be frustrated or angry or upset or whatever to do that thing so I'm in favor of training the trainer programs I think they're good ideas I think buddy systems work really well I don't think you can train everybody up to be a really good teacher which is okay but you need to be realistic about what the expectations are both for the people you're teaching but also for your staff or your students or your interns that are going to be a part of this there may be stuff they don't know do they need to learn it? is that a lot of websites that are made for training the technology users not specifically to teach technology but like the unemployment sites and the moose license site or whatever the sites are sometimes their first experiences are awful like I'm not bad they're just bad like you can totally say this is not a very good website without insulting somebody you can design so it's okay to say this is hard for people to use therefore my tentative technology users are so it's totally appropriate to say I think sometimes we don't want to we just want to be nice and be like oh good effort ALA they're websites but their website they redesigned twice in the last 10 years they broke every incoming link that real people who design websites think is an acceptable outcome and it might be one of those things you're like well we tried and I think the we tried years are behind us in the last century it's not enough to just get the stuff on the web and be like it works out for drinks you really have to make it look nice in order to be able to consent to people motivation that we talked about before to help people actually get to use them but other things that actually is helpful is sometimes being like it's just not a great good website and we're gonna have to figure it out but it isn't very good and it's okay it's not you because people blame themselves why wouldn't they I can't apply for a job at Home Depot I must be incredibly stupid and you're like nope their website is horrible and I'm sorry but if you want to do that let's I think it's helpful to tell people the problems of them because they blame themselves so you're just like you know they made some choices and how to make this look that were not good choices or that were hard or that weren't good for people without good vision I work with a lot of seniors you know the website hates senior citizens you would think it would love senior citizens they have disposable income they're motivated they have years and years of fascinating stories and things that they learn and sometimes it gets shaky hands they can't see so well and it's really hard for them and it offends that that is true because that shouldn't have to be true so USA.gov government made easy so this is what I was gonna say before easy is one of those touchy words for people because easy is like this website's easy so easy even a monkey could use it which means if you can't use it so I try to refer to say stuff like uncomplicated or you know this has a couple steps and I think you'll know I think you know below but easy touchy and it's hard because you want to say look Millie I think because you want people to feel comfortable you want to calm them down but easy even so again public services in the US I don't love this website it's hard they alphabetize things so what do you want from the United States do you want an auction so as opposed to the United Kingdom how do you interact with the United Kingdom the website laid out what's popular some photographs big search accessibility up in the corner not bad like all of a sudden I feel a lot less stressed I feel like I could get the things that I wanted from this website this website not so much they don't think I'm very great and I'm not even sure what I want I don't know if there's nothing in search of K I'm not seriously nothing in the entire United States government that starts with K really Google has made some forays into this this is a cute little website it's linked on my page of links it's called teachparentstech.org it's basically a thing you fill in when your parents have told you they've gotten a computer you're like I'm stoked for it you can click little boxes it'll send them an email with links to very straightforward YouTube tutorials on very basic things it's chart I have no idea why it took off it's one of 10 million websites that tries to do a thing and I linked to you on my list of links all the videos so you can click through them I don't particularly learn super well from videos I don't they're too slow today we're going to learn about my life is bleeding away two years but some people really enjoy it it's like television to them and it's a good way for them to get information and so this is sort of nice teachparentstech and the website beautiful you know what it does you know how to use it this is the equivalent UK website to the ad council one here pretty much I need to learn fancy good colors not sure what's going on sign in big buttons not a lot of tiny texts for reading one of the main things that we know about novice users and how they use computers over the internet they read top to bottom left to right every word on the page I mean I don't know what you guys I don't want to see this ad where's the thing they are reading and you know websites that want to sell you something will know that you're reading and they'll put the button down here websites that are trying to help you out put the button up here or up here but it's sort of challenging and so the UK has this approach and they try to help people learn to go through the button and banner blind us like little advertisements they look at their email there's this picture of somebody you want to get ready for bailing suit weather these guys think I'm fat they're just guessing they don't know but they assume those things are targeted to them why wouldn't they they don't understand how the internet works I can show them how to block advertising and do a whole bunch of other stuff but you know, awkward and then this is a website you can make a page for somebody that's got five buttons they can click and you can put URLs behind them shaky hands great for shaky handed people who are not so great maybe at typing in gmail.com but they can click a big button and you can set this up for people the example they use is they make the Grandpa Simpson one he goes to the Springfield isotopes and the Quickie Mart and History Can you can put a little picture of yourself down at the bottom you can do this at the library and be like got trouble call the library but for people who really need a place to get started a way to get started beautiful website and they have a little helper thing that pops out and explains how to set it up if you can move stuff around on an iPhone you personally you can set one of these up and then all other people have to do this and then your head up great website for getting started great website for seeing what other people are doing not super up to date sometimes it's a little full of we're a cobcast and we're totally solving the digital divide do you guys have them as a cable company who's your cable company I'm Warner I mean they're all terrible but you know how they all are we're totally solving the digital divide because we pay charge you money to get on the internet there is a lot of their things that they built because you know as a result of lawsuits and other stuff they have to help with stuff like this but you know things like this very good getting started and look at this how nice is this they know computers they can help you with computers and then remember how I said it at red circle in my presentation hello hello this may have to be fair it looked awesome in 1999 but so then people get stuck here which is not I think it was so they type in every single box and then what the heck is an FS CSID I don't know what that is does anyone know what that is we know but it's like the citizens don't know it's like they like statistics oh okay yeah so it's just a bar I would like to use it for 8-bit bookmobiles but it is just too bad so designing stuff and the other thing we need to remember about designing stuff is big companies know how to use this to do what they want so I have a Google account and I don't have a big huge problem with Google I think I'm realistic about the extent to which they spy on me but also create useful tools that I want to trade off I'm okay with but what they really would like is my mobile phone number I don't use it through my phone I don't want them to have my mobile phone number for I'm sure irrational reasons so I get to this page every now and again every now and again they're like just a minute we don't have your mobile number anymore and I'm like yeah I don't feel like it but if you're reading this page from top to bottom and from left to right you get to the add phone number part first before you get to the click here blue link on black text that says click here to skip it so our novice users think they're doing the right thing because they figured out how to fill in the box and click the button and it's fine maybe you don't care that Google has a phone number like that's an appropriate that's a choice and yet it's also pretty tricky a lot of people would think that I had to do it yeah people don't understand what their choices are and it's hurt right because you might not know and try to figure out how to explain this without being too boogie boogie well I guess it's true you have to get a hijack but have a good password and know how to log out but it becomes like a bigger question you know like if you have a child you're a weird man doing that on the street and you're like well let's talk about the problem of homelessness in America it becomes a really tricky thing to have to talk about another example a Discover card I have a Discover card, I use it as a credit card it's fine but every now and again they want me to do something that I don't want to you want to transfer money I don't but you know there's two buttons get started and no thanks and if you're a novice in it you don't even know that's a link but that's a button and so people get cajoled down directions they might not want to go even if they're savvy about this stuff much less you know the crazy bank of America emails that they get your account might be compromised I mean it's so hard we taught a class on eBay and the big deal was it became almost impossible to teach a class on eBay because we had to teach so much keep yourself safe here's how to use PayPal here's what you have to do and don't do and then it made it really difficult to teach it in a short enough class because one part of the class was all about safety which you know if you're already using it maybe you know but maybe you don't and I feel it's kind of my responsibility so back to the design stuff I think a lot of people are like it works! upload it! and I think we can do better I think we have been doing better I mean I think the websites you guys are dealing with for this project are really nice and you're so lucky but keep it on the forefront and working with the people you're working with it's okay to say the website isn't good and people's website is not actually very good that's okay like you're not a traitor to librarians by saying you know it could be better VLA's website could be better and then I said that a lot and then they put me in charge of it and now people tell me it could be better you know and it could so it's hard like it's not an easy thing but it's okay without you're not being a jerk just by telling people the website could be better so now I'm just talking about people last section solving the real problem with people like what's the well my kids have grandkids and they put all the pictures on it so I guess I have to because okay what do you want to like let me show you how you can get on facebook to see these pictures but you don't have to approve any friend requests let's show you how to you know let's solve your problem for you not for someone else who's like you got to use it like this because a lot of people again being online that has kept them offline also has given them some misunderstandings that they're not doing stuff right like everybody's like I have a sister who's about my age she doesn't use facebook she's a normal adult lady and I trot her out a lot in classes because I'm like it's not everybody in my age is on facebook most of them are the people that I interact with but it's a choice and it's totally okay to not make that choice so you should feel comfortable with whatever you decide if you decide that so I talk about sort of sample users a lot and it's good to kind of model the kind of users you might have so what are my users expected, do they expect a lot from me, do they expect a little how experienced are they do they have a lot of experience do they not have very much experience so kip up there he doesn't really expect that much he's got a lot of experiences are dirty Roddy down here expects a lot not very good at it challenging and figuring out what people's level of knowledge is usually you have to kind of ask a bunch of leading questions, figure out what's going on and figuring out what their expectations are often they will either tell you or tell you by the sort of absence of expectations sort of way so modeling patrons and maybe thinking about this with your staff as well because for people with very little computer experience your peers that you're working with them on maybe the only ones they know if they don't have a lot of experience and that is a very different thing when you're explaining why it doesn't thing or why it doesn't do a thing a lot of what people are learning interacting with operating systems they're learning how to deal with metaphors like it's not a real folder it's kind of a pretend folder and you can take a file but it's not a real file and stick it in the folder sort of and for a lot of people that's totally new ground very challenging and some people just aren't good at that kind of stuff and figuring that out while you're explaining a thing do they need hard metaphors for stuff or can I talk about big ideas and what are they hoping to sort of get out of this and then the thing to remember is a lot of people they show up one of the things we learned in information school was a lot of people don't even show up at the library until they have they hit a wall, they have an information need and they can't and their friend doesn't know the answer which is usually where they go first so a lot of times they show up and they're like I'm going to be fired you need to help me do the thing immediately, chat, talk or whatever and you're like what's going on but a lot of times people are stressed, unhappy and angry and part of what you wind up needing to do is find a way to diffuse the situation which we do with angry patrons all the time um dealing with that situation first and then figuring out sorry it's ruined and then figuring out how to motivate you going forward so I've got a couple more bolded lists and then we'll wrap up, have lunch like I said, I'm going to be around all day um, but when you're doing your training specifically and I was thinking about this when I was thinking about handouts but I think it's true for outline frame two you want to make sure there's an objective that people can get to even if your students are slow even if they're bad at this even if they're mean you want them to have some sort of success a thing that works a thing that goes their way in your class and you may have to dial back what it turns out that can be but you want to have a thing so that they feel like they have gotten slightly farther along and that continues than they were before and this is challenging sometimes it's just like way to go for coming in here I know you didn't want to and this wasn't a thing but I think, you know, keep coming back you want to have outlines that are fairly you don't want to be like this is the agenda, oh it turns out everybody needs basic mouse skills and we'll back it up but people want to know what to expect and I think a lot of times they're afraid you're going to throw them in the deep end of the pool I'm going to go on Facebook and I'm going to go check my email but I don't know how to do that so being clear what's coming around then having exercised is one of the things I talk to a lot of people about who just feel like they're never going to get it is a lot of the things that I know how to do are just muscle memory double click doesn't work for anyone until it works and then suddenly they forget that they didn't know how to double click I mean some people too, shaking hands check balls there's assistive technology options for people who are really going to have a hard time but for a lot of people it's muscle memory learn how to click and hold learn how to click and drag Solitaire, everybody wasn't told to play Solitaire because it's the funnest card game everybody was told to play Solitaire because that's how you learn to use a mouse I know right I didn't know that for the longest time so you don't tell people play Solitaire you love it people love Solitaire you tell them to play to like learn to practice their mouse skills and not feel like they're not getting it any hard people don't know we write it down I don't care what the word is I have a list of vocabulary I think they won't know and every now and again we don't get to it and people are like, what's this you didn't tell me what a pixel was a pixel is the smallest unit of but people like feeling like they're learning things and the vocabulary also helps them use the Google which is really where I would prefer people would go with future vocabulary questions but they can't start out there and also like I said books, dummy skies more information have those readily available not everyone is a learned by hearing person not everyone is a learned by hearing person some people are learned by reading people some people are like go away and then come back and try to get people and you're going to get all kinds of people so don't presume exercises are good but you may have a couple students who are just like this doesn't work for me can things aren't working this is great because I would love to just try this on the wireless it's not my wireless so I'm trying to not try to fix it but this is part of what we talk to people about learning what they know and learning what they think which is important it's their learning experience so tell me what happened in your own words what were you doing when it happened you know I've had people who are like computers dead well I moved my chair and oh is your chair doing the power out of that hang on a second people don't know they have no idea certain things like how come I can't ignore the check oil light on my car but I can't ignore the check engine light that doesn't make any sense but one of them you have to turn the car off immediately and one of them you can drive to the mechanic I don't know why they don't know why you know things just go off all the time they certainly don't know why turning it off and turning it on again fixes 90% of everything it shouldn't work and it totally does but asking people what they were trying to do Twitter used to have this great tech support page that was like what did you do what were you expecting to happen what happened instead because often you know people want a linear flow chart and this stuff is just not linear sorry, I wish it were, it's not but so figuring out what they were expecting can often help you figure out like maybe something needs to be described better maybe something needs to be done differently and I know for myself that if you see the PDF I always sort of think I am the smiling Buddha my job is to you know help people with this not get angry, not get frustrated and we've all seen like 8 million pictures of people angry at other people on the internet one of my favorite has to be like watching somebody use the scroll bar instead of the scroll wheel on the mouse and getting increasingly angrier and angrier you're watching the person not scroll and then watching Google the URL that they have to doesn't matter I'm doing what I love for a job so moving on so like do you know when my car wouldn't start not really, I don't really know much about cars but I know it's either gas or the battery or the spark thing not happening it's one of those let's move on but I can use that information to maybe help troubleshoot myself and then or the problem there's an auto shop at my school where I do computers and it's changed my life having a mechanic and a nice friendly person because all these things that people are with computers I am with my automobile like I don't know it just made a noise and now I'm frightened and and my car does like crazy stuff it's not working for no reason oh well your shifter cable broke won't that happen but that's the thing, why did it happen doesn't matter why my shifter cable broke at all unless I did a thing to break it which I was pretty sure it did it doesn't matter it's not an idea and so cositillination like I said air, spark, gas are we looking at a hardware problem is something physically wrong did you kick the port out is it a software problem students don't know the difference between hardware and software it's a teaching moment to kind of explain all the computer has instructions that teaches it how to do a thing so it may be that it was expecting you to do a thing whatever what hardware problem people familiar with this acronym Michael is we call this problem exists between keyboard and chair you never say this out loud to people but it is kind of a way that you can be like you know off the side but what hardware problem but let's make mistakes I do the same thing all the time there's no such actual thing as problems but sometimes software things combine you get your computer my favorite thing on this handout let's see by the time they ask you for help they've probably tried several things as a result of their computer might be in a strange state this is normal but weird things happen ask them to turn it off see if that helps I really don't like the computer has issues because the computer doesn't have issues it's a robot it doesn't care about you it's not helping you when things are working but it's not fighting you when things aren't working it's just a giant calculator we need to learn to talk to so wrap it up we've all heard we've all heard that ultimately teaching them how to do this for themselves which is the goal the goal is they do it themselves not that they always need to come to the library though we're happy for them to come to the library a lot in near future but what we want is people to have their own happy relationships with technology and part of that is going to be teaching them how to get answers when you're not having a number and not having to email you on the weekends if that's not what you want if it is what you want I give most of my students my email one of the things that's involved in that is knowing where the other people are who are solving their own problems on the internet which I cannot stress enough everything that you can get on a computer has a forum dedicated to people talking about it on the internet which is a project of the internet archive and they use Adobe Digital Editions as their digital rights management nonsense and it throws up error messages that make absolutely no sense to me whatsoever and so when I'm trying to help people with them I'll Google some stuff but if we still can't get a resolution I think you need to ask this question on the Adobe Digital Editions forum that's where people talk about Adobe Digital Editions and they can help you with your specific instance it's outside of my thing normally if you've got an act and it's still under warranty call people at Apple they are friendly and they will help you windows they're friendly and they're friendly sometimes whatever they may sometimes be helpful I have not found them as helpful but that's fine the good news is there are people I had a problem with a scanner the other day I was trying to help my friend I was like I don't know what's wrong with this we'll call TechSport TechSport was like a guy named Bob in the Midwest who just answers the phone you know such and such and I was like hi are you TechSport yup and I talked him through what I did but Bob knew enough to know that my scanner was in fact broken which I was not sure about and so he explained for us how to do a refund I think people believe in their minds that TechSport is like calling the police talking with all the attendant with all the attendant that would make me uncomfortable your neighbors are going to know you call TechSport but really that's what I do when I get stuck either calling TechSport or going to forums on the internet not great for novices but you can show them how to Google an error message for example or how to do that kind of stuff so that in the future they may be able to help themselves and if all you knew about computers on the internet and some of the people told you about the paper you'd be really a little bamboozled too and I think of a lot of what we're doing to sort of un-bamboozle and so asking ourselves are we solving people's real problems and are we helping which of the two things we really want to be doing finding ways to evaluate this and basically our job entirely is helping people get better information better experiences sometimes all you want is for someone to have a decent experience with the computer and walk out feeling like welcome that wasn't awful and better help than they would be getting aware of and so you don't have to be a computer genius to be able to do this and in fact sometimes it helps so grabbing up with one of my favorite internet cartoons it's like a joke and I think this is hilarious but when I unpack it the reason I think this is hilarious is because I have a whole bunch of cultural knowledge that makes this picture funny I've got to know that there's a bear he was on the Muppet Show that's who the bear is I've got to know what Facebook is that's helpful and I need to understand that they had an IPO like a public offering of stock and the joke of course changes on the fact that going public has two meanings one of which is the stock and one of which is making all your public stuff available because they're bad with privacy so all of those things combined turn this into a joke that you don't even understand if you're a person who's not kind of shifted over into that culture and so it's not that I think everybody needs to be on the internet so that they understand my jokes although that would help one of the things that we're finding is that people are moving forward towards tech culture whether they want to or not whether they're being led by us other people or pushed kicking and screaming by institutions and the shift isn't really that simple and it's not that quick I really thought you know why now I'm surprised but we're getting better and better at facing it in good humor if nothing else and you know us and our communities so thank you for listening ten minutes into lunch I apologize this handout is worth getting you reading and if we get the internet you're welcome to look up my slides and you can get me on twitter at Pat and Justin and I'll be around