At one point or another, we have been students. One can argue that we will always be students since there’s always something new to learn. Learning doesn’t end after you finish high school or even college, and graduating from any school doesn’t necessarily mean you know every single thing. So with those thoughts in mind, we can consider some valuable things to remember while we are helping people learn things they are completely new and complex to them. Remember, these are just some suggestions. Teaching and learning are completely subjective and vary from case to case.
Patience is everything when you’re helping people with anything. Imagine you don’t know how to swim and you go find someone to help you learn. It would probably not make you feel good if your instructor shoved you into the deep end first thing, criticized your efforts, and then got angry because they didn’t want to take the time to start you from the beginning so you could learn properly. I also doubt that you’d be going back to that instructor ever again. That example can be applied to learning to use technology as well. For some people, technology is completely scary and foreign. As tech instructors, we want people to know technology is nothing to be scared of, and that you can start from the shallow end and work your way from there.
Due to the nature of tech help, people are going to approach us with many questions, but if detective shows have taught us anything, is that there's always more to the story. So when people come in for help, we want to ask more questions to try to pinpoint what they need more assistance with. This is generally a good idea since it'll give you a clear starting point. If someone wants to listen to music on their iPad, we can ask if they either want to purchase music through a digital store (like iTunes or Google Play), or if they want to browse YouTube. If they want to use YouTube we can ask them if they know how to search for and install apps, and so on. This also works the other way around. We should encourage patrons to ask us more questions on things they are having a hard time with. The goal of tech tutoring should be to address all of the needs of our patrons and let them feel comfortable asking us questions.
I’ve had to help people that didn’t know how a computer mouse worked. I’ve been using computers and, evidently, computer mice since I was five years old. That’s about twenty years! It took me a minute to even begin to process the situation and to take myself out of my own head. I had to approach this as someone who has never interacted with a computer before. When I told her to left-click on the username box, she looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. You might be faced with scenarios like this when helping people with technology. The best thing to do is to try to simplify your language to the most basic point you can. Avoid using technical language that you think people might not know. Instead of saying “select the address bar and type in google.com,” say something like “move the mouse towards the white box with text on the top of the screen, push down the left button on the mouse, and when the text turns blue, start typing ‘google.com.’” Now, just because you’ve simplified the language and given clear instructions doesn’t mean that someone is going to be good at using a computer on the first try. Remember, patience is a virtue. They might miss the box or push the mouse around when trying to click on something. They might misspell things while typing and become frustrated. Assure them that this is all part of learning. No one is born being really good at using computers, it’s a skill that develops over time. Michelangelo didn’t paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel the day he picked up a paintbrush.
It's hard to know if you're doing things right without any feedback. Whenever you're teaching patrons, let them know what they're doing well. Be encouraging and supportive. Learning to use a piece of technology is a big hurdle for some people and any positive reinforcement will go a long way. Interacting in a positive way with learners will increase the chances of someone retaining information and approaching things confidently. Whenever you're trying to correct something the patron might be doing wrong, phrase things in a way that doesn't put the blame on the patron. Instead of saying "Never use spaces when you're typing email addresses," you can say "Let's try taking away the spaces. Email addresses are always grouped together." We never want to add to the patron's frustrations and confusion. We want people to feel comfortable coming to us and getting their questions answered.
I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to control freaks, I'm as bad as we get. I actually become anxious when I don't have complete control over everything. It's not my best quality, but I do what I can to keep it under control. When teaching, it's always best to let people do things themselves. Let people make those mistakes on their own and learn to get around them. I know it's always easier to pick up the mouse yourself and start clicking away to "fix" people's problems, but at the end of the day people are bound to run into more problems they can't fix themselves. We gotta stop throwing fish at people, and teach them how to catch them on their own! Delicious, succulent tech fish. Yum!