I just got a call from my wife’s friend, Sarah. She got a new Mac computer this week. Tomorrow evening my wife and I are going to her house for dinner, and for Sarah’s first Mac tutoring session. I am excited about teaching her the basics, the tricks I learned over the past three years. A few months ago, my 95-year-old mom bought a Mac. I had practice giving her instructions.
Here are a few of the things I will teach Sarah tomorrow:
- Picasa and photo editing
- Screenshots
- Files and file folders
- Word docs and Toolbox
- Gmail
- Keyboard commands: Cut, copy, paste
- Spotlight
- How to get an app to quit
- “Save” and “Save As”; Saving a website to the desktop; Backing up data
- Printing articles and papers
- Changing the volume
- Using the option button – instead of right clicking
- Changing icon, cursor, and image (jpeg, Word doc, etc.) size
- Using Google images, maps, etc.
- Color-coding icons
- Using the dock and exploring applications
I will give Sarah printouts of each of the above units, using those ideas and formats that I gave to my mom recently. I will place all the units in a file in Sarah’s desktop so she may refer to them when she wishes.
Teaching always was fun for me. I taught for 34 years, and I have tutored in my professional area for many of those years. But I haven’t tutored much at all in my hobbies. I do recall having tutored years ago in my peg memory system. In the near future, I expect to lead tree walks at the TreePeople site on Mulholland Drive. But now I am excited to teach what I know about using the Mac.
I would love to tutor in other hobbies such as my genealogy skills and making pop-up cards. Maybe one day, after I finish all the documenting and philosophizing in my Shutterfly books, I will have time for that.
It feels good helping others to learn. In doing that, I always am learning, too. One of the things I learn is that I have a lot to learn. It’s a good cycle.
Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com
