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