When I came to the University of Maine at Farmington, I was always asked the question "So, you're going to be a teacher?" More of an implied statement than anything. Regardless, when I was a freshman I didn't know what else there was to do with my BA in English, but I told them "no," firmly and left it at that. Occassionally I'd give more thought to the idea, but the answer was still always "no, I do not want to teach children English." When I began my internship at the library in February 2012- which quickly became a job by April- I had no idea that I would be teaching Facebook to an unusual group of community members. Senior citizens.
On a normal day at the public library, we are closed on Mondays. My day to day interaction with Seniors included fetching books from the glass floor or aiding them in printing from our computers. But one day an older lady came in- let's call her Nancy- to see me at the circulation desk. Nancy had a macbook pro. The last time I had worked with macs and enjoyed it was middle school, when I used them to play with Garageband and Text-to-Speak. Sure that's something neat that I can claim- that in 2004/2005 we were the guinea pigs of the state of Maine- but, since then, every interaction I had had with macs weren't my favourite times. It's part of my job to aide the patrons as best I can when I am on the circulation desk.
Nancy's daughter had just had her first grandson and she was uber excited. Her daughter and her relatives had sent her many emails containing photos of her new grandson and she wanted to save them to her laptop as well as burn them onto a CD. Nancy decided that she was comfortable with iPhoto- a program I had never exactly played with- but she didn't know how to use it nor did she know how to save her images from her emails to iPhoto. For the next amount of time, I took my time teaching her how to right click an image, using the mac, as well as how to save an image for multiple types of files that had been sent to her. Once I had her comfortale with right clicking and processing what the prompts were, we proceeded to save them from her desktop to iPhoto. If taught her this, rather than email straight to iPhoto, because some files sent to her did not give her that option. Also, had she saved them incorrectly to iPhoto on her own in the future, they'd always been on her desktop. Anyways- then began the task of creating an album and remembering what photos had been imported already and which ones hadn't. It didn't take long, but when we were nearing the end Nancy reminded me that she wanted to put them onto a CD so she could print them at Wal*Mart. Ok, I thought, now I'm really testing my memory. I own a laptop, how hard can it be? Nancy's computer made it hard. Macs are suposesed to be designed to be user friendly, but it isn't helpful when they do not automatically prompt you to create your settings. For instance, a laptop or desktop should prompt you when you insert a CD or DVD- Nancy's didn't. A laptop or desktop should make it clear that a pendrive has been inserted- her doesn't.
At some point my director swung by to see the progress we were making and she managed to find where the blank CD was hiding. I ended that experience still not caring about macs. Again.
Fastforward to today. Today was my third day helping with macs, as well as ThinkPads. I was wrong about being done with macs just as I was wrong about not having to teach. While I'm not exactly teaching English, I'm teaching people to speak Facebook, to understand the largest Social Media website available. Okay, so I'm not the "teacher," this experienced guy named Patrick is. But I , as well as my director, assist and go between patrons as we see their need spread across their face. The look of concern or worry on a Senior is quite clear. We began the class getting them set up with GMail and, today, we are ending with creating a profile photo and uploading photos to an album. We've taught some things that, being a Facebook Native(seven years running), I had begun to take as common knowledge. Example, click on your name and you see your wall. Click on "Facebook" and you refresh your homepage. The globe icon means notifications, the two faces mean friend requests, and the double square means messages- as in email but for Facebook. It's a pretty nifty class for an inexperienced group. We've taught them how to "lock down" their profiles, meeting their security worries and battling them away. Along the way, there were many funny moments. Ones in which stories about kids were shared or funny faces of sons/daughters were posted to Facebook.
Oh Facebook, the place to tag and publish photos while a relative or friend is blissfully unaware. And find "suggested friends" or advertisements seniors do not want. Those moments were good too.
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