Teaching the Computer

I went to the library today to get some books about computers. I'm teaching some people to use computers, but I just sort of picked it up, so I can't explain computers to other people.I wanted to read these books to see how they explain the computer monster.

The Computers For Dummies books are really funny. I was glad they had that amount of sarcasm because it's the only thing that could make reading about the difference between hardware and software bearable.

While I was reading, I was getting all of these ideas about labelling the different parts of the computer, like A drive, D drive, mouse (hardware), monitor, and so on. I was planning on using permanent marker, but Kelly reminded me that labels were probably a better choice. I also wanted to make the desktop wall paper actually say, "This is the Desktop Screen".

The whole experience is giving me a new respect for IT people who take these questions all day. Computers aren't the easiest thing in the world to explain to someone who has no idea what's going on. Can you imagine, "How do I open a word document?" or "I can't find the document I was working on. Should I have saved it before I shut down the computer?" And who can forget everyone's favorite, "I'm holding the paper to the screen, and hitting enter, why wont it fax?" How do IT people handle this? Hopefully someone is checking to make sure they're not loosing brain cells from being exposed to this so often.