How to Help Someone use a Computer

[Luna Moon]

The original post is actually full of a lot of valuable advice!

I think my method for teaching involves making sure I'm approachable and won't mock them because of their trivial question. And then give them a straight answer. I've always believed that not knowing does not equal stupidity.

I like your approach and I agree with you. A person, who does simply not know, but wants to learn and understand is far from stupidity. Helping them to understand and not only give them solutions, which only work in that exact situation is the key in my opinion.

[Starborn]

A small anecdote

I have an office job (I'm also the "LPU" and the guy that my colleagues come running to, when Windows is being stubborn again). We used to buy our own office stuff, and many many years ago one used to get a small thing as a thank-you gift. One day such a gift was a small, oval-shaped, battery-powered radio. Our boss gave it to a colleague (an older woman that since retired years ago) and told her it was a new, wireless mouse.

She didn't understand why her mouse cursor did not work.

-oo-

He meant it as a joke, and not as a way to mock her. But to be honest, I don't like such practical jokes: one does not make fun of people's not-knowing something.

I myself too have learned SO much about computers and operating systems. Back in the MS-DOS days, the . (dot) was the main directory (or whatsammacallit?) of DOS. Well, one day I apparently managed to delete everything by simply deleting that "dot" (in DOS?). It is years ago, but I still remember that the guy at the computer shop said I could come work with him right away.

We were all n00Bs once.

[phenest]

Despite how I hate mocking people that are a bit lacking in computer skills, here are 2 anecdotes of my own, and done to the same Supervisor at work:

1.
The supervisor left his office to do something, so one of my colleagues changed the display settings so the orientation was upside down. When the supervisor returned, he was confused but tried to solve it. His solution was to turn the monitor upside down.

2.
Again, the supervisor had left his office, but this time, he had not turned the computer on yet. As he has to login, we switched 2 of the keys over on the keyboard and tried to keep a straight face. We decided to switch the N & M keys as they are next to each other on a QWERTY keyboard and would not be easy to spot what is wrong. Incidentally, his name is Simon. He never managed to login. We had switched the keys back by the next day and he never worked it out.

I guess that's how you get to be a supervisor.