February 3rd, 2010

Last week was a crazy busy week, like it always is at the end of the month. The newsletter has to be finished and printed for the communities in the region. My supervisor hasn't been at work for over a week because she's having serious back problems, only a lot of physio, painkillers and rest will help her right now. So she's out of the game for a while. I try to pick up the slack a little bit with little things I can do to help her out around here like answering the phone, taking messages, faxing, photocopying or being the messenger. The activities coordinator is here only 3 days a week, so I do what I can to help her get things done around here too.

There have been more and more people coming in to use the CAP site in the past couple of weeks. I think the word is finally starting to spread that we are here to help and offer great services. Some people are finally taking advantage of that. Like this elderly lady I'm helping, who's learning about emailing and sending pictures via email and web surfing and that kind of stuff. She keeps telling me: If someone can teach you something, learn it. You never know when you might use it.

It's amazing that at over 80 years old, we can still learn about things we could never imagine as a child. Technology is evolving all around us and at every level. It's impossible to keep up with everything, but to keep the mind young, keep learning about anything that interests you.

Over 80 and still learning!

I was in the restaurant helping to prepare for a banquet one evening. It was about closing time for the public, and an elderly couple was having a cup of coffee while waiting for their car to come out of the garage across the street. The elderly lady asked the waitress if she knew anything about the tutorials from the CAP poster in the entrance of the building. The waitress said to the lady that she knew the intern and came to get me in the kitchen to go talk to her. I go out into the restaurant to talk to the lady who’s interested in the tutorials. I had not gotten many replies from the poster, just a few saying they were interested but never showed up or never came to ask for more information. But this lady was saying that these tutorials that I was offering were exactly what she would need to improve her computer skills. So we set a date for that same week and I asked if she could write down her questions and make a little list of the things she wants to learn.

The elderly lady of over 80 years old, showed up as she said she would, with her binder full of papers to take notes, and she had her list ready too. She used to be a teacher and now the positions were switched, she would be the student, and I would be the teacher. I vaguely knew the lady from when I was younger. I would go around with my mom, delivering milk, from our dairy farm and this lady was one of the customers.

We stared with the basics of email: how to check email, how to reply, forward and create new email, etc. After sending out a few test emails that she felt comfortable with, we moved on to something different. I showed her how to upload pictures from her digital camera to her computer and then to select the few that she wanted to have developed and put them on a USB stick.

We’re meeting up about once a week to continue to improve her computer skills. She now has more confidence to use her computer to keep in touch with family, friends and current events. When we started, she had not used her laptop for 3 month and had only just looked at it a few times. She still calls me or emails me with questions, but now that she’s more oriented with her laptop, we can usually work it out through the phone.