Monte

I began volunteering my time with the International Rescue Committee about a month ago, and I think I’m really liking this whole “helping other people out thing” (my indifference is purely sarcasm).

But seriously, I really do enjoy it. Right now I’m teaching refugees how to use computers, most of whom have never used one in their entire lives. To add to the challenge, many don’t speak english very well which makes explaining computer terminology quite difficult. For people like me who are accustomed to using computers, we assume they’re fairly straight forward, but it’s only until you introduce a newbie do you realize just how convoluted computer software is—the Windows operating system is a prime example.

How do you explain to a newbie the difference between a “left-click” and a “right-click”? You’d first have to explain what a contextual menu is, and then you’d have to make the connection that the contextual menu is associated with the item you right-click on.

Here’s another pitfall I discovered: Many Windows applications have a main window which is separate from the document windows inside of it? So how do you explain that the larger “X” closes the program while the smaller, more subtle “X” closes the document within the application?

And then I had to explain the difference between “Save” and “Save As…”. Holy crap!

Logging off of the computer is also tricky. First you click on “Start” (which seems completely ass-backwards if you’re trying to log off or shut down), and the you have to click shut down (depending on which version of Windows you’re using). But wait, I thought we wanted to log off, not shut down. But don’t worry because Windows will ask you what you want to do (which is completely redundant): Do you want to log off, shut down, restart, hibernate or stand by? How the fuck is someone supposed to know the difference between stand-by and hibernate!? The seemingly simple process of shutting down a computer becomes even more complicated in Vista because they’ve changed “shut down” into a shiny button with a power-off symbol. Logic would suggest that by clicking this button, the computer would power-off as the symbol implies—but not quite. Instead of shutting down, the computer goes into hibernation. So what do you do if you want to shut down the computer instead? You have to click on another shiny button beside the log off button which is marked only by a nebulous arrow symbol. You must be joking, right?

So then I noticed that one student, “Joe Bunda”, was having trouble using his mouse, and I assumed that the trackball was dirty. I thought to clean it, but in the meantime I would replace it with another mouse. Unfortunately, the donated computer was setup so that only administrators have rights to install hardware, and yes, that includes mice. So when I unplugged the old mouse and plugged in a new one, the cursor lay motionless, and I couldn’t reinstall the mouse driver because I didn’t have permission to install hardware. The machine is useless now (at least to the refugees anyway) until we can reinstall the OS.

Despite the difficulties, I think I’m making progress, especially with “Joe Bunda”. His typing is improving and today he was able to open WordPad without me having to walk him through it.

It’s funny. When I look at “Joe Bunda”, I see a really intelligent guy who’s fascinated with computers and anxious to learn. I can’t help but think that under better circumstances, he’d be a computer programmer or Web designer or something. If I had the money, I’d buy him a laptop, place it in his hands, and tell him to have at.

I’m starting to think those $100 laptops would actually be of some use here in America.