Ubuntu book for "grandma" users

[Joel Bryan Juliano]

On Dec 8, 2007 3:44 AM, H.S. <hs.samix at gmail.com> wrote:
> nad wrote:
> > Other than books, a better way to educate grandma about ubuntu is to simply stop by her house more often,
>
>
> My query was based on a few people I know who are just now starting to
> use computers. I myself have been giving a couple of them instructions
> on how to go about a computer doing basic stuff. During all that, I have
> tried to keep things general. That was on Windows.
>
> My efforts to keep things general payed off when one of the persons was
> able to use a Ubuntu installation without too much of a problem. I found
> that very interesting. Clearly, instead of saying "use Internet Explorer
> to read yahoo mail", I alway instructed "use your web browser to visit
> Yahoo Mail web page", or "type this in Notepad" was "type this in your
> text editor, in Windows you have Notepad to do that". When that person
> explored the Ubuntu desktop, "web browser", "text editor", etc. all made
> complete sense. After all, the basics of a user interface are more or
> less the same in all desktops.
>
> In my view, dumbing down Windows users ("IE is your internet") has done
> a lot of damage. Some of that is also coming from the corporate culture
> of "making things easy for the customer" which has, in this field, just
> made "things dumber" actually.
>
> Even though it is easy to help those people by visiting them, and it is
> more rewarding and time efficient, I have also discovered some of them
> actually want something of a reference text so that they can read up on
> that at their leisure. Hence the query for simple basic textbooks.
>
>
> thanks,
> ->HS
>

Teaching old dogs with new tricks is a great challenge.
You have to be radically inspiring and motivating in order to persuade
someone who
have brains and beliefs older than you.

Plus you need to have a great amount of patience and understanding.

Perhaps you can begin by giving them more and more assignments and tasks
so it will be engraved and tattooed on their mind.

-- 
Unfortunately, it's our responsibility to be successful. To learn
everything and anything under and beyond the sun.