“Where is the Title Bar?” I ask for the third time. My student points at the task bar. I shake my head. Literally ten minutes ago we reviewed the parts of a window. Apparently he wasn’t paying attention. I point to the Title Bar and ask him to click and drag on it to move the window. He grabs the mouse in his hand, moving it slowly toward the top of the screen.
This week we’ve moved to teaching two hours a day, this is my second two-hour session and it is pretty draining. The frustration from not being able to communicate relatively simple concepts is a constant companion in class, as well as the myriad of ways students manage to break their computers. Also some students get it the first time, while others take ten times longer than you would expect.
Somehow he has managed to right click during the process of moving the mouse. An option screen has appeared on the screen. He looks at me questioningly. I ask, “How do you close the options?” another process we went through only a few minutes ago.
“I don’t know” he says.
“Click here” I say, pointing at the background. He manages to move the mouse, and right-clicks.
“Left click” I say. He right-clicks again.
“Press the left mouse button” I say. Another right-click.
“Look at the mouse, where is the left button?” He points to the correct one and clicks it. Good.
“Now move the pointer onto the title bar and click and drag.” He moves the mouse onto the title bar, right clicking again in the process.
Teaching IT is harder than I thought it would be. We’ve been using the mouse everyday for a week now, and half of the class still can’t use it correctly. I was told to expect something like this. I never dreamed it would be.
I realize now that planning lessons I have been putting myself in the place of the students, and have expected them to learn new things on the computer about as fast as I did. This would probably work for people who had similar exposure to computers as I did, but it certainly doesn’t work for someone who has only seen a computer a handful of times in their lives and probably never used one.
It’s hard and sometime frustrating process, but I am getting better at it.
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