September 21, 2003

• Hunting and Pecking

  
  

  
  Photo by Alice Woodrome

  
  

  This is my mom at her new computer.  It’s really an old machine, but it’s new to mom.  My niece decided it took up too much space for how little she actually used it, so she had her mom (my sister Alice) take it and set it up for our mother.  We really thought that mom would find it a little too complicated and therefore she’d lose interest in it in a matter of days, but much to our surprise and delight she’s sticking with it. 

  
  

  In the picture above she is starting a game of Scrabble, and I really think that it’s the capability to play Scrabble on the computer that is keeping mom focused.  She’s always been a very good Scrabble player but now she doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to play and she’s a afraid that her skills might slip if she can only play once a week.  

  
  

  You see, my sister plays Scrabble with mom each week ( a real game – not an electronic one) when she goes over to do her laundry and the grocery shopping, and Mom used to always win because of her huge vocabulary and impressive spelling ability.  Well, Alice has been playing Scrabble on the internet and has improved quite a bit, and now she beats mom at least half the time.   So being able to practice; to hone her Scrabble skills is a powerful motivation.

  
  

  She is doing much much better on her “mouse” skills, but Alice is wisely taking it slow.  She doesn’t want to try to cram too much information into each teaching session or mom WOULD get discouraged.  Eventually we’d like for mom to be comfortable enough to send and receive emails, engage in Instant Messages, maybe even surfing the web.  Alice has even created a Xanga site for her, if and when she wants to do that.  I think she’d LOVE it. 

  • 4:35 pm
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