re: #10 wheat-dogg, raker of forests, master of steam

A couple of us here were complaining about the lack of basic tech skills among the Olds. Here’s another example, from today in the office.

Subject: 61-year-old white male
Problem: Inability to print contents of email (sent by subject to himself)
Background: Subject needs to prepare end-of-term grade reports, which are Excel spreadsheets. Having marked student papers at home, subject recorded students’ grades in separate emails which he sent to himself to open and print out in the office. Files (plain text) looked like this:
Class 1 Class 2
Quiz 1 Quiz 1
Sally 23 Jacob 17
Bill 21 Sunshine 18
etc.
NOTE: Subject has a USB stick issued to him by our employer.
Treatment: Subject asked for help in printing out contents of email. Did not know how to copy and paste into a Word document for printing. Showed him shortcuts CTRL-A, CTRL-C, CTRL-V into Word document. On his own, subject did CTRL-V into a *new* email document. Had to point out necessity of copying into a separate Word document. At this point, subject was able to complete desired process.

Or so I assume, since I left for lunch about this time.

Subject also has been shown how to scan a document on the office copier-printer to save on his USB several times, but I had to do it for him *again* today.

Subject is leaving to teach at another college, so we’ll be spared his particular kind of techno-helplessness.

I am A Old but I have a degree in Computer Science (such as it was in 1986) and a 30-year career in IT.

People really did think that their CD tray was a cup holder.