After a few phone calls and emails John Giancone, the Sr. Computer Instructor at the Benjamin Rosenthal location, was kind enough to grant me a short interview to discuss the following:
 The driving force that inspires him to teach adults to use the computer.
What new computer skill theyâre improving on within each lesson.
And his goals for his students.
Now, when I stepped in his classroom for the first time I was amazed by the layout. For a second I thought I was still on campus at Pace University. The room is filled with computers and literature on computer self-improvement. The room size is spacious enough to accommodate 10 to 15 eager adults at a time. You wonât find an over populated lecture hall with a podium. When youâre there itâs just you, other enthused adults and John Giancone. Â
Please listen to our Conversation about: His hands on experience with the elderly and how his effort is closing the digital divide.Â
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A Citizen Why Project audio blog interview with John Giancone, the Sr. Computer Instructor at, Selfhelp in Flushing, NY. In this interview John talks one-on-one with the Citizen Why Project blog to discuss, how his hands on experience with the elderly is slowly closing the digital divide.
One of the benefits of using the Internet is: it allows us to connect with people we know but donât see often. If youâre new to the World Wide Web, you may think the first shared interaction people ever made, started with social media. But on the contrary social media sites are not the founders of the social evolution on the Web. I was a big fan of AOL when their chat rooms were the hottest things around. At one point, moderated conference rooms and private rooms were all we raved about.Â
 Advice # 1.
(In order for anyone to setup a Facebook account an email address is needed. If youâre teaching someone please, take some time to set one up with them and explore all the goodies inside it. If youâre learning on your own and bypassed this step, now is a good time for you to create one.)
Now, creating a Facebook account with a social media novice like Jocelyn H. wasnât hard to do but understanding its architecture will take some getting use to.  Already the information on the screen looks familiar to Jocelyn and sheâs comfortable providing the needed information.  To a young adult, composing their life, listing all their contacts and publicizing their picture on the Web is normal. They want to be seen and their narcissistic behavior wants the whole world to follow their timeline. However, Adults like Jocelyn H. who are brand new to Facebook are in deed the opposite. Jocelyn felt bombarded as soon as questions like: Are your friends already here? Searching your email account is the fastest way to find them appeared? This step was of know use to Jocelyn, because her email address was fairly new. She decided to skip this step and the ones that followed. She felt like the questions were intrusive and uncalled for. By the time questions like, âGet interesting news in your news feedâ Appeared, she was already concerned about profiling and identity thief. Yes, Jocelyn isnât an expert on the Web like you or I but the news has kept her well informed.  Â
 Advice # 2.
(It helps if you explain in full detail why Website like Facebook asks for such information but donât push beginners to conform to these prying questions.) Â Â Â
 I like watching shows like ER and Greyâs Anatomy. I especial like when the actors on those shows have someone on the operating table that is facing some type of complication. The doctors or should I say actors are presented with two options. The first is to keep operating but doing so might make things worse or better; who can tell for certain. The second is to close the patent up. Reviewing what went wrong in the first surgery so you can approach it differently is a great method.Â
Jocelyn and I have yet to scratch the surface but in time we will.
Advice # 3.
(If youâre learning Facebook for the first time donât be taken by all the information you encounter during the sign up stage. The skip button is your best friend. If your helping someone to learn donât be discouraged when the attempt fails to launch the way you though it would have.)  Â
When I was 15 years old, I got my first job at a supermarket working as a Deli Assistant. At the time I didnât have a resume that highlighted my skills, experiences, or objectives. Back then I did what most people did; I solicited companies that I was interested in. I was persistent and words like âNo weâre not hiringâ were not in my vocabulary. It wasnât until my third or fourth attempt that the manager at the Supermarket gave me a job. Obtaining a job was a bit more simple back then.  Today, the chances of someone walking into a business and getting a job the same way I did are slim. Today employers post 90 percent of their job openings online and they frown on unscheduled walk-ins. If youâre not Internet savvy finding a job through the Internet can be difficult.Â
Mary B. (a Citizen Why Project participant) is thinking about getting another job. In the past sheâs used job agencies, the want ads, and her connections to find employment opportunities. But now Mary B. is hoping the Internet will help her find another job.Â
(If you're teaching someone how to find a job through the Internet there are many job Web sites to choose from. However, rather than introduce them to every job search engine in one fell swoop, try to keep your selections to a minimum of one in the beginning.)Â
If their using a search engine like Google, only three steps are required for a successful Job search:
First, the user has to input what type of job their looking for in the Google search box.
They have to use the mouse wheel or the horizontal bar thatâs located on the right side of the window to scroll up and down the screen. Â This allows them to view the full-page content.Â
Find a job title that theyâre interested in, click on it, and watch as it redirects them to the page they requested.
A dedicated Job search engine like Career Builder, Monster, or Indeed will also introduce users to available job listings. However, donât expect users to know these sites off the top of their head.  Try to refer back to general search engine like Bing or Google and follow the steps listed above.Â
It just so happened that our Google job search provided Mary B. with a link that redirected her to Careerbuilder.com.
If you look closely, Job search engines like Career Builder share similar features to general search sites like Google. When Mary and I examined Career Builder closely we were able to see the following:
Two search boxes, one marked âKeywordâ and the other marked âLocation.â (These two boxes are where users specify their search by inputting what type of job their looking for and the where.)Â
A list of job titles with a short description below.
Accessible links that allow users to click and preview the full information;
A resume submit button.
These steps werenât difficult for Mary to understand and once she successfully executed her search she was able to see the information she requested.  However, Mary misunderstood how online job searches really work.  She thought you could find out which places were hiring and call them direct.  Although, Mary wasnât satisfied with the outcome now she can execute the steps and search for a job.  Mary and I have only begun to scratch the surface. Now, if I can convince her to sit down with me and structure her resume she can witness the full job searching experience.Â
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Weâve had almost four centuries to get used to the mail system. In 1660, the General Post Office was official established and everyone grew accustomed to sending and receiving messages this way. When I was in third grade, my teacher taught the entire class how to properly fill out an envelope for the postman. She always said, âIf the envelope isnât filled out properly the postman will return it to you.â  Â
Those of us already deeply familiar with email have had a decade or two of experience, making the process of drafting and sending a note and managing addresses. But for millions of elderly or poor Americans, Internet communication can be confounding and nerve wracking.
In my efforts to help newcomers to he Web learn to communicate, I find that if you can communicate the similarities between an email system and your neighborhood postman the light bulb turns on for them. Â
The Postmanâs primary job function is to distribute and pick up mail. Our job consists of writing letters, putting them into envelopes, and placing them into a mailbox for the Postman. After we read the mail we perform two essential functions. We either save the letter/message if itâs important or we put it in the trash. Once Mary and Jocelyn, two of the people Iâm working with in this Citizen Why Project, visualized this picture the inner workings of an email system was no longer difficult for them to comprehend. Now they understood the following:
The Inbox is their mailbox; itâs where they pick up delivered mail.Â
Compose, is their nifty pen and paper, which allows them to write a letter to someone.Â
Sent Mail is a carbon copy of the original letter that they sent to someone.Â
The Spam folder is where they can store all that junk mail from businesses like, Publishers Clearing House. Â
And finally, the Trash Bin is their kitchen garbage.
We laughed at my form of reasoning but it made perfect sense to them. Â
I think Mary and Jocelyn are almost ready to graduate from learning all there is to know about emails.  Just think theyâll be composing on their own soon and they might send you and email⌠Youâve Got Mail.Â
Since Jocelyn H. is new to the Web our first lesson involved the mouse and the Web browser. If you get the opportunity to teaching someone the Internet for the first, try the following exercise to begin.Â
The mouse has three different functions but beginners are unaware of this. To illustrate how the mouse works, I moved it in all directions and clicked on the left and right clicker to show Jocelyn how it performs on the computer screen. After my demonstration, I decided to empower Jocelyn by letting her control the mouse for the remainderof the lessson. (You should try the same steps if youâre teaching someone the computer as well.) I asked Jocelyn to click on a few program icons on the desktop so she could see the design of each. After she opened them I asked her to close them all by directing the mouse to âQuit Program.â
(This activity may seem tedious but these exerciseâs help beginners to understand and differentiate what each icon looks like when there open. And it teaches them how to open and close windows on their own.)
Once Jocelyn mastered the mouse she was ready to learn something new. People who frequently use the Internet are accustomed to more than one Web browser but people who are learning the Internet for the first time are not. When Jocelyn graduates from the Citizen Why Project, she may come in contact with a different browser than the one we're using in our lesson. Therefore, if your system occupies more than one browser be sure to explore them together and familiarize the person you're teaching. I told Jocelyn that Web browsers like Explore, Safari, Chrome and Firefox bassically do the same thing, which is connecting people to the Worl Wide Web.  Understanding the domain extensions can be confusing to anyone.  Just the other day I visited a Website and noticed the domain extension ended with .hu instead of the .com extension that I normally see on most Websites. To spare Jocelyn H. the mystification that Internet beginers incounter with domain extensions we went over common extension like www, .com, .gov, .edu, and .org. Once Jocelyn was completely comfortable with the basic she used the search box and typed in her favorite stores web addressâpetco.com.Â
As we mature I think it becomes increasingly hard for us to step back into a classroom and learn something new. Our minds become preoccupied with just about everything in todayâs world and those distractions cloud our focus. If youâre willing to put aside some time to learn something new, you will learn the âun-learnable.â
Today we started with setting up an email account on Google. But there were some basic steps that had to be taken first.  If youâre teaching someone the Internet for the very first time, you should first give that person a full introduction to all the tools theyâll be using in conjunction with the computer. Everyone has a general idea on how the keyboard operatesâitâs simply the evolution of the typewriter.   The mouse on the other hand, is a foreign object to those who have never used one. Donât make the same mistake I made, when I didnât explain the difference between the left and right clicker followed by the mouse wheel, to Mary.
Creating an email account is a great beginning for anyone who wants to learn how to use the Web. Once I illustrated how to open the browser on Safari we started to cruise.
You have to take your time with Internet newcomers. Its essential that you get them into the habit of looking at the entire page, so they can familiarize themselves with where things are. Creating a viable username and password can take some time but itâs important that adults experience these steps for themselves, since other sign-up forms that they will encounter on the Web are similar. Like many, Mary would like to maintain some level of anonymity on the Web so she wasnât comfortable with submitting her correct age and name for the email account. We barely scratched the surface before our time came to an end but we both can't wait to pick up where we left off.
