from times to times I come in a situation where I teach people -
I've been working once in a software company where we developed teaching software CBT (computer based training) - we've been one of the pioneers even in the pre-windows DOS time - I was aware about the principles of learning - I developed teaching progs & was quite involved in the philosphy behind it - you can only learn by repeating - some people need personal guide, some prefer written guide - a lot of people are totally unable to learn on their own -
One of my jobs in that company was to teach new clerks, trainees or customers to use our software - I prefered the method to let them sit on the computer from the beginning, use the keyboard & mouse just with slight hints from behind - you much better learn if you do it yourself, - I was always very patient in teaching, because it's one of the prime teaching facts, that you have to repeat most of what you told - sometime or more often than sometimes, untill it really get's into their heads & minds - of course if you get a lot of new informations you can only remember a small part of them & only learn them by repeating them again & again.
I'm & was always patient with giving the same informations again - but sometimes there are informations - which are so crucial, that you shouldn't ever forget them ever from the very beginning - These informations of course you try to give in a way that they are very important (like "Don't make fire between our highly explosives!") -
But repeatedly I got pupils who also totally forgot about my most essential warnings, which I repeated again & again to them & later on they tell - "But you never told me that I shouldn't strike a match in front of the explosives!" -
I remember having a Vietnamesian trainee in our company - she was only in a software company because her husband was a software developer - she told me that she preferred to be a designer in fashion & wrote in a lot of her time she was in my office vietnamese fairytales with our textprogramm or played around with our graphics prog -
I sat one day with her on the PC and taught her the main DOS commands - like 'dir', 'cd', 'time', 'md' etc. etc. - of course I also told her the more dangerious commands like 'delete' or even 'format' - I totally warned her from ever using the command 'format C:' - because this would totally erase the whole hard disc - I really totally warned her to ever use this command.
Some days later she came in our office & didn't start her PC - I don't like to force people to something - maybe she wasn't in a good mood or something - but as in the early afternoon she still sat in front of her PC without even had switched it on - I went to her & asked her, why she didn't start it - then she told me that she was the day before in her husbands company - while waiting for him to be done - he allowed her to sit on a PC to use it - she probably had told him what she had learned in our company & wanted proudly to show what she has learned - maybe she didn't had understood what words like "don't use it!" - "this command can be dangerious" - "it can delete all your files" meant - probably this was the only DOS command that she still remembered, because I had told it so urgently - she told me that she had actually used just this command 'delete C:' & then the computer had made sounds like 'tick-tick-tick-tick-tick' for a long time & then remained very quiet for a time & nothing happened anymore on that PC for a much longer time, while she still hoped, he would awake again to it's normal behaviour - because all data had been sorrowly erased -
she had totally deleteted that PC - it must have been a very important PC in that company, because her husband turned really sour to her - there must have been important sources on that PC..
so she didn't even dare to start one of our computers, afraid the same desaster would happen again. - She even told me reproachfull: "But you told me that command!" - - Yes it was my fault - never tell someone to 'not burn your house' - he may misunderstands you & believes you want him to burn your house down..
Yesterday I gave Maria my old laptop - it's an old PC, is a bit slow, but still works fine - it has a slack joint while opening it - so the screen picture only comes if you put the screen in a certain kind of angle - if it's in the wrong angle the screen stays black - I'd visited her sometimes with that laptop - everytime we've been together at that notebook I told her about that loose contact. -
Yesterday I lent her my desktop - & told her how to use the mouse & how to use a simple grapics programm - of course she will get much more lessons - because it's the first computer in her life -
but while yesterday I told her how to start & shut down the PC - I repeatedly told her about the slack joint of the screen & that she had to fix the screen to a certain angle (& then don't move it anymore) to make it work.
Today she called me that last night she had tried for hours to start that laptop but the screen had remained black & she already had thought that it was broke - in the next morning she had tried it again & it worked (by chance she hat moved the screen in the right angle) - I remembered her that I had told her so often about the loose contacts & how to fix it - but oops - she had totally forgotten..
I remember another trainee in that CBT company who had lost his work of about 2 weeks, by recalling the last saved version (which was 2 weeks old) because he had totally forgotten about the saving system I had told him very urgently in the beginning - He said: "But you never told me so!"
Of course I told you so folks - & it's your fault if you just don't care to listen!
