Human interest in technology surpasses any other form of hobby in our time. However, this interest was never shared by my parents. Their love for materialistic objects has always been limited to what is needed and what is useful. But things couldn't stay that way as smartphones are more important than ever to keep in touch with your loved ones. So before I moved to Thailand there were a number of things that I shared with my mother about smartphones and applications.
The smartphone she had at that time was Nokia Lumia 620 (in colour: Black)
She was thrilled to have such a funky phone. What's more is that, the large icons made it easy for her to use. Unfortunately, later on that phone was stolen (she was heartbroken)!
Getting back to the topic. I started teaching her from the very basic, mind you, it took patience and time....and lots of repetition. We began with how to switch on the phone (I never taught her how to turn it off though). Following that I showed her the basics such as where the necessary tiles were located on the screen such as the phone, contacts, Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp tiles. Following that, I opened up the Facebook Application and logged in for her, making her an email account as I did that. Once Facebook was up and running, she seemed to quickly grasp how it worked. I introduced her to the 'like' and 'share' concept. Knowing my mother, I knew she wouldn't want to get too deep into it so I stopped right there and moved on to the next and most important Application she needed to learn. WhatsApp.
Getting back to the topic. I started teaching her from the very basic, mind you, it took patience and time....and lots of repetition. We began with how to switch on the phone (I never taught her how to turn it off though). Following that I showed her the basics such as where the necessary tiles were located on the screen such as the phone, contacts, Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp tiles. Following that, I opened up the Facebook Application and logged in for her, making her an email account as I did that. Once Facebook was up and running, she seemed to quickly grasp how it worked. I introduced her to the 'like' and 'share' concept. Knowing my mother, I knew she wouldn't want to get too deep into it so I stopped right there and moved on to the next and most important Application she needed to learn. WhatsApp.
Now its important to know that my family members are all settled and some are also married with families, so we are quite many in number (God Bless). We live in different parts of Asia and mainly function keeping in touch with each other through the WhatsApp application. Therefore, this was something my mom needed to really understand quite thoroughly.
I began by adding her to the family group chat and let her try out typing on the keypad. Once she grasped that, I showed her how to use emoticons and share pictures. Once that was finished we moved on to Skype, which was pretty simple and she got it right away.
Overtime, she moved on from learning basic things such as typing and sharing pictures to more advanced user friendly applications such as using YouTube, all by herself.
