Computers 101: Welcome to the show. Or why memorizing is not learning.
beingzoe about 1 month ago // Digital Life Computers 101

Have you ever sat your computer, frustrated, not understanding why something that worked yesterday isn’t working today? Are you lost and confused when you have to install software? Does your head spin when you call tech support because you don’t even understand what they are asking you?

Computers 101 is a series of articles intended to share the basics of how a computer works and why in the belief that understanding WHY IT WORKS will help you teach yourself how to use any software, accomplish any task, and even begin fixing problems yourself without calling IT or your “guru” nephew.

Computers 101 articles

Core articles

1. What and how. Or why the sum of the parts are bigger than the whole.
2. Computer metaphors and conventions. Or why it looks and works like that.
3. Files, file structures, and file systems. Or why you can’t find anything on your computer.
4. Operating system fundamentals. Or why you should already know everything you need to know about your computer.
5. Application programs. Or why knowing one thing means you know a whole lot more than that.

Beyond fundamentals

1. What is email? Or why it isn’t for file sharing.

The titles and topics are likely to change over time as I merge and separate topics. But the core articles list really represents everything you need to know to be a competent computer user. The Beyond fundamentals list represents more fine grained topics that help put everything in perspective on specifics while still focusing on the how and why instead of simply telling what to do.

More about the Computers 101 series.

I’m not a computer scientist. Far from it. In fact I personally feel like a bit of a novice, maybe intermediate on good days, when it comes to my computer knowledge. This fact doesn’t stop people turning to me constantly with computer questions, expecting that I can tell them in a few clicks of the mouse how to fix or do anything. In reality I am a designer creative type who just wants to sit down at their computer and have everything magically happen, without crashing, without losing data, without spending hours reading manuals, without having to learn anything. I just want to click a button and have that new design ‘happen’. I just want to click a button and have that new website appear. I never want to build a computer, format a hard drive, fix a broken network, or modify mysterious settings to optimize my computer. In short I’m just like everybody else.

But I’ve been working with intimately for over 10 years and my brain happens to learn things best by doing. And while I’m doing something I start asking questions like how and why. Once I start understanding the how and why I quit doing the thing I was learning by rote and build a bigger picture of what is happening. As this occurs a whole new world opens up where as I learn the next thing and I’m not memorizing a process but intuitively predicting how the next thing should be done. As this happens my learning curve drops dramatically for the next step.

This is no different than how a math text book doesn’t start with calculus. It starts with basic maths, addition and subtraction, multiplication tables, building on itself so each subsequent step just makes sense.

Fortunately AND UNfortunately computers are designed to let you jump right in. No learning required. Open a word processor start typing. When people get stuck they just call a friend and say, “Hey I’ve typed up this document and now I want to print it, what do I do.” The friend replies, “Just click the big button that has a little picture of a printer on it and then click Okay.” This of course assumes that you bought a computer with everything pre-installed and ready-to-go.

And so on. Every step of the way people learn to use their computer by memorizing a set of steps to accomplish certain tasks. As they continue they might accidentally click buttons that make a certain thing happen and accidentally learn new things. For the most part people have no idea what is going on, they just know that when they do one thing a particular result occurs. Which is fine. Until they want to do something new, or worse, something goes wrong.

Then all of a sudden they have no idea where to even begin to get out of the problem situation. Calls to their friends no longer work because they don’t know either. This is where the modern myth of the guru is born. The guru is the secret ally you have, the person who knows everything, the computer genius who can fix it when everything goes wrong.

What happens when people call their guru, be it the IT department or their gifted nephew, is that the guru, sick of being called, simply passes on some rote solution that gets you out of the current situation. Similar to calling their friends, people then memorize the process to get of that particular situation should it happen again.

Years ago though, after the umpteenth phone call requesting magical help, I finally decided that I would no longer simply tell somewhere to click and what to type to make something happen. If they wanted my free advice, they were going to have to actually learn something in the process. That was the beginning of this series of articles.

I theorized that people were memorizing and not really learning when it came to computers. People would even buy or take computer courses that taught processes and not understanding. So I came up with the brilliant idea of offering a series of workshops that would, instead of teaching you how to make a formula in Excel, would teach you everything about how your computer works so that you could figure it out yourself. The classes would start with everyone writing down one thing they wanted to learn how to do that inspired them to take the class in the first place, and then I would explain that I would never tell them how to do it, but by the end of the workshop they would have their answer.

Well being an idealistic visionary whose brain works on overdrive this didn’t really go anywhere. Then a couple of years ago I was asked to teach a computer class for the stagehand Union IATSE local 122. Finally I was going to be able to put my ideas into practice. Unfortunately, I think when they asked me, they were expecting the rote information directly pertinent to the jobs and tasks that matter to the local, not a comprehensive 8 hour workshop. I wasn’t nearly prepared as well as I thought, and I was only going to be given 2 hours with no hope for more time in the months following. So while the workshop wasn’t an abysmal failure, it was far from a success.

I learned a lot from the experience and if the opportunity came up again I would be far better prepared to accomplish my goal.

And that’s when it occurred to me. I could simply take my notes and presentation materials from that class and turn them into a series of articles here at CoTradeCo. Thus Computers 101 was born.

Life is fairly hectic for me so it will probably take a while to get it all put together and properly reorganized and rewritten. In the meantime I will be posting bits and pieces as I get the time and revising them as we go. The first article I posted was actually about how email works which is far beyond my core fundamentals that I want to cover, but I needed to post that so I could usefully cover some topics I promised someone a while back.

I hope you find this useful. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to post your questions and comments either in the articles or start your own posts in the Digital Life and other communities at CoTradeCo. I am so keen on helping people with their computers, because I would have never figured it all out without those people who took some time out of their days to explain it all to me.

All Computers 101 articles by zoe somebody are licensed under creative commons, attribution and share alike.

Computer mess image used under a Creative Commons License courtesy of phil_g at Flickr