One of Simmons’ students, 91-year-old Pauline Lockman, had taken the course before but was rusty. She wanted to learn how to reply to incoming eMails, and she struggled for nearly an hour to tap out a few lines to a friend who had eMailed her more than a month earlier.
Lockman labored over details that the younger generation often ignores when writing on computers. As she leaned in toward the screen, straining to read its 16-point text, Lockman pondered whether to capitalize the start of each line, what to write in the subject line, and how to spell certain words. When she was finished with her brief message, she didn’t want to send it because, she told Simmons, it wasn’t good enough.
“No, that’s not sendable,” she said firmly despite Simmons’ gentle prodding.
“The hardest part for me is not touching the mouse or computer myself,” Simmons said later. Like the other tutors, she has been advised to make the seniors do things for themselves.
The challenge, she said, is helping people like Lockman overcome their fear of computers and the internet, while also teaching them the perils of pop-up ads and virus-carrying attachments. “It’s hard to say, ‘Don’t be scared to click on anything, but be scared to click on these,'” she said.
That’s a comfort level that usually requires more than one pass through the course, said Coppola, whose oldest student was 101.
“The third or fourth time, something clicks,” she said. “By the second time, they’re beginning to understand. By the third or fourth time they’re comfortable with it. They’re no longer confused. They’re no longer afraid.”
That’s how it was for Eisenberg, who met with Allen in her sunny, cream-colored 13th-floor apartment. She had been through the course twice—enough to feel comfortable flicking on her iPad and checking her eMail for the daily message whose subject line was “Thought for the Day.”
But Eisenberg, who moved to New York from Florida to be close to her daughter, a Broadway producer and actress, was stalled. Her son had set up an Amazon account for her so she could buy books online, but she had forgotten how to log in and did not want to call her son for help.
“I hate to keep admitting defeat,” said Eisenberg, who had yet to figure out how to view the family photographs that she knew were somewhere on the iPad.
Allen leaned in and guided her toward the flower icon, then showed her how to tap it to reveal pictures of her children and grandchildren on vacation. “I’m seeing these for the first time,” Eisenberg said in wonder as the screen filled with photographs of a smiling little girl with dark, glossy hair.
Then, Eisenberg clicked on another icon and fell into a trance-like silence as the voice of her daughter, Jana Robbins, belting out “I’m Still Here” from the Broadway musical “Follies,” floated from the iPad and filled the room.
“At first I didn’t know anything,” Eisenberg said, “but I’m picking it up, piece by piece.”
Copyright (c) 2012, the Los Angeles Times. Visit the Los Angeles Times online at www.latimes.com. Distributed by MCT Information Services.
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