Susie Shimel, left, receives computer assistance from Shawanna Kindrick, family partnership specialist, as she verbally calls out Web addresses for neighborhood senior citizens during a free computer class Wednesday at Orchard Knob Middle School. Sam Scott, third from left, watches the exchange.It was a simple trade. Orchard Knob Middle School offered a free computer class for senior citizens. In exchange, the seniors agreed to volunteer at least 10 hours helping at the school — a swap that each side saw as a bargain.
Seniors needed the class to catch up to today’s technology. Everything from bill paying to shopping is quickly migrating online. But what comes easily to kids and younger adults — texting, word processing, surfing the Web — can scare off some members of the Greatest Generation.
So this class hit the fundamentals, like what each piece of the computer is, what each key on the keyboard does.
“We had to go real basic. We had two that were scared to even touch the mouse,” said Tre High, a computer technician at the Howard School who volunteered to teach the four-day course.
After going through the Web and learning programs like Microsoft Word and Excel, the 10 participants said they felt more comfortable working on computers of their own.