The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Don’t fear the iPad, head to the library for free tech help
What goes around comes around.
Parents who taught their children basic tasks such as how to hold a fork and use the bathroom are now turning to their children to help them learn the new so-called simplicities of daily life.
Sending a picture attached to a text message. Inserting a file to an email. Running operating system updates. They didn’t laugh when you couldn’t tie your shoe and didn’t have a smartphone to post your most adorable foibles. Maybe show them a bit of patience when they admit they are scared to open the iPad you bought them for Christmas.
Some roll their eyes and act like they were just asked to donate a kidney when a relative asks them to, “show them how to work this thing” as they hold up a phone/laptop/tablet.
Take the kids off speed dial (if you figured out how to program it). There is free, non-judgmental help at hand.
Montgomery County-Norristown Public Library is offering free individual tech help. Tech help volunteers Ash Aragam, Rashaad Bates and Anthony Lis are available three days a week to offer their expertise.
And they have saint-like patience.
“My mother is not very tech savvy. The patience I have is from helping my mother. I figured I could help other people if
I could help her,” said Lis, a Conshohocken resident.
That’s a resounding testimony not many can make.
“I enjoy computers. I like helping people and I’ve been doing it for a long time. It’s like second nature,” said Bates.
I immediately confess my computer sins to them. My laptop is getting up there in age. Yes, I know. I work on my laptop all day and I need it be at optimum performance.
“I did get an external hard drive,” I said with a hint of pride. “I back up the computer once every few months.”
I know that’s not good. Both men nod their heads because they have no doubt heard worse -- but suggest someone with all of their work on a laptop should back it up much more often.
Of course they are right and they are right that my current laptop isn’t going to last forever and it might be time to think about a new one.
The tech helpers have a breadth of experience and decided to give back to the community. They were matched with the MCNPL through Volunteermatch. org, a network that connects volunteers to causes.
Tech help is available in 30-minute sessions by appointment only on Wednesday (5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.), Thursday (6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.) and Friday (3 p.m. – 4 p.m.). They offer assistance with: creating an email account, improving internet skills, online job applications, resume formatting and uploading, using a phone tablet or ereader, sending e-mail attachments, saving a file to a USB drive, and other issues.
Bates and Lis said the age ranges of people they have assisted at the library are 35 and older with laptops or tablets. The most common issues are formatting documents, understanding the computers various applications and changing operating systems if people switch from Windows or Mac or a desktop to a laptop.
Both relate to the frustration people have at times with technology.
“What makes you frustrated is when you’ve done something a hundred times on the same computer and then somehow it doesn’t do it the right way next time,” said Bates, a Norristown resident.
MCNPL has been in the process of launching the Tech Help program since the beginning of 2018. Like many libraries, they are much more than books.
Aside from Tech Help, the library offers computer classes that cost $5 per session.
Need to decompress after staring at a screen or find your center?
Aragam is also a certified Yoga instructor and teaches classes at the library most Friday afternoons.
The institution of the library is one of my loves and this is not the first time I have written about them. They remain a resource of knowledge. It no longer just comes from books but in various forms of media.
My first books on each reading level came from the MCNPL. Each time my mother went to the library, I took a whiff of the first page for that unmistakable aroma. Then I was off to a different world in those pages.
Adapting to technology is now the equivalent of moving up a reading level. It is a necessity. You don’t want to keep reading picture books when the rest of the world is devouring novels.
Don’t be afraid to open that iPad or make an appointment with Tech Help. Bates and Lis agree that tablets are the most userfriendly. I disagree. Libraries are the most user-friendly. Katie Kohler is an awardwinning columnist and journalist. Visit her at www.katiekohler.com.