CommonCraft Assignment Update

I know this sounds funny, but my mom actually learned how to “copy and paste” thanks to the video provided by http://www.teachparentstech.org/watch. She is incredibly unfamiliar with the layout of a keyboard, so she types very slowly. Copying and pasting will make her life much easier. I had tried to explain this to her before, but I think the video's directions were great because they gave clear, visual representations of what to do. When she’d asked me about transferring information before I had said,” O just hit Ctrl+ C and then Ctrl +V”, let’s just say I lost her. It was great to have a pre-made video which could teach her how to do this in about a minute. She got really excited and now she also knows how to make bookmarks instead of trying to remember the site she wanted to show me. I wish I had known about these sites before!

My brother watched Common Craft’s Social Networking in Plain English, but didn’t find it very helpful. He doesn’t want to network for business or love interests and he said that was one of the focuses of the video. Something applicable that he learned was on teachparentstechn.org,  “how to share a big file”. While away in college, lots of videos and pictures were taken of my brother at his track meets. My family has been bugging him about seeing them, but his argument is that the videos are in Oregon (he just got back to Alaska this week). Now, there is no excuse because he knows an easy way to upload links and share them with us.  After this, I had him check out the Common Craft video entitled Online Photo Sharing in Plain English.  Relatives and friends are always asking how my brother is doing. I occasionally get an email with a few photos from him, but then I have to forward and share these with other people. It would be much easier for him to upload his pictures online and have a common link that everyone could view. Whether or not he will take the time to do this is unknown.

As for me, something I had always wanted to do was to set up an email signature. I never knew how easy it was to create one! Beforehand, Twitter seemed like dangerous territory for me. Years ago I created an account and that was it. I never went on one again. But now I realize how easy it is to tweet. I may not be ready to manage a Twitter account, but it would be an efficient way to eliminate the same small-talk with the friends I am texting. Instead, they would be able to see my updates throughout the day instead of constantly asking "what's up?" I ended up checking out numerous videos on both sites, setting aside just 15 minutes of time resulted in me learning so much. I really appreciate that sites like this are developed to help us all become more tech-savvy.