If you’d like to contact my Mom, she’s cruising her AOL account or anxiously awaiting a *DING* on AOL instant messenger. Yes, my Mom is NOT TECH SAVVY. She knows it. She is TRYING to adjust to the gmail my Sister and I setup for her. Someday, she’ll get Google Docs. We will move that business of her from snail mail to the digital age. It just takes time.
In all honesty, my Sister and I probably are the worse people to try to teach her. We’re impatient with good mom. We talk way too fast (and though we look nothing alike, our voices and lingo are just about identical), have no patience and well maybe teaching isn’t our gift, nor is tech support.
Helping Parents with Technology
(This is where Google goes from brilliant to GENIUS).
Apparently, there is a HUGE need for moving the older generation online and educating them in the way of tech. Google recognizes this. They understand people need to get it. They know that daughters and sons are attempting to teach parents how to do things (like copy and paste) and they’ve created a possible solution.
Teach Parents Tech
In 2010, Google had a created a website called teachparentstech.com. Unfortunately, this has since been retired. The need for tech support for parents is still a huge need though!
Google has created a site called Product Tips to show you how to use various features of Google. While not specifically focused to helping parents with tech support – it is quite useful.
Google has created several easy how to videos covering the basics that your parents may ask about. Sure, there are a lot of Google product tie-ins, but let’s face it… Mom and Dad NEED to know how to use Google products.
When this post was first written back in 2010, Google had created a website to help teach tech to boomers. Yes, you heard that right and it was called teachparenttech.com. This website was created to help teach your parents tech. Unfortunately, it looks like this is no longer a project that Google maintains.
Are your parents tech savvy, or are they still stuck on AOL?
