Before they can run, they must learn how to walk
I was recently reminded that not every person who uses a computer every day understands the instruction “Minimize that window.”
I watched someone hesitate for a really long time after I said that. Eventually I realized that I had to tell him how to do it, and even what it meant.
Now, don’t get all highfalutin and nasty-mouthed over this — reach down deep and summon up some compassion. There are people among us who have been getting along just fine (until now) without this basic knowledge of how to control their computer screens. It’s a bit hard to comprehend, I will admit. And I’m tempted to scream and tear my hair, yes — I’ll admit that too. (”How in the world can you possibly NOT KNOW what ‘minimize the window’ means? Have you been IN A CAVE for the past FIVE YEARS?!?”)
And as my last sheepish admission for today, I will confess that I do agree with Paul Conley on this:
Nearly everyone who works in Web-only or Web-first journalism came from a print background. And for years they toiled in places where the online world was treated with disdain. Then, as Web journalism took off, the online staff found themselves in an all-new form of hell. Every day was filled with the whining, complaining and resentments of the print staff. I assure you — the Web journalists who have managed to escape that scene are not eager to start hiring the same moaning characters they left behind. The big secret of Web journalism is that it’s fun. And we don’t want anyone to spoil that.
However, I don’t want to be part of a society that takes its old people and sickly babies out to the desert and leaves them to die. It might be good for the financial bottom line, but it’s certainly not good for our karma.
So I was thinking about the basics, and how not knowing them would really get in your way if you were trying to update your technology skills (and save yourself from being left in the desert to die). It would be like trying to run the 100-meter dash in flip-flops. I know, it seems like a person would have to be a complete idiot to do that, but let’s assume that it’s because he doesn’t know how to get more suitable shoes, okay?
I suggest we look around the newsroom and start noticing how people manage their files. How they open programs. Whether they use intelligent file names and have a usable folder system on their hard drive.
If they’re using Windows, do they know the proper way to eject a USB device? I have noticed that very few people in newsrooms do. It’s a wonder they haven’t lost more crucial data than they have, yanking their thumb drives out without ejecting them. (I killed a whole hard drive that way once.)
I think it’s a big red warning flag when someone has about 10 million icons on the desktop. That is almost certainly a person with a computer literacy problem.
These folks need our help. Maybe a remedial brown-bag lunch?
And don’t think it’s only the older people — I’ve seen 19-year-olds who can’t find a file 10 seconds after closing it.
Add to the list of “those to notice” — anyone with an assistant (aka - secretary). I am not bemoaning them, it’s just that their jobs do not entail knowing most software. People have always done things for them in many realms. I was surprised by a friend in his mid-40s whose home computer was a disaster. He is smart - Ivy-educated - capable - just hadn’t had a need to manage a computer and now feels kind of silly about asking to learn.
April 23, 2008 at 12:55 amOne of the bloggers that I work with (I’m not going to name names, but I will provide a link to the blog http://www.pharmalot.com/) seems to be running without walking.
He routinely has a heap of trouble navigating files on his computer, with everything stored on the desktop and no understanding of how to get to anything, or even that there are other places to store things.
For years before becoming a blogger he tooled away on our editorial system where the contents and functionality of his computer were mostly irrelevant.
None of that has stopped his blog from becoming a growing success. So I’d actually contend that knowing how to use a “computer” is becoming less important than knowing how to use the internet. (Knowing how to use his computer would definitely make his life a lot less frustrating though.)
Now he tools away on the internet, with his computer functioning just as as a way station between the interwebs and wordpress.
April 23, 2008 at 5:40 amAnd yet, these people use InDesign or Quark or even more elaborate front-end systems like JazBox to put out a print edition every day.
WTF? You know how to flow text into Quark but you can’t find the refresh button on your browser?
I think people just get it into their heads somehow that the Web is a technical thing, like an ethernet cable, and not something they can re-arrange just by pushing buttons.
Trying to figure out how to make this easier for people, every day.
April 23, 2008 at 6:41 am@Ryan: This post was in part inspired by a photo editor who told me he’d recently realized that some of his photojournalists — seemingly the most tech-savvy people in the newsroom — don’t understand the underlying concepts of some tasks they have been doing with software for years.
This becomes obvious when you give them a new tool and think they ought to be able to figure it out quickly, because it is so much like another tool they are using expertly. But — surprise! They can’t learn the new tool because they were only pushing the buttons in the old tool, without any real understanding of how it works.
April 23, 2008 at 7:35 amBang on target, Mindy.
In an audio training class, I told the students — mostly reporters, who don’t need to know much more technically than how to turn on their PCs and type — to create notes about what was on their recording and put the file in the same folder as their MP3. Use Word or Notepad, I said.
How, one reporter asked, could she do that?
Do what? Create a Word file.
We have a Harris system that uses a version of Word, but the system has its own desktop buttons. This reporter had never used a word processing program outside of Harris and had no idea what to do.
It’s the same when it comes to tasks like dragging-and-dropping files from the audio recorder to the desktop or deleting a group of files. A surprising number of reporters have never learned any computer skills other than those required to work with the newsroom system, or have never learned any of the shortcuts others take for granted.
And, Ryan, “just pushing buttons” is scary enough for people who don’t understand the computer but have been warned that they can make their stories disappear forever if they push the wrong button.
April 23, 2008 at 10:13 am@John Kroll: I met a guy at a newspaper training session last year who told me he does not have Internet access at home.
No Internet access.
Now, I know a lot of journalists have really, really low pay … but NO INTERNET? I did not know what to say to him. I just stood there, speechless.
April 23, 2008 at 10:31 amI think it’s a big red warning flag when someone has about 10 million icons on the desktop. That is almost certainly a person with a computer literacy problem.
Ouch. So I’m computer illiterate?
And I’m always amazed at how people use tools and don’t understand how they work.
April 23, 2008 at 10:35 am[…] Teaching Online Journalism » Before they can run, they must learn how to walk “I think it’s a big red warning flag when someone has about 10 million icons on the desktop. That is almost certainly a person with a computer literacy problem. These folks need our help. Maybe a remedial brown-bag lunch?” (tags: teaching journalism) […]
April 23, 2008 at 11:31 am@Mindy: Yes, I know of newsroom folks who don’t have Internet. I’d be more astonished, but that was worn out of me by working with biz journalists who had massive credit-card debt. And our pay isn’t THAT low. Or the biz journalists who had to ask for help every time they needed to calculate a percentage.
One clue to how someone can work in a newsroom for years but not know basic computer tasks: After every class I teach here, at least one person compliments me for being … patient. I am, but I suspect the compliment says less about me and more about the reaction they usually get when they tell a boss they don’t understand something or ask for help.
April 23, 2008 at 1:00 pmThere are several dimensions to this.
Some people are spatial and some are linear.
Some wonder “what does this do?” And some ask “Which button do I push?”
Many were hired when the computer was a machine you used at work, not a lifestyle accessory.
Many editors were found and developed for their tunnel vision and their ability to do things one way.
And frankly, some people think of having a life as something that does not involve screens and pixels.
One of the best things about having staffers blog is that they learn things in the process. Wanting to put a photo online teaches them about uploading, folders, files, jpgs and more. Some are learning about Google Docs and spreadsheets because they want to put a poll on their blogs.
I became aware of how useful RSS feeds are because Safari on my Mac at home made it so easy. I can explain the concept to co-workers, but our old IE browser doesn’t make it easy to grasp.
It’s crucial: Journalists should have curious minds, and now I jump at every oppotunity to learn something new. It wouldn’t hurt to have one of these http://lifehacker.com on a basic level for the staff.
And we should challenge ourselves. We might find ourselves saying, “What do you mean, you college kids don’t Fleegle? All my developer buddies say it’s the next big thing.”
And they say, “That’s so 3.0.”
Or more likely, they say, “I’m just a poor college student/working person, I can’t afford a FleegleFone.”
April 23, 2008 at 4:32 pmI think it’s a big red warning flag when someone has about 10 million icons on the desktop. That is almost certainly a person with a computer literacy problem.
I gather you’ve never looked at the desktops of some very computer-literate colleagues that I know you respect?
What drives me mad is when I instruct people to “click” (like on a hyperlink) and they “double-click.”
April 24, 2008 at 10:11 amForgot a point previously…
The messy desktop issue is actually a perfect metaphor to the physical world. Some people have clean desks, some messy. Some people work places where clean desks are enforced, like I used to (who asked me about my desk during my interview?).
Who cares how clean the physical or virtual desktop is as long as the person is productive?
And, dear readers, I have seen her physical desk and it ain’t pretty. I bet she knows exactly what everything is and can lay her hands on something in less than five seconds if she needs it, though.
April 24, 2008 at 10:22 amHey Mindy,
April 24, 2008 at 3:01 pmGreat post. We’re wrestling with these issues in our newsroom, too. The online editor and I are working on a list of computer skills we think every newsroom employee should have. The question is how best to teach them. We’ve tried having the head of IT do seminars for groups of 6-8 people, with mixed success. We’re going to try doing one-on-one instruction. Do you or your readers have any suggestions for those must-know skills?
FWIW, the academic world is in the same boat. Everyone of my colleagues has a computer in their office and, while they can use them, they use them in very entertaining ways. (I’ve heard stories of one professor who, repeatedly, has called IT because he can’t print. They walk in, plug the printer back in, and he’s happy again. No one knows why he unplugs the printer …)
Partly because of this, we just finished an 8-session series of workshops for our colleagues. While we weren’t teaching people to minimize windows, we were trying to raise their digital literacy when it comes to the tools they can use in their classrooms and research.
We offered it to everyone in the college, across all departments, and sold it as a way to learn and refine skills. While one colleague, who attended every session enthusiastically, kept referring to it as “‘reeducation camp,” the response was strong.
People do want to learn this stuff, it can be taught. If - big if - you have someone who can teach, you can do it in-house. There’s a level of pride involved when you bring in a consultant and that can set up some barriers. How about weekly Thursday brown bag lunches? How about creating a blog with a tip of the day?
Hmm … maybe I should do that one …
I posted the last session’s slides online. ( http://mejohnso.myweb.uga.edu/presentations.html )May not make much sense, but you can see how we tried to tie some loose ends up, they may be a good starting point.
-mark
April 26, 2008 at 8:26 am@Reid:
My first suggestion would be to make sure the person in charge of the training is your best teacher, not necessarily your savviest tech person. If you’re lucky and that’s one and the same person, great. But if not, you’re better off with a trainer who has patience and a knack for teaching.
Second is to realize that, particularly when it comes to basic computer skills, you’ll have a wide range of pupils and you need to address that. When I run audio classes, for example, I hand out three different sets of instructions for uploading MP3s (the most technical part of the work, here), from a bare-bones checklist to a detailed, step-by-step, click-by-click package. Then I explain that they should use whichever they feel most comfortable with. That’s helped a lot.
Finally — do make sure you’re providing handouts of some sort. Even with one-on-one sessions, it’s better if folks have something on paper they can refer to later.
It’s great that your newsroom is trying this. Good luck!
April 26, 2008 at 8:45 amI don’t advise using IT people to train journalists (or college professors). They think differently about software; they do not perform the same tasks in the same ways; their communication is often off-putting.
April 26, 2008 at 12:56 pmI’ll take it one further. How about journalists with no Internet access or cell phones. Drives me crazy.
April 26, 2008 at 1:00 pmThis is an interesting post. And I’m going to try to show some compassion.
I don’t think we can forget that many journalists grew up before computers (let alone Internet access) were widespread in homes. I am very computer literate, but that is largely because I had a computer to play around with as a kid. I think most people are inquisitive when they are young, but if you didn’t start using a computer until you were 30, you’ll probably never really try to understand what makes a computer tick.
With that in mind, newspapers probably should try to make sure their staffs are computer literate. Although, the time to really do this kind of training was 10-15 years ago, but I digress.
The real question I have however is this: Can we make people computer literate (understand a computer, not just what works)? Or is that level of literacy something that a person must learn on his own? As Brian noted, some people want to know what makes something happen, while others just want to know how to make something happen. I’m not convinced that those people can be made computer literate.
Could you really make someone car literate? Sure, you could teach someone to change their own oil, but I don’t think a person who isn’t inquisitive will figure out how to fix others issues on his own.
Maybe some computer literacy training is in order, but the hour is growing late for many newspapers. At some point pragmatism will have to displace compassion, and computer illiterate people will have to go. Journalism is increasingly becoming an industry dependent on people with a good technical knowledge, not just basic computer literacy.
April 28, 2008 at 5:32 pmIt’s funny - I have been meeting with reporters in newsrooms of all sizes and cultures lately (big, small, rural and metro) and the reporters reactions to learning digital journalism tech vary widely.
Curiously the most technophobic, clueless and resistant to change are those editorial types over 40 who have been able to keep their posts mostly due to their seniority in their guilds - not because they have remained nimble in their skill set and adapted to the changing environment. Sadly, now these newsrooms are half-filled - all the less senior staff has been let go. That is scary to see.
I have had the most fun and get the bigger thrill out of working with the staff of weekly papers and groups who publish community papers.
Hands down those reporters are the most eager to learn and it is a pleasure to act as sort of a bridge for them.
April 28, 2008 at 11:37 pm“I don’t think we can forget that many journalists grew up before computers (let alone Internet access) were widespread in homes.”
Pat: Now don’t go bringing logic into this. After all, the people here want to pant about being “wired” and how they, and they alone, are the key to the future of newspapers.
Also, to Robb M.: You should give yourself more credit. Based on your prior claims, I’m quite sure you would be the most clueless person in all of those newsrooms. Don’t go selling yourself short, PFAD drooler.
I know I’ll be entertained when people who haven’t learned how to write are posting straight to the Internet.
April 29, 2008 at 10:40 pm