'You've got mail' music to seniors' ears

By Cortney Blitz

Published April 30, 2007

Just four weeks ago, Jack Catt, learned how to turn on his very own “machine” for his first time. The Indiana native and retired barber hardly considers himself a technical wizard. But “this machine,” most commonly known as a computer, is transforming Catt’s life. He now communicates through e-mail with his grandchildren and friends who live throughout the country.

Photo by Cortney Blitz Ruth Catt, 69 ,and Jack Catt, 72, began using the computer back in January and have made using the computer a tag-teamed activity.

Catt, 72, is one of the growing population of older Americans who frequently use e-mail. A Pew Research Center report found over the past year Internet usage among the 65-and-over age bracket increased 12 percent due to their frequent use of the e-mail. To learn e-mail, many adults take computer classes offered around the community such as those programs offered at the Monroe County Community School Corporation’s Broadview Living and Learning Center where summer classes start June 4. 

Jack Catt, a Bloomington resident, has taken several classes at the Adult Education Broadview Learning Center. He decided to enroll in his first computer class after he became frustrated while planning a cruise for him and his wife Ruth, he said.

“Every reservation we tried to make needed to be done on the Internet or the promotion referred us to their Web site,” Jack Catt explained. “You just know what is going to come next… ‘please visit our Web site for more information’” Jack Catt added.

The Catts bought their computer just four weeks ago. The first week was spent setting it up, the next two were spent on the cruise, and this past week the couple has been busy exploring the computer, Ruth Catt said.

She is more familiar with the computer because of her many years of work at RCA using mainframes and typewriters of many sorts. Keyboarding for Ruth Catt is not as challenging as it is for her husband.

“I use ‘Dragon Naturally Speaking,’ a computer program that tracks my voice and types the message I’m trying to send to people,” he said. “The only problem is something that is supposed to relieve frustration creates more because it never picks my voice up the way I want it to.”

Because of this, using the computer has become more of a tag-teamed activity in the Catt household.

“I’m not as afraid to just push buttons like my wife is,” Jack Catt said. “If my granddaughter can do it why can’t I?”

His wife sits with a smile on her face, shaking her head and rolling her eyes as her husband explains his fearless attitude towards using the computer. She explains how they have become good at saving each other when the other hits a wrong button or two.

Printing online handbooks which are often mystified with endless computer lingo often challenge computer novices.

“At my job at RCA, we had a step-by-step sheet on how to complete certain tasks,” she explains. “It said hit enter after typing these commands, and control whatever number, etc.” 

A teacher's perspective

Joann Novak is familiar with computer commands. Novak has been Ruth and Jack Catt’s computer teacher since January at the Adult Education Broadview Learning Center. During the day, Novak is a teacher at Bloomington High School North’s Hoosier Hills Career Center, where she is a software technology services instructor.

Photo by Cortney Blitz “Within my small classes, I use a step-by-step process along with patience and lots of repetition,” Computer Instructor Joann Novak said regarding the approach she uses when teaching her adult students. Listen to computer instructor Joann Novak discuss how she approaches helping first time computer users.

Novak said Ruth and Jack Catt enrolled in her class for the same reason most of her other adult students decide to enroll: to learn the basics of how to make a computer function and how to use e-mail.

To make using the computer less overwhelming for new students, Novak offers some basic guidelines when teaching her adult classes.

“Everyone comes to class with their own skill level and level of comfort,” Novak explained. “Within my small classes, I use a step-by-step process along with patience and lots of repetition.”

Novak also understands that most of her adult students enter her classes with a level of fear much different from her high school students.

“I have three types of students,” Novak pointed out. “Those that want to learn the computer for their own recreational use, those that have to do it for a job, and those that are a hybrid of the two.”

Regardless of the student, a common fear she has found is that they are afraid they are going to break the computer. Through educating on how the computer operates, she eases their fears.

“There’s a lot of jargon,” Novak said. “When I teach my adults, I explain to them that sitting in a computer class is like taking a foreign language.”

Novak emphasized that there are more obstacles than just the language barrier of the computer lingo. She leans over and grabs her computer mouse sits as if she is navigating for her first time.

“It’s having the coordination to move the mouse, to be able to see the screen and to hear what I’m teaching,” Novak said. “It can be very difficult and some of my students can be scared to death.”

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