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Project Reverse Mentoring

Creating a Document
& Word Processing

Teaching a senior a word processing system like "Word" or "Word Perfect" or any of the major systems is beyond the scope of the "Reverse Mentoring Project."

It is the limited goal of "The Reverse Mentoring Project" to simply teach a senior how to create a simple document, with a view in mind of saving the document or printing the document, attaching it to an email, or incorporating it into the body of an email.

A senior lawyer may feel a sense of accomplishment by being able to use a computer and printer instead of a typewriter to create and print a document.

1. Give the senior a floppy disk to use for practicing.
2. The senior should be shown how to open the "Notepad"" or "WordPad" program into which the document will be typed.
3. The senior should compare the similarities and differences between the keyboard for the computer and the keys of a typewriter.
4. Demonstrate how the cursor can be moved with the scroll feature and how the scroll feature can move up and down until released.
5. Explain how the keyboard and the typewriter are similar. Both have a capitals feature. The typewriter has the Shift lock key, which stays down until relieved and the shift key on the typewriter, which bounces back immediately. The keyboard has a CAPS LOCK button, which stays in force after stroking until stroked again, and has a light on the upper right of the keyboard, which stays lit so long as the Caps Lock feature is functioning.
6. The typewriter has a backspace, which backs up one space but does not erase anything.
7. The keyboard has a backspace key, which erases going backward so long as it is held down until released. The keyboard has a delete key which erases forward so long as held down until released.
8. Explain the tool bar.
9. Teach them not to panic when making a mistake and how they can go back one step with control Z (undo).
10. Show them how to "Erase" a word or letter by any one of three methods - Delete Forward, Backspace Backward or Highlight and Space.
11. Explain how a single word or a whole block of text can be copied, deleted or moved (Control x) or copied (Control C) and pasted (Control V).
12. Teach how to change font size (An important feature for people with reduced vision.) using the zoom feature, or font size feature, or scrolling the mouse while holding down the control key.
13. Teach how to print the document.
14. Teach the senior how to save the document onto a disc.
15. Teach the tab feature to tab forward and the tab shift feature to tab backwards.
16. If the senior can type, encourage the senior to type a document and save onto a floppy a summary of what he or she has learned at the end of each session.