Google Launches Teach Parents Tech Site
Google this week launched a new site that lets kids choose from 50 basic computer tasks and send a video tutorial to their parents. Like all things Google, it’s free.
TeachParentsTech.org was the brainchild of Jason Toff, a Google employee who found out he wasn’t the only one who was the family’s designated go-to guy for tech. Referring to a to-do list picture:
“If you couldn’t already tell, that’s a list of things my dad wants me to teach him how to do. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching my dad how to do stuff on his computer—and he’s fairly tech-savvy as far as dads go—but sometimes trudging through that to-do list gets tedious,” he wrote in a Google blog post.
The site contains an organized list by common help topic including basics, World Wide Web and media. Select a topic and a list of videos appears in a box to the right. For instance, under basics you’ll find copy and paste, adjusting the time on your clock and making text bigger or smaller.
The videos are short and clear. Zooms allow a close-up view of exactly which button to click. Most of the videos were filmed using a Mac computer, which could be confusing to moms and dads using a PC, and render the advice almost useless in certain cases. Easily resize a photo? Not on a PC.
The form is humorous with a Mad Libs flavor: I'm really shocked, impressed, worried, jazzed (choose one) that you've been using your computer these days. Once completed, it’s sent as an email with a video attachment. Let’s just hope mom and dad have a media player installed on their computer.
In the holiday spirit, Google offered the first 10,000 people who send tech support care packages a real tech support care package to be snail-mailed to the recipient of their choice. Packages were out of stock in under nine hours.
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