[/floatl]DPA: Japan youths teach adults about PCs
Tech-savvy Japanese high school students are becoming popular computer instructors among Tokyo's middle-aged and elderly computer users. A five-day computer course offered three times a year has received more than 100 applicants for 20 seats because the instruction is made easier to understand for the aged first-time users, according to a local government, which sponsors the project. Some 13 students who are members of a media science club decided to share their knowledge of computers by collaborating with the local government and by offering the course to the general public, mainly adults. They set out to make manoeuvring the technology much easier than the available manuals by writing textbooks with larger fonts, changing tech jargon like "click" into "press a mouse once," the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun said. Even the term "to drag" a mouse can be a foreign language and a headache to those who are new to the technology. During the course, the participants learn everything from how to turn on the computer and manipulate the mouse to how to use word- processing software and conduct research on the internet. The students-turned-instructors try to solve the difficulties pointed out by the participants after every course, the newspaper said. "I feel rewarded for teaching the course when I see senior participants finding web pages they like to read. They were afraid to touch it earlier for fear they might break it," Taiji Matsunaga, one of the students, was quoted as saying.
