Apple Education for Fairfield & Westchester

What makes education at MacInspires different from anywhere else? The way people learn is vastly different depending on the age demographic, experience and level of fear or apprehension when faced with new challenges. We teach classes for any and every age demographic, in this article we will be focusing on our education for adults and seniors. MacInspires educators are trained to work with adults in a very different fashion. One that focuses on empowering the student to be fearless and learn at a pace and style that best suits them.

Most adults learn technology from their kids. The first problem with this is that kids don’t know how to teach, as they often want to do it for you to or worse they explain it very quickly in combination with touching your keyboard, mouse, or screen and don’t allow you to slowly practice and process. Most kids learn by doing. Adults learn by doing in repetition while asking questions about the process and often take notes.

Very often we hear adults tell us that the technology was “invented for young people” or that they are “technology illiterate.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Apple technology is designed for everyone under the idea that people learn by doing. The iPhone, iPad and Mac come with no instruction book. You are supposed to learn by playing with it and trying different things. If I gave a 10 year old an iPad for the first time her first question wouldn’t be, “where is the instruction manual for this?”, she would start to play with it and figure it out as she goes along. When stuck, if one can’t find what they are looking for, kids look at everything on the screen, adults often look at whats in the middle of the screen and say they don’t see it. MacInspires works to help adults learn their new Apple products or get better at using their existing Apple products and software by focusing on how the adult learner is comfortable learning. We do both in-home education as well as over 35 classes we offer in the store. Because not everyone is built the same one of our best skill sets is to learn how you best absorb new information. We then work with you to teach in a style that is best suited for your needs.

The fear factor is often what tends to block the idea of successful learning. Adults have a common almost Pavlovian response to anything new they have to learn in technology. We immediately go to our memory banks and remember the worst possible experience with technology (you know, that time you clicked on the red dot when it asked you if you wanted to upgrade and the whole computer froze and you had to buy a new one). We go to that dark place in our mind and use that as the example that all technology is complicated, and we tell ourselves that we don’t know what we are doing, that we are going to screw it up somehow. We take years of bad experiences and bring them into the present with us. If the only tool we have ever been given is a hammer then everything around us looks like a nail. By knowing this going into any educational opportunity we have with our students we know how to begin to help unwind that response to the fear and give students new tools that allow them to be more creative. Our primary goal is to empower people to know that they not only can use their technology but they don’t have to fear anything new that might come along in the future. MacInspires is here to help. We are always here to help. Please feel free to call or email us and tell us what is confusing you, what you would like to learn or if you have any comments or suggestions for us.

Lance Pendleton
MacInspires Director of Education
Education@MacInspires.com