I usually end up fielding tech support calls from members of my family, friends, and the occasional random stranger. Usually, they're legitimate questions about what software to buy, or how to make Internet TV work. When I come to visit for Christmas, there's usually a list of things my parents want tech advice about waiting for me.
My parents are pretty tech-savvy for their generation. But the questions I field from other people belie a deeper problem—a total lack of basic computer knowledge.
It's for situations like that that some folks at Google came up with TeachParentsTech.org, a web site that lets you fill out a form to send your parents (or anyone else) links to a set of 50 instructional videos on everything from how to handle basic computer tasks (like adjusting the computer's clock and changing a screensaver) to more challenging web-related tasks (such as starting a blog, creating an online calendar, or sharing photos online).
Google's Jason Toff explains the origin of TeachParentsTech on Google's blog:
Talking to fellow Googlers, I learned that I wasn't alone in my role as the one-man family tech support team. In fact, I was hard pressed to find anyone who didn't have a similar story about getting their parents up to speed. This got a few of us thinking. Why isn't there a site designed to help "kids" teach their parents about computer basics? So we put our heads together and built a new site.
Some of the "help", such as a video on how to check the weather online, is mostly an advertisement for the capabilities of Google (no surprise there). Some of it is a little less than helpful—instructions on setting the date and time correctly are only available for the Mac right now. But the site is a cute way to give relatives (or yourself) a helpful nudge in solving some of their persistent tech woes. I found the video on "How to know if an email is real" to be a good, quick way to introduce people you care about to the basic ways to screen for phishing messages—without actually having to be there to do it.