The Value of Learning
Mitchell, Marvin

>>MARVIN: My name is Marvin Mitchell and I work at the Ohio State University and actually I teach technology courses here at the university. And I want to talk about the value of learning, particularly how it was valued in my family and I guess even as you get older you see what you learn always comes back to you. When I was growing up in my family, and I look back, reading and books were valued a lot. When we were young we used to watch Captain Kangaroo like every day, every morning and I know that Captain Kangaroo, they would read books to you almost every episode. And then umm, at home, when my mother - there was three of us and I was the oldest and we're all two years apart, so often times before we went to bed my mother would read books to us and we thought that was like one of the greatest times, you know, instead of just saying your prayers and going to bed, this was like an extra time we had. She would pick out a story to read; so as we got older, we wanted her to do it every time, every night or whatever. She would not do that but she would do other things to try and encourage us to read and learn how to read. One of the things my parents did, they got me a book - I got this book in the mail and it was like called "Me and the Bee" and it was one of those books where it had your name in it and had names of my friends and things like that and I thought that somebody had actually written a book about me, you know not knowing this was something my parents had went away and sent for and all that kind of stuff. So this was one of the first books I ever got to help me learn how to read and so it had my name in it and it was talking about me and the bee and some kind of something that happened or what have you. So I was just really flattered by it and from then on - I remember one Christmas time my aunt - I would get books for Christmas, and looking back those were some of my most treasured gifts that I can remember some of the names of the books you know like: "Little 2" something like that. So, reading was important I think because even with the book that I got with my name and my brother and sister they thought they were gonna get a book, and they did later, but later on I realized how that thing kind of worked. That was a way in which reading was emphasized; another way in which reading was emphasized was through the library because in the summer time when school's out they had reading programs and I guess if you read so many books you get certain prizes. I think the ultimate prize maybe back then was like, you know, a meal at McDonald's if you read like 16 or 20 books or whatever. So, we all probably achieved that and it was like every year we would participate in that program and our mother made sure that we participated in that program. Another influence on reading and learning was my grandfather, he, both my grandparents did not complete high school but they were born right before the Depression and a lot of times in both cases they had to quit school to help support their families and so my grandfather in particular - he had to quit school when he was in fifth grade and so he worked for probably thirty, thirty-five years at Ohio State. One piece of wisdom that he always told us was to get as much education as you can because once you get it nobody can take it away from you. So the more you learn the better off you can be and do and things of that nature and that always stuck with me. Those are some of the things I look back growing up in the 70's and even in the 80's that helped emphasize the value of learning in our family. As far as it relates to computers, I think back to the first time I interacted with a computer - and I think back then it was like in the 80's I guess you would say - early 80's. Back then they had Comodores and it was more of a DOS system, I don't even think you even had a mouse, you had to type a command or type a program in order for the computer to do something. Back at that time I was in sixth, seventh, or eighth grade and I remember back then we were more infaticized with the games, you know, we wanted to be able to play games on the computer but in order to play the game you couldn't just turn the computer on you had to actually type a program in for the games to happen. But we learned how to do that, probably before anything else, we could almost learn how to do that on our own, but we did have to take computer classes and learn how to type the programs and things of that nature. What's ironic now is that in my current job I teach computer literacy classes for adults and some who may have never touched a computer, but the ironic thing about it is that they may have never felt that comfortable using a computer but they know how to get to the games. They can play solitaire and all the other things and [laughing] using the mouse and what have you but as far as some of the other tangibles those are where they need assistance so I think it's kind of ironic when I think back to when I first started using a computer and I could show you how to get to the games or write a program to play a game and then you fast forward you got other people who are a little bit used to computers or know a little bit about computers they can use the game or play the game but you have to kind of show them the other specifics. 

[Media skips over someone asking a question]

>>MARVIN: Umm, that's a good question. We generally try to start from the outside and then work it in, when I say outside we talk about the different parts of the computer as far as hardware and software and of course with hardware you've got three or four different parts: the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse, and even with the keyboard we break it down with as far as looking at the keyboard and what some of the different buttons are and familiarize some people in the sense that they may be familiar with the fact that part of the keyboard looks like a typewriter, which they may have used in the past, but there are other parts of the keyboard that are different. So that helps some people and at the same time when we use computer-based training, particularly when it comes to the mouse because that's one of the biggest challenges. There's actually websites that you can go to on the web to play games so to speak to teach you how to use the mouse. For many people they like that, it kind of eases their tension or whatever - their fear about using the computer because potentially you can do anything you want to do with the computer. You can do it using the mouse or the keyboard and I guess for a lot of people they like the mouse but it may take a while for them to get comfortable using the mouse. Teaching the class, that's probably one of the biggest challenge for some - they can type but as far as clicking and dragging and things like that it may or may not come easy, but it's different then because they can practice at home as long as they have the internet. I would say hardware, and then we would go into the different parts as far as windows are concerned, what a window is and also understanding the user interface. If you can break down any parts of a window you can basically use the internet or any software by understanding the different components. That's kind of how we progress with teaching the computers. 

>>SPEAKER: Ok, is there anything else you want to share? Your education background at all? Computers or...

>>MARVIN: I don't have a formal educational background in computers, actually my background is in public relations and communications and of course with that it's spent using computers so that's how I became familiar with it. It's been a good career area. I've met a lot of nice people and I'm glad to be able to help people. 

>>SPEAKER: Alright.