GILLETTE, Wyo. (AP) - Fifteen senior women and men shuffled into the phone store in Gillette, snagged a cookie or two and sat down.
It was time for their free cellphone class.
Immediately, they whipped out their smartphones of all makes, models and sizes and prepared to learn just how the thingamajigs really work.
LaVonna Shank, with a friendly, grandmotherly smile, leaned toward Debbie Fantarella as they compared small screens and learned about the iCloud and photo storage on their phones. They both laughed.
Their instructor, Fillie Gibson, the manager of the Verizon Wireless at Wyoming Wireless store in Gillette, mentioned that the iCloud, available on Apple phones, could cost them to use each month depending on how much storage they need. To avoid the expense, they could store their photos on Google and still access them at any time. But if they delete a photo, it’s gone forever.
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“I thought Google Drive was for when I was driving.”
- Overheard during a cellphone class
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As these older students listened - they call themselves old-timers - there were jokes, sharing of experiences and punchlines, laughter, some frustrations and questions. Always questions.
But no one was embarrassed. There are no questions that are too stupid if you don’t know the answer, Gibson said.
She and others at the store, including Megan Oleson, stopped frequently to check with the students who had trouble with the hands-on lessons.
New cellphones glistened on the walls, still inside their packaging. Accessories - many of them overwhelming to the crowd of age 60 and above - dotted another wall.
While there is one brief sales pitch in every class, all types of phones and phone providers are welcomed - and problems tackled - during and after classes.
It wasn’t those new, shiny baubles that brought this group to the store for the cellphone class. It wasn’t the “bribe” of fresh-baked cookies and snacks, either.
The focus is learning how to use a phone that at times can seem smarter than its owner.
“At some point, I hope to get to advanced classes,” Gibson told her students, some of whom, like Shank, 67, and Dwayne Dorson, 64, have attended every monthly session since April. They were five months in.
“We’re still on the basics,” Gibson said.
“We’ll do that when we can turn it (phone) on,” Dorson joked.
Actually, that was covered in the first class. That’s when Gibson taught them to make calls, receive calls, text, receive or send a voice mail and how to take pictures and videos.
Normally, the classes are just an hour. That class lasted four hours.
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“The younger generation can do this all day long. The older generation? Not so much. That’s why I do these classes.”
- Fillie Gibson
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Sandra Exe, 72, grew up with a party line. Her family’s wooden phone hung on a wall and featured a rotary dial. Those are now prized as antiques, like some of those in the cellphone class.
“I remember the first calculator when they first came out,” Dorson said. “I carry two phones, a flip phone and one to learn on.”
During the July class, Dorson, who owns rental properties in Gillette, showed how he had gotten an app that displayed weather radar. You could actually see the dramatic system of rain and thunder moving toward town as he sat in class, warm and dry.
But the class on how to download an app already had taken place. And there’s no user’s manuals given out with new phones anymore. There hasn’t been for years.
“When we’d go on trips, I used to take the manual with me to learn how to use the phone,” Dorson said of his flip phone, which he still uses for personal calls. “Now, there’s no way I could do that.”
This is one of those challenges each generation faces. Like driving a stick shift when most young drivers don’t know what that is. Like the concept of recycling in a throw-away society. Like going from a Model T to a Chevy or Ford with fins.
Among the biggest challenge to each in the class is how to cope with that change, whether to adopt it or drop it. For many “old-timers,” it’s a question of some importance. Do we try to learn and adapt to the technology, or do we refuse to change and continue as we always have? Those in this class likely fall somewhere in between. Many still use their flip phones. Others just yearn to learn.
Most people know to go to the internet to quickly learn what their phones can do and how to make them do it. But the internet isn’t ingrained into this generation. It’s not the natural choice to find help. And they don’t want to admit they’re inept or can’t remember.
Exe drives a bus for the Senior Center and said she’s seen a lot of older folks give up on smartphones. Most want little to do with them. Others keep their flip phones because they don’t want to have to learn how to use new technology.
“They think they’re too old to learn,” she said. “They’re wrong. … Some of us are trying to learn. A majority have given up. But I think I can learn it. I’m ready for anything.”
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“I don’t know what buttons to push, sorry.”
- Donna Foote
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It’s the desire to learn that has driven Shank, Dorson and Exe to take the class. They all want to discover the mysteries these phones hold.
Well, to a certain extent, anyway.
“I like to learn things,” Shank said. “And I was worried about losing my pictures.”
She’s discovered that her phone’s camera is better than the handheld camera she bought.
“I know a lot of people are so intimidated about it all,” she said. “I check my email. I like texting, I do.”
Shank admits she wants her spelling to be correct and won’t abbreviate words in a way that takes a cryptographer to unravel a text message. And those itty-bitty keypads? Let’s not get started on that.
“I think smartphones are nice, but it’s a little overwhelming. All these options and my phone is 5 years old,” she said.
Exe, too, wanted to learn how to take photographs with her cellphone.
Dorson came to learn how to better use his phone, he said. “I can see how it’s useful and I’ve just touched the surface.”
He was motivated by watching what others could do on their cellphones. He wanted to do that, too.
“I did my first video conference the other day,” Dorson said, proudly.
But he isn’t sure what he wants to learn next as classes continue.
The next lesson was on software updates. It’s still the basics.
Every class is an adventure for Dorson and he takes something from each. Going beyond the basics, though, he’s not sure what he’d like to learn.
“I don’t know what I don’t know,” he said.
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“We’ll show the next generation!”
- Donna Foote
“Yeah, if we can remember how.”
- A reply from elsewhere in the class
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“I have a memory problem. I don’t remember it if I don’t do it,” Dorson said.
That’s a common problem for young and old alike.
It was trying to help her grandparents with their cellphones that made Gibson think a cellphone class was needed for the older generation in Gillette.
“I grew up in the age of tech. But anyone over the age of 45, they have trouble with it because it’s foreign. They can’t retain it as well because it is foreign to them,” Gibson said.
And her grandparents, she added, are her world. She wanted them to be able to use the technology that could make things better for them, like a cellphone.
It used to be if her grandfather got stuck 7 miles from the ranch on a road, he’d have to walk home. Now he can just call for a ride.
But she’s been frustrated at times teaching them about their cellphones. Her grandmother would “keep blowing batteries” on her Apple phone because she kept it charging all the time, Gibson said.
Now, her kids can teach their great-grandparents about the phones and she can work to teach others without the frustration that comes with family.
“I love it,” she said. “It’s what I started when I first became manager. If you use a phone, you’re packing a mini-computer in your pocket and you have to learn how to use what it does.
“I love helping people understand something and building relationships.”
While Gibson is paid to offer the classes - this is a teaching store, after all - she would offer them even if there was no paycheck, she said. It is her way of giving back.
And the old-timers’ way of catching up.
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Information from: The Gillette (Wyo.) News Record, http://www.gillettenewsrecord.com
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