Best strategies for setting up iPad for elderly person?

Captino -

The hard reality that I have come to realize is that many seniors with memory problems "learning" any computer usage at all, which then becomes a massive hurdle of anxiety and fear to get them to "use" it at all. So in my case, I have gone around the problem, by actually assisting them in the "use" of it by using a remote control program, such as GoToMyPC.com. I just point that one out because it reportedly works with both Mac and PC - any program that you can use is fine, this you can download fast on your computer and your elder person's computer. Then now you can bring up web sites, email, etc. from your end, and the elder person can "view" that on their computer without the anxiety and fear that they will make some terrible mistake, break it, etc.

I also have a "shared drive" between my computer and the elder person's computer on DropBox. This DropBox is a cloud drive, which allows me to have documents that I can access locally, the elder person can access locally, and more importantly, you can access locally from the remote control of their computer, and show them how to pull up a document, print it, etc.

The other tool that is great is the Google Cloud printers (or any cloud printers). With HP printers, you can send a document to an email address and it will print at their printer. So let's say they don't know how to print the document. You can access that document from DropBox and print it to their local printer, but if that is too hard, you can access the same document on DropBox send it as an email to the HP printer email address, and it prints.

By using GoToMyPC, you can "answer" a Skype call, to avoid anxiety on the elder person's side. You place the call on Skype on your end, and then on GoToMyPC, you log into their computer remote, and login into Skype on their computer, then you answer the Skype video call that you made. (Now you actually are at GoToMyPC remote login of their computer, way before you actually place the call, and you have that ready in another window on your computer.) The elder person just watches the screen and talks to you, without the anxiety of how does it work, will I break it, etc.

One thing I talked to iPAD people about was remote control. They didn't like the idea of remote control and said why would you need that? That's fine. But we have a different problem. So you will probably have to use a MacBook or a PC. The reality with many elders is that if you don't actively help them with their computer, they will never use it. They need to have positive experiences that show it is going to work for them.

Hope this helps.

Jeff

I hope this helps many of you.

I was checking up on Splashtop the other day and saw an app called Jump Desktop. It sounds pretty incredible and uncomplicated and could help so many help our Senior parents so they can use ipads and computers for some enjoyment and communication.

Jump Desktop is the top paid app in the business category and the user reviews are great! (I thought any of these kinds of apps- RDP and VNC - were very professional and needed major networks, like companies, to work.

You might want to check it out. It works with macs and pc's. And, get this - your iphone or android phones, itouch, etc. I think you can connect it to up to 4 ios products.

(I've been scanning documensts (trying to take us paperless) on and off all week so while it's scanning, I'm a captive audience at my computer. Early today, I was deleting some' old mail' and 'recently deleted mail', came across this and a few others with similar issues, so now that I'm back at the computer, I just thought I'd let any and all of you on this thread know about it in the hope that it can help.

Hope this helps.