Older Learners

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks or so they say, but I have a recent personal example that challenges this adage. My father, who is 71 has very quickly mastered a fourth generation iPod photo I loaded with music and passed along to him. He’s also sending me an occasional text message from his recently upgraded cell phone, with brief updates on the weather back home, travel plans, etc. What has surprised me the most is that while he loves the music capabilities of the iPod, he’s drawn to the solitary card game, one of the default games that comes on previous generations of iPods. Personally I’ve never been too interested in gaming on older iPods as there are much better mobile gaming platforms, but in his case he’s very happy, possibly obsessed with winning at solitaire, over and over again. Personally, I’ve enjoyed seeing him learn a new technology and continue to expand his horizons, which is what we should all be doing as often as we can. Here’s to lifelong learning!