The School of Living · everyday skills for a whole life
Everyday Tech & Digital Literacy
Passwords, scams, backups, and settings — running your digital life instead of being run by it.
How accounts actually get broken into, and the manager-plus-two-factor setup that stops most of it.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~6 hours
Unit I — How Accounts Fall
Reused passwords and credential stuffing · Phishing: the message that looks right · Data breaches and checking your own exposure
Unit II — The Manager
Choosing and setting up a password manager · One strong master passphrase · Migrating your worst passwords first
Unit III — Second Factors and Recovery
Authenticator apps and passkeys over text codes · Recovery emails and phone numbers: the weakest link · Securing the email account that resets everything else
Urgency, authority, isolation — the mechanics of fraud by phone, text, and email, and the habits that defeat it.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~6 hours
Unit I — The Anatomy of a Scam
Urgency, authority, and isolation: the three levers · Why intelligence is no defense · The pause: the single most protective habit
Unit II — The Common Forms
Impersonation: banks, agencies, and grandchildren · Romance, investment, and job-offer schemes · Tech-support pop-ups and remote-access requests
Unit III — Money Tells the Truth
Gift cards, wire transfers, and crypto: the red-flag rails · Verifying independently: hang up, look up, call back · Protecting older family members without condescension · If it already happened: freezing, reporting, recovering
The 3-2-1 rule, automatic backups for computer and phone, and the restore test that proves they work.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~6 hours
Unit I — The 3-2-1 Rule
Three copies, two media, one offsite · What you would actually cry about losing · Sync is not backup: the deletion that propagates
Unit II — Setting It Up
Computer: an external drive plus a cloud service · Phone: photos and settings, backed up automatically · The restore test: proving it works before you need it
Unit III — Digital Order
A folder structure you can keep for a decade · Photo libraries: dedupe, date, and cull · Digital estate: access for someone you trust, someday
Permissions, notifications, storage, and battery — a settings audit that returns the phone to your service.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~6 hours
Unit I — The Privacy Audit
App permissions: location, microphone, contacts, camera · Ad tracking settings on both platforms · App diet: removing what you have not opened in a year
Unit II — Attention
Notifications: allow few, batch the rest · Grayscale, home-screen pruning, and friction on purpose · Do Not Disturb schedules that survive real life
Unit III — Housekeeping
Storage: finding what is eating the space · Battery health and charging habits · Updates: why they matter and setting them automatic · Accessibility features everyone should know exist
Better searches, lateral reading, and a working eye for manipulated images and machine-written junk.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~8 hours
Unit I — Searching Well
How search ranking works, roughly · Better queries: quotes, sites, and dates · Ads, sponsored results, and organic results told apart
Unit II — Judging a Source
Lateral reading: leave the page to check the page · Who wrote it, who paid for it, who benefits · Primary sources and finding the original claim
Unit III — Spotting the Fakes
Manipulated and out-of-context images · Reverse image search in practice · Machine-generated text and images: tells and limits of tells · Why fakes spread: outrage travels fastest