The main aim of the Erasmus project LIDS (2019 to 2022) is to create a curriculum for learning digital skills for disadvantaged adults. Now in Dec. 2020 the first outcome is available: The LIDS Curriculum as a digital book in WORD- and PDF-Format containing a possible curriculum for these necessary skills. The LIDS curriculum can help the partners in digital@dults to find a complete list of necessary digital skills, which all adults should have.
The second quarter of the year 2020, strongly affected by the pandemic, was characterized by a reflection by EPALE, the electronic platform for adult learning in Europe, on Digital Skills. This reflection led to the development of a KIT entitled «2020: what a Year!Challenges and innovations from the EPALE platform «, with four thematic focuses that marked 2020.
In this KIt, particular attention was paid to basic and digital skills learning offer, as the pandemic has shown how never before as the large number of adults with low basic skills represents a major obstacle to an inclusive society.
The partnership of our project digital@adults.eu, in continuity with what has just been said, has also worked during the recent months so that adult educators could have effective and innovative tools available to help adults, especially those with poor digital skills, to help them improving these skills, and to understand the importance of digital in their lives.
This has been the focus of our online training entitled “ICT TOOLS AND SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SOCIAL INCLUSION”.
Due to the pandemic, the short-term joint staff training event was held online on the Zoom platform instead of Greece, in Kalamata as planned in the application phase.
It has been an interactive course of five days, that gave participants the opportunity to acquire new knowledge on how to transmit digital skills to adults with a view to inclusion and sharing.
This training course was an important moment of exchange and comparison at an international level between all the actors who are daily involved in this sector, and at the same time, it offered the possibility to those who are simply intrigued by the subject, to get an idea on how in the rest of Europe it is possible to involve adults in informal learning contexts and bring them closer to new technologies.
If you are interested in knowing more about the results of our project and the training material used during the training, don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our online platform @digitaladults.eu where videos and materials are available to consult or download for free.
People often joke about how much easier it is for children to embrace technology than their parents, and there’s probably a bit of truth to those tales. After all, children don’t tend to worry about hitting a wrong button, and many young people seem to have an uncanny sense of what they need to do with a gadget in order to accomplish their goal. However, technology isn’t just for the young. It holds promise for people of all ages. While older adults sometimes resist using new advances, the benefits of technology for seniors are numerous.
Benefits of Technology for Seniors
Technology can be intimidating, frustrating, and intrusive. It can also open doors, support intellectual curiosity, provide increased safety, offer assistance, and simply be fun. Ultimately, it’s all in how you use it. Let’s explore the many benefits of technology for seniors.
Making Social Connections
There are countless technologies that help people connect with family, friends, and people with common interests. Seniors can use video chat services like Skype to see their grandchildren grow up when distance might otherwise make that impossible. Email will feel familiar to those who enjoy writing letters or cards, but it has the advantage of instant delivery. Social media options like Facebook and Twitter help people share thoughts, pictures, and news with just a few clicks.
Providing Mental Stimulation
Study after study suggests that learning new things and participating in activities that challenge the brain both offer some protection from dementia. Simply learning to use a new technology provides mental stimulation, and once someone has mastered a technology, they can often use it to find new challenges. Video games can provide hours of mental exercise, and the Internet delivers plenty of opportunities to explore new topics and delve deeper into areas of interest.
Increasing Safety
Have you ever had your vehicle break down on the side of the road? If so, you know firsthand that technology can increase safety by improving a person’s access to help. For some seniors, that might mean a cell phone that they carry with them on their travels. For others, especially those who live alone, it might mean a personal emergency response system (also known as a medical alert system) that allows people in trouble to request assistance from emergency responders with the push of a button.
Encouraging Exercise
How does technology encourage exercise? Many video games today prompt players to get out of their seats and use their whole bodies. For those who want something less competitive, the Internet offers access to a multitude of videos demonstrating an amazing array of exercise routines.
Helping with Health Care
Today’s tech can also make health care easier. Cell phone apps are available that offer seniors audible reminders to take their medications, reducing the chance for missed doses. In addition, many doctors and hospitals now have online programs that provide a place to keep up-to-date medication lists and health histories and offer easy access to test results. Using these programs lets seniors and their families keep needed health information at their fingertips.
Delivering Fun
Whether you like to socialize, enjoy challenging games, or thrive on learning something new, technology can help you do it. It offers fun at your fingertips and a world of possibilities. So if you’re bored and looking for something fun to do, explore your online options.
Learning to use technology can open doors and provide significant benefits for people of all ages, including seniors. Seniors who want to discover how to utilize new technology can often find classes at libraries, community colleges, and senior centers. You can also find tutorials online or ask a family member (such as a grandchild) for help. No matter how you learn about it, never underestimate the benefits of technology for seniors.
Traditionally, basic adult education has had a particular concern with the skills of literacy and numeracy, seeing these as essential for entry to the world of work. Adult education teachers may therefore be reluctant to adopt ICT, unsure of the part it should play, and worried about the time it takes away from the development of those basic skills. As we enter the 21st century, however, ICT has already become a necessary and important component of adult education. Formal and non-formal education are being delivered at a distance via technology – particularly the Internet – with the promise that learning can take place at any time and in any place.
Adults in the United States with low literacy – and in other OECD countries and many developing countries – are heterogeneous demographically. Such individuals, like most adults, may have complex family, work, and social circumstances that cannot easily be put aside to permit education to take place. These factors add additional complexity to issues of instruction methods, learning strategies, and programme planning and management.
In this article we suggest that the digital divide among adults within and across many nations is likely to persist for some years, the adults concerned being probably more resistant to change than children and youth, who will be growing up within societies ever more permeated by new technologies. Furthermore, up to the present the vast majority of ICT investment in education worldwide has gone into children’s schools and higher education, without regard for the educational needs of disadvantaged adults. There are extraordinary opportunities for ICT to bring about significant change for adult populations with low literacy, especially since adult education is less hampered by rigid education systems, required curricula, and constraints on individual motivation.
We know that only a small percentage of those who could benefit actually enter adult education programmes. Improving the ways technology is utilised as a learning tool can make adult education more engaging and effective. Already ICT is providing additional opportunities to learn in less structured environments, such as independently at home or at libraries. ICT-based education seems to be ideal for giving additional educational opportunities to at-risk and disadvantaged adult learners. Most of the examples in this article are drawn from the United States, where the focus on new ICT for adults is relatively advanced.
The digital@dults.eu project continues the implementation of its activities respecting timetable and deadlines set by the workplan; all the project partners are currently actively working on the translation and subsequently the fine-tuning of the “Manual containing comparative studies in Europe on methods of approach and teaching in the use of ICT for disadvantaged adults”, and preparing themselves to participate in the 4 transnational project meeting.
This manual constitutes one of the most important results of the digital@duts.eu project because it collects all the research work carried out in the previous months from the beginning of the project.
The German partner VHS SOB oversaw the selection and drafting of case studies of good practice across Europe on teaching methods for adults in ICT and methods of inclusion of disadvantaged adults. The manual will soon be uploaded on our website and will be accessible to anyone who wants to use it as a resource to expand their knowledge in this field.
In early April all the partnership should have met in Norway hosted by the partner TERRAMPACIS, but due to the current global health emergency situation it was decided by mutual agreement, to relocate the meeting on an online platform, giving still the consortium the opportunity to continue to work, meet even if virtually, to discuss the next steps in the implementation of the project activities.
IT
Marzo 2020 Aggiornamenti sul progetto: Il manuale e il 4° Meeting transnazionale
Il progetto digital@dults.eu prosegue nell’implementazione delle sue attività rispettando i tempi e le scadenze previste dal workplan; tutti i partner di progetto al momento stanno lavorando attivamente per la traduzione e successivamente la finalizzazione del “Manuale contenente studi comparativi in Europa sui metodi di approccio e insegnamento nell’uso delle TIC per adulti svantaggiati” e si preparano a partecipare al 4 meeting transnazionale di progetto.
Questo manuale costituisce uno dei risultati più importanti del progetto digital@duts.eu perché raccoglie tutto il lavoro di ricerca svolto nei precedenti mesi dall’inizio del progetto.
Il partner tedesco VHS SOB ha curato la selezione e la redazione dei casi studio di buone pratiche in tutta Europa sui metodi di insegnamento delle TIC rivolti agli adulti e i metodi di inclusione degli adulti svantaggiati. Presto il manuale verrà caricato sul nostro sito web e sarà accessibile a tutti coloro che vorranno utilizzarlo come risorsa per ampliare le conoscenze in questo campo.
I primi di Aprile tutti la partnership si sarebbe dovuta incontrare in Norvegia ospitati dal partner TERRAMPACIS, ma a cause dell’attuale situazione di emergenza sanitaria globale è stato deciso di comune accordo di sportare il meeting su una piattaforma online, dando la possibilità al consorzio di continuare a lavorare, incontrarsi anche se virtualmente e discutere dei prossimi passi nell’implementazione delle attività del progetto.
We are facing certain times all over the world that have proven to all of us how important digital skills are in the modern world. Ljudska univerza Rogaška Slatina and its learners have been facing quite a lot of challenges in this area during the last two months. The main challenge the education organizers at the organization are facing is a different level of digital skills of their learners, which raises the question how to make learning opportunities equal for all, for those with lower and those with higher digital skills. Therefore, a lot of differentiation in education organization has been made and the lecturers are using various digital and other tools for involving as many learners as possible into educational sessions. The lecturers are using different online applications to carry out online group sessions and online classrooms for creating lessons and quizzes for the preparation for the final exam in the formal vocational programmes. At the moment, Univerza has also started offering online language courses. But the main challenge was keeping in touch with the members of the University for Third Age due to low levels of digital skills of senior participants. The problem is even bigger since their children and grandchildren cannot visit them to help them with setting up online tools and devices. Therefore, the contact is being kept with the help of ordinary phone messages and through exercise sent by regular mail, which enables equal treatment of all senior participants. So, everybody is doing their share to try to keep contact and to continue with the educational offer at our organization to learners of all ages.
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