initiative | Best Practice Types | Ageing in the Digital Age

Virtual and Real Learning and Competence Network for Older Adults (ViLE e.V.)

The “Virtuelle und reale Lern- und Kompetenz Netzwerk älterer Erwachsener e.V.” (Virtual and Real Learning and Competence Network for Older Adults) was founded in December 2002 by senior citizens and staff of further education institutions from all over Germany.

The network offers introductory courses in the technical basics of virtual learning, virtual literature circles, its own online newspaper for adults interested in further education (www.lerncafe.de), project and seminar work, workshops and travel offers in the sense of research-based travel. The members work together virtually and in real life, also in regional groups.

The association’s latest project is the production of an information brochure on educational opportunities for older people at universities: The “Digital Study Guide for All”.

Source: https://vile-netzwerk.de

Access date: 01.06.2022

AGE Platform Europe – the voice of older persons at EU level

AGE Platform Europe is a European network of non-profit organisations of and for people aged 50+, which aims to voice and promote the interests of the 200 million citizens aged 50+ in the European Union (Eurostat, 2018) and to raise awareness on the issues that concern them most.

AGE’s vision encompasses an inclusive society, based on well-being for all, solidarity between generations and full entitlement to enjoy life, participate in and contribute to society. At the same time, each person’s rights and responsibilities throughout their life course have to be fully respected.

The network’s work focus on a wide range of policy areas that impact on older and retired people. These include issues of anti-discrimination, employment of older workers and active ageing, social protection, pension reforms, social inclusion, health, elder abuse, intergenerational solidarity, research, accessibility of public transport and of the build environment, and digital technologies (ICT).

The network members seek to give a voice to older and retired people in the EU policy debates, through the active participation of their representative organisations at EU, national, regional and local levels, and provides a European platform for the exchange of experience and best practices. They furthermore inform older people on their rights as EU citizen or resident and on EU policy making processes and recent EU policy development.

Through the involvement in several EU projects, the network members also seek to promote older people’s participation in the development of projects and devices intended for them (‘user involvement’).

Source: https://www.age-platform.eu

Access date: 01.03.2022

Senior Digital Club

As part of the activities of the Centre of Education and Creation FACTORY OF THE FUTURE in Tarnów, a thriving Senior Digital Club has been opened – a place where you can spend time learning new – very useful in everyday life skills, but also fulfilling your hobbies and individual needs thanks to reaching the Internet resources. The FACTORY OF THE FUTURE also implements projects for the digital integration of people over 60 years of age.

In the Senior Digital Club you can get to know the rich resources of historical photographs of the town and its inhabitants, learn to photograph with a digital camera and send photos to your loved ones. With an instructor, you can visit the largest European museums, get to know music portals with your favourite songs, find your friends on social networks – on Facebook or other ones. You can learn how to pay for parking with a mobile phone, shop safely in online stores (with home delivery) and pay bills at no extra cost.

The Senior Digital Club is equipped with laptops, tablets, x-box kinect console, scanner and printers, which can be used freely during opening hours.

The organizers of the Senior Digital Club want to adapt the activities to the individual needs of seniors.

Source: https://fabrykaprzyszlosci.pl/pilotaze-i-eksperymenty/edukacja-cyfrowa-seniorow

Access date: 29.03.2022

Digital Coalition

The Digital Coalition builds on the original idea of the European Commission, first presented to the world in 2013 as the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs. In Slovakia, this initiative was taken up by the IT Association of Slovakia together with our Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic and on 27 September 2017, the National Coalition for Digital Skills and Jobs – Digital Coalition initiative was born.

Its goal is to mobilize despite the spectrum of public, private, academic and civil society organizations and institutions in Slovakia for the improvement of digital skills of citizens, IT specialists, all employees and in education. Members join the Digital Coalition voluntarily and free of charge with their own commitments to manage the digital transformation of society. At the same time, each member undertakes to contribute to the promotion of the topic of digital transformation in their area of operation, within their respective capabilities, and to assist in the development of a study on the impact and preparedness for digital transformation. Currently, the Digital Coalition has 83 members who have collectively declared 232 commitments.

Source: https://digitalnakoalicia.sk/

Access date: 04.11.2021

60+ Virtual Culture

60+ Virtual Culture was an international initiative in which 4 partner organizations of similar background in informal education, including education of seniors, from Poland, France, Czech Republic and Italy have worked together to improve and optimize educational offer for elderly concerning their digital competences within the context of culture accessibility.

The process of optimization has been developed in two stages. First, each organization appointed one teaching tandem (young ICT educator and one experienced senior (50+) educator) who took part in 3 Joint Staff Trainings, during which based on exchanged practices and knowledge, an educational model for local senior centers or libraries had been developed. Therefore, an innovative offer of ICT courses for seniors aiming at encouraging older people to participate in culture resources and cultural events using new technologies (e.g. accessing e-books, audio-books, visiting virtual museums, buying tickets online, creating and uploading content etc. ) was created. Simultaneously so created teaching program was implemented, tested and adjusted during two cycles of ICT workshops for seniors in each country. The teaching tandems provided during the project a total of 198 hours of workshops for 105 seniors in four countries. Additionally, from among the participants of workshops 8 Digital Ambassadors were selected – people at the age of 60+ whose leadership and digital competences enabled us to include them into dissemination process and in some cases into the process of supporting the trainers in the teaching processes both during and after the termination of project activities.

Results:

Lesson plans of ICT Workshops for Older Adults:

online newspapers,
books on-line (e-book and audiobook),
music and films online,
going out- cultural event,
monuments of the world- visiting historical places abroad.

Tips for trainers. How to approach seniors during ICT trainings.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under Erasmus+ Programme.

Source: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/projects/search/details/2016-1-PL01-KA204-026593

Access date: 14.10.2021

Lighthouse Keepers 2020 (Latarnicy2020.pl)

The “Latarnicy2020.pl” project is one of the largest initiatives for digital education of adults in the country.

The substantive foundations of the activities were developed as part of the “Lighthouse of Digital Poland” project implemented by the “Cities on the Internet” Association („Miasta w Internecie“ Association) together with the Ministry of Administration and Digitization in 2011-2015 under the slogan: Digital Poland of Equal Opportunities.

The project has been implemented in Poland in 12 voivodeships.

The main goal of the project is to acquire and increase the level of digital competences by nearly 30 thousand project participants – residents of voivodeships where the project activities are realised, and to increase the use of information and communication technologies.

The general objective will have been achieved through the implementation of a number of detailed activities, i.e .:

recruitment and training of a group of 250 professional digital educators (the so-called Lighthouse Keepers of Digital Poland) who will provide training support to project participants,
implementation of the “lighthouse method” – a model of adult education developed in the Digital Poland of Equal Opportunities project,
increase of the level of digital competences of important professional and social groups – officials, teachers, employees of local government institutions, councilors and village leaders, who will motivate adult residents to use Internet resources,
reduction of the scale of social and digital exclusion of persons with disabilities.

The project will have a significant impact on improving the operation of local government units by increasing work efficiency (improving employee competences) and increasing the ability to create and develop public e-services and to integrate persons with disabilities with persons without them thanks to creating opportunities for wider social interactions through the use of the Internet. It is assumed that as a result of the project implementation, the operation of local government units will be improved and the use of public e-services will be enhanced.

The website of the initiative https://latarnicy2020.pl/ features educational materials (reports, brochures, workshop materials and lesson plans) and films that have been developed in the Digital Poland of Equal Opportunities project. They can be useful in lighthouse work as a didactic aid or inspiration in developing scenarios for classes with seniors.

Project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, Operational Programme Digital Poland for 2014-2020.

Source: https://latarnicy2020.pl/

Access date: 12.03.2021

The Silver Code

Living both in a rapidly developing digital world and in aging society, the Silver Code project goal is to make older learners active players and citizens, equipped with competences required by our hyper connected world.

The main Silver Code project objective is to increase the digital literacy of older learners and offer basic knowledge and skills in coding.

Older EU citizens from the 27 EU countries are both the target group, reached through direct activities (30 learners per partner country will take part in the training activities), and direct beneficiaries, reached through peer-to-peer learning methods and dissemination events (about 100 people per partner country). A relevant number of participants, among older people, will be medium-high skilled, such as retired professionals and older people being professionally active and willing to improve their knowledge and competencies.

This will be reached through:

The development of a training course, delivered by professional trainers (for theory and general supervision) and youngsters, possibly ICT students, expert on coding, acting as “tutors”(for the practical sessions).
Creation of a “Silver Coding” community based on tools such as platform, forum, social network groups.

Source: https://www.utzo.si/en/projekti/silver-code/

Access date: 30.09.2021

Digitized society and the elderly

For 20 years, there have been discussions and a multitude of different projects and programs (many of which have never been implemented) on the need to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the daily lives of the elderly population, as well as other vulnerable groups. Extremely rapid development of technologies and services that dictated by capital has intervened in all pores of our lives, which we are suddenly faced with the fact that mastering e-skills has a huge impact on quality of our lives. But today we are no longer talking about the information society, but about digitalisation, which is supposed to change the whole society.

Technological development has greatly changed our way of life. Among other things, it is everything

several things can be done “remotely”, using different electronic devices connected to the Internet. It seems that more and more often this will be the only one how to exercise rights and access services in a digital society. Therefore decision-makers, competent institutions and civil society must pay special attention attention to ensuring equal opportunities for older and vulnerable groups in

integration into the digital world. Last year’s festival for the third period of life, for the 20th time in a row, dedicated a special festival, open to the public, professional discussion to the digitization of the elderly, as this is the very important basis for the inclusion of the elderly in all social pores. The annual festival is therefore in itself a well-established good practice of pressing issues of society in the integration of the elderly.

The participants of the round table highlighted the following measures of equal integration of older and vulnerable groups into the digital society:

Integrate the inclusion of older adults and vulnerable groups (systematic planning and implementation of digitization measures) together with support activities such as they are information, counseling, motivation, analysis and evaluation.
Improving cross-sectoral cooperation between public and private providers in the field of acquiring knowledge, skills and competencies, and implementation of permanent (adapted) support programs for the elderly and vulnerable groups for quality of life in the digital society.
Providing accessible internet infrastructure and connectivity (be able to use a smart device)

and appropriate communication on how to use these services.

Establishment of mobile centers for the elderly, which will be placed in public accessible locations e.g. shops, health centers, banks, where can help the elderly through the first steps in using digital services (eg obtaining a digital certificate, downloading applications to a mobile phone,

user help, etc.).

Empowering seniors to be as independent as possible tackling digital transformation such as education of the elderly educators to help older people with digital inclusion and

acquisition of skills / competences (intergenerational assistance);

Systematic provision and protection of the right to disconnect from digital devices and screens even during the digital transformation. That right that is tight related to privacy is the foundation of democracy.

Speakers drew special attention to the user-friendliness and adaptability of digital services and applications to the elderly. For older adults, any digitized service can be a whole new experience that needs to be carefully approached by the provider.

(see the brochure of the Festival for the Third Age 2021)

Source: Festival for the third period of life

Access date: 01.04.2022

CODECATZ

In Slovenia there have been several initiatives important for spreading coding, among socially disadvantaged groups among which CodeCatz. CodeCatz ended up founding Django Girls Store, a non-profit organisation that empowers and helps women to organize free, one-day programming workshops by providing tools, resources and support. Their goal is to bring more amazing women into the world of technology and increase the diversity in the tech community. They believe that. They are making technology more approachable by creating simple tools and resources designed with empathy. During the Code Week Slovenian Third Age University and Katja Koren Ošljak made a step further towards older people’s coding.

Django Girls is a non-profit organization and a community that empowers and helps women to organize free, one-day programming workshops by providing tools, resources and support. During each of our events, 30-60 women build their first web application using HTML, CSS, Python and Django.

Source: Django Girsl & The Slovenian Universitxy of Third Age

Access date: 14.10.2021

The Digital Day

The Digital Day is a nationwide day of action for digital participation. It is intended to make digitisation an everyday experience for all citizens with numerous activities. All over Germany, people will come together on the Digital Day at various event formats to discover digital technologies together and get to know them better. Everyone can offer their own activities on the Digital Day: Private individuals, associations, organisations, authorities or companies. In this way, the various aspects of digitisation can be illuminated and discussed on Digitaltag.

The Digital Day takes place once a year.

All actions of the Digital Day should:

deal with a topic related to digitalisation as accessible as possible (e.g. digital participation, digital skills, digitalisation and society, digital technologies).
be open to a wide range of participants.
be offered free of charge if possible.

* be easily accessible, for example through uncomplicated registration.

Source: https://digitaltag.eu

Access date: 01.06.2022