(silver) surfing with mother part 2
A great use of time today - at the Silver Surfers Day event organised by Cambridge Online … in the back of a lovely Cambridge Church they had over 35 people in off the streets learning about everything from how to turn a laptop on, how to work a mouse, and for my mother and @AnneFaulkner’s father learning about Voice Recognition Software - Dragon - and finding music on YouTube.
Almost every person that went along signed up for free tuition and was keen to follow up the learning experience. Mum was amazed by voice recognition software and by the simiplicity of how to lay out a letter in Word and is already looking forward to her Introduction to Computers session next week and will then quickly go onto MyGuide … NOTE TO SELF: must fix the old computer at her house.
This now the beginning of what will, I am sure for Mum and I, be an exciting and I am sure iinsanely frustrating (at times) journey as she learns her way around what most of us now take forgranted … My father used to call me at all hours with wonderful phrases like “I’ve lost the Word”, or “I’ve deleted the Internet” - which inevitably led to me spending hours installing and uninstalling things, retyping documents and repairing the mouse when he had slammed it down in temper - but he did enjoy researching projects, sending email, and latterly he found his local doctor, looked up information on cancer and all of that helped him through a very difficult time.
Silver Surfers Day is a great concept and it was exciting to think of similar events going on the length and breadth of the country thanks to Digital Unite, UK online centres and the sponsors of the event Wiltshire Farm Foods and McCarthy & Stone. Each of the corporate sponsors has written an interesting blog post, here:
http://dnc.digitalunite.com/2009/05/13/why-wiltshire-farm-foods-is-spons
oring-silver-surfers-day/ and here
http://dnc.digitalunite.com/2009/05/08/mccarthy-stone-offer-25-ssd-event
s/ about why businesses should take on the responsibility for bringing digital literacy to their potential customer group. “It makes sense”, says Gill Adams from Digital Unite, “but these two are ‘the few’ who see this. They should be applauded publicly”.
Also to be applauded are the many staff and volunteers from UK online centres and local traning organisations up and down the country for all the hard work they do helping the digitally excluded learn about getting on with technology, onto computers and online.
My mother asked her tutor, “What IS Twitter? My daughter keeps doing it …” the tutor looked up at me and sighed!!! First things first mother … right click
There is a great video on Why Be a Silver Surfer - spread the word http://www.youtube.com/silversurferstv
and the following link to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 is available to listen again for a few days on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kbhpm
The piece about Silver Surfers is from 01.34 until the end of the show (about half an hour).
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