Tell us about your event?

Home Prime delivers a range of quality services for older people to help them remain independent by meeting their individual needs. Home’s ICT department worked with our colleagues in Home Prime to put together a week of Silver Surfer events held in 5 of Home Primes sheltered accommodation. The days were aimed at encouraging people 50+ to become acquainted with the internet. It was also open to tenants, relatives and people from the local community interested in knowing more about the internet.

We registered our event with Spring Online’s website and acquired and utilised the five marketing packs provided which attracted silver surfers from the local community by advertising in libraries, doctor’s surgeries, etc. We chose a theme to ensure the day was fun as well as educational. Our theme was a “red carpet” theme with attendees wearing their Sunday best with volunteers came in tuxedos and ball gowns. The rooms were decorated with a silver theme even including covering candle sticks in silver paper and putting up pictures of film stars to add authenticity. Nibbles and sparkling fizzy pop was provided, in champagne flutes.

Each session lasted 50 minutes and at the end everyone produced their own certificate by typing in their name and printing. They also had their photos taken on the Red Carpet, proudly holding their certificate and champagne flute. Sessions included an introduction then finding out what the attendees were interested in and if they had any particular requests. Among the 75 people taking part there were a mix of abilities attending, some had never touched a pc before, some had a little experience and a few had their own laptops and PC’s and felt that they were unable to get the best out of them. Topics covered included: exercises to enable attendees to become proficient with mouse control and looking for sites that may be of interest, i.e. local history, online shopping, family tree, sports, NHS Direct.

Our event brought in a number of people from the local community and also different generations including mothers and daughters as well as ancillary staff who work in the schemes. The volunteer tutors ranged in age from 17 to mid-50s. The silver surfers’ ages ranged from mid-50s to 90s. The largest group were octogenarians with our oldest surfer being 92 years young.

What went well?

The red carpet theme with silver balloons and decorations provided a fun and welcoming party atmosphere along with the champagne flutes and photography on the red carpet. Also combining these events with coffee mornings and chair-aerobics classes ensured that attendees had a fun time before and after their training session.

Other aspects that went well were:

- Attracting people who had never used a computer before and watching their confidence grow as they picked up skills helping with dexterity (mouse exercises) with many commenting on the fact that it was much easier than they thought it was going to be.

- Seeing them find information about the communities they grew up in, friends and family from the past and also information about places they worked.

- Helping less mobile people discover internet shopping so they could now get heavier items delivered to their own homes.

-  The one to one tutoring also worked well enabling attendees to learn at their own pace.

-  Attracting local press to cover the story and publish photographs. The story appeared in both the Sunderland Echo and South Shields Gazette.

- The portable ICT equipment that was used enabled us to take the technology to the silver surfers in a familiar environment. The equipment also provided a level of adaptability for people with visual impairment with larger screens and hand mobility with mice and tracker balls available.

What would you do differently next time?

At the next event scheduled for August we will ensure more publicity in the local area takes place to increase the number of attendees from the local community. This would include community centres and local colleges.

Tell us about some of the stories you heard

Every single silver surfer remarked on how they thoroughly enjoyed the event and the training and had their initial trepidation they had before the event quickly disappeared.

Here are some of our stories……………

A gentleman in his early sixties who had had a stroke so he and his wife decided to move to sheltered accommodation. He had applied for a job several years earlier and felt stupid as he couldn’t use the mouse or work his way round the test on the screen. This made him determined to learn about IT but then he had the stroke and had no opportunity. At the Silver Surfer event he enjoyed all the mouse exercises and felt much happier and more confident. He learned how to use Google to find IT courses in his area. He also was talking to the tutor about his grandfather who was one of the Ewbanks (carpet sweeper manufacturer) and was shown how to look at his family tree on AncestryUK which he loved.

A gentleman who was writing a novel had typed up 115 pages in a program called Microsoft Works. This program was removed from his PC and OpenOffice was installed. OpenOffice would not recognise the format of his Works document and failed to open. He was convinced he had lost the lot and would have to start again. His tutor copied the document to another PC with Microsoft Word on and showed him how to convert the document from a Works document to a Word document that then could be opened by the software on his PC. He was overjoyed at this, he also learnt how to make a backup copy onto a portable hard disk drive he had so he would not lose it all if his PC broke for any reason.

A lady who attended one of the sessions had gathered email addresses for members of her family in advance. She had never used email before and she learnt how to compose the email and send it to more than one person. She sent a short email and then before the end of the session she got a reply from her daughter. She was so pleased to get the response so quickly and her daughter was very proud that that her mother had sent her first email. She also learnt how to search using Google to found pictures of the Isle of Arran where she had a lot of fond memories of holidays spent with her family.

A gentleman who was blind attended one of our sessions. His great passion was music and felt that the old time music he liked best was now beyond his reach. He was overjoyed and serenaded everyone at the event singing along to the music we helped him find online that he thought he would never hear again.