Development of Elderly’s Digital Skills Through Family Learning

Family traditions are respected in Bulgaria and one of the popular activities in this regard is the creation of a family tree. This is usually done in a notebook by one of the oldest members of the family – the one who remembers previous generations and wants to bequeath them to future ones. And the younger ones transfer the finished product, as far as it has reached, on large cardboard, so that it is more representative and shows as fully as possible the family branches and sub-branches. Some make the family tree in one way, others in a completely different way.

The process involves a lot of scratching and rubbing, with strange features and lines showing the connections between families that are difficult to trace. However, the two representatives of the Foundation “Values, Virtues, Integrity”, who participated in training under the project “Development of Elderly’s Digital Skills Through Family Learning” in Nazili, Turkey in October 2021, adopted interesting know-how related to the topic. After training in several sessions on creating a family tree on a personal computer,

One of the things that impressed the Bulgarian team that participated in the training on ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES FOR FAMILY LEARNING in Utena, Lithuania, was that the local library is home to a bee. This bee is an image made by children who are learning how to program. Next to a board made of plastic cups (10 by 11 rows), there is a code on how to fill each row – i.e. to put napkins of different colours in the cups in a certain sequence – so that finally, if the cups-pixels are filled correctly, you get the nice shape of a flying bee. It was this bee that flew from Utena to Sofia. Two Bulgarian representatives of the Values, Virtues, Integrity Foundation (VVIF)

appreciated this good practice and applied it in their work at the Family-type Accommodation Center (FTAC) for children and youth in the Lyulin district of the Bulgarian capital. In the context of the project “We speak through our shadows” under the National Fund “Culture”, which aims to prepare and present a play by the method of shadow theatre, the foundation’s team had the activity with children and staff of the FTAC. In addition to decoding and programming (creating a script), the exercise was very useful to show how, with the participation of all, a creative product can be created.

At the end of June, senior students at EduVita explored how to use Canva: a free-to-use online graphic design tool, where to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more. We discovered this tool thanks to the exchange of good practices with our partners within the Erasmus+KA2 Digital Skills through Family learning project. Young educators of EduVita presented the www.canva.com website to the elderly students of the English course at EduVita. 

After the basic presentation of the tool, the students altogether created a postcard with their wishes for the summer holidays. Students explored that it’s possible to make their own designs through a website or application on their website. During the workshop, all the participants developed their digital skills and English language competence, creating phrases in foreign languages. At the end of the session, the participants shared their considerations on how they can use Canva in their life:

During the meeting in the field of the Art Bridge project, we explored a digital tool to guide international guests and local participants of different ages to discover the beauty of Lecce.

This tool is called ActionBound and it is a digital app, which we discovered thanks to the exchange of good practices with our partners within the Erasmus+KA2 Digital Skills through Family learning project.

Damiano and Roberto, adult educators at EduVita and Art Bridge participants, inspired by the potential of this app, decided to create an interactive tour through a quiz on monuments and places of interest in the historical centre of Lecce. After selecting the main stages of the tour, they collected photos and information to create cards with questions and riddles inspired by the place and distributed them along the route on the virtual map of Lecce’s historic centre.

To make the excursion more engaging, we divided the team into groups with participants of different ages and gave them a challenge: guess as many correct answers as possible to win a tray of Salento sweets! The atmosphere of positive competition soared, as did the spirit of mutual cooperation between participants of different cultures and ages. It was exciting to see how intergenerational learning came about spontaneously in this context: the younger and more “technologically literate” participants showed the adults how to interact with the app, move around, give the answer or read the clues; the adults shared their knowledge and experiences, to look for the right answer together. In this way, each participant of any age and culture had an active role in the process, discovering at the same time the architectural, artistic and cultural history of Lecce.

The employees of Utena Public Library are looking for various ways and means to raise the interest of seniors in technology and encourage them to learn.

The library staff actively participate in the EU Erasmus + strategic partnership project “Development of Elderly’s Digital Skills through Family Learning (No. 2020-1-LT01-KA204-077965). They attended the training in the Bulgarian capital Sofia. The training topic was really useful – they learned how to arrange artistic and creative activities to improve the digital competencies of older people. 

The librarians discovered an idea for interactive learning – creating mandalas from plants. A mandala usually is a circle-shaped drawing. It is an art form, an intuitive creation that gives peace of mind and helps to focus attention. The workshop participants worked in pairs and created mandalas from plants, flower blossoms, pine cones and other plant materials.

Plants are important in the lives of many older people. They are interested in plants and growing them themselves. As a result, this popular job can be used to develop other competencies as well.

The library workers came up with the idea to organize a creative laboratory: they invited people to create colourful mandalas, then took photos of them and use the photos to create original postcards.

10 older women participated in the creative laboratory. They liked the activity because it was not the only possibility for self-expression but also a good way to communicate by involving other family members – children and grandchildren. They said it could be favourite leisure and learning activity for their families. Collecting plants, putting and photographing them, transferring photographs to a computer, and later creating postcards. These are steps that combine not only pleasure, communication among generations and a strong connection with nature, but also perfectly develop digital skills – taking photos with smartphones, editing, the layout of digital publications, and printing. This activity is a great opportunity to transfer the elderly knowledge about plants to young people and children, respectively the younger can help seniors in learning to control smart devices and computer programs.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has created many challenges for educators who need to find new ways to present the subject to their students. Utena A. and M. Miskiniai Public Library in Lithuania have used the mobile “Actionbound” application to create interesting and inclusive virtual workshops with the purpose to popularize ethnocultural knowledge. They developed six virtual escape rooms for this purpose. Participating in virtual escape rooms, learners of different ages learn through immersive adventures where stories are created for each cognitive topic, and participants overcome challenges by following clues and codes to solve various puzzles.

Escape rooms have been known in Lithuania and the world for several years, but their digital versions became popular only during the pandemic when physical contact is prohibited or limited.

Digital escape rooms combine a variety of activities and maximize learners’ interest and involvement. Various creative activities are integrated into the route: video, audio materials, quizzes, tests, creative writing, etc. That’s why the game allows experimenting, creating, playing, and working in a team.

Actively performing creative tasks, the participants of these activities get to know objects important to the ethnic culture of the region. At the same time, they learn to work in a team solving different problems and overcoming challenges.

The main aim of Erasmus+ projects is to collect and implement the best practices of partners. During the project „Developing of Elderly’s Digital Skills through Family Learning“ (2020-1-LT01-KA204-077965) the participants of Pärnu Central Library got a lot of good ideas. 

The most interesting for us was the idea of Utena Public Library using different digital means for introducing the collections and services of the library. Utena library used the application Actionbound for a treasure hunt in the library. Those who participated in the treasure-hunt had to solve different exercises and find the answers to the questions which were related to the history of Utena city, to the library and also to the literature. This seemed to us a very good way to put different generations to work together.

Pärnu Central Library made our own version of the treasure hunt of Utena Library. We prepared the exhibition all over the city – „Pärnu in fiction“. The main idea of the exhibition is where are the literary places of Pärnu. Which authors have got inspired by Pärnu.

We marked with the boards 12 places all over the city which are mentioned in some novels. On the board is a picture of the cover of the book, the section from the book where this place is mentioned, a short introduction of the book and the author and an old picture of how this place did look like years ago. Also are on the board two QR codes – one leads to the interactive map: https://www.fiasko.ee/proosaline.jpg, where you can find the next stop and the other QR code leads to the electronic catalogue of Pärnu Central Library to this book.

The main aim of Erasmus+ projects is to collect and implement the best practices of partners. During the project „Developing of Elderly’s Digital Skills through Family Learning“ the participants of Pärnu Central Library got a lot of good ideas. 

As the main idea of the project is to develop digital skills and also to confirm the connections between the generations. Our Paikuse branch library organized a storytelling festival which was dedicated to birds. As in April and May, there are a lot of days which are dedicated to birds – April 8th is an international day of drawing birds, May 12th is international owls day, the first Sunday of May is an international day of morning bird sing-listening day etc.

The main idea was, that the children had to ask their grandparents about the folk stories, proverbs and folk beliefs which are connected with birds and on basis of that they had to make drawings or short stories about birds. In all, we got 96 drawings or stories. 

The idea for the second part of this festival we got from our partners from Turkey who also used Kahoot for connecting the generations. Their Kahoots were also about history and cultural heritage and the themes were before shared between different generations through storytelling. We used Kahoot for confirming all this knowledge and folklore about birds that children got from their grandparents. We made a „BirdKahoot“.

During the project “Development of Digital Skills of Older People through Family Learning”, the participants from UCLM got many good ideas which they put into practice in their own institution. 

During the transnational training event in Sofia, scarves were painted using the technique of painting on cloth. At UCLM this technique was applied but in a slightly different way. A workshop was developed which consisted of creating reusable bags in intergenerational groups. The objective was to develop an intergenerational activity where the aim was to obtain a useful product by applying creativity and making a personalised design.

Painting on canvas is the ultimate way to put all your artistic skills to the test and make everyday objects acquire a magical touch. It’s a great activity to do in a group or on your own to relax, and something everyone will enjoy. One of the best things about painting on canvas is that you can show off your wonderful masterpieces by wearing them. 

The Sagrada Familia school in Cuenca is located on the Cuenca Campus of the University of Castilla-La Mancha, which has made it easier for the students to visit the university frequently and share with us a few hours of class that are different from what they are used to living every day. In this case, the experience took place with the University Programme “José Saramago” 50 plus, in which children and adults learned to create a comic together. The seniors took advantage of the dramatised reading they did during the course of the text “The Iliad” to be the plot of the comic, related to the current moment, the war we are living in Europe. They explained the story to the children and defined the characters. For their part, the children contributed their skills in the use of mobile technologies, with the Comic Strip application.

This tool was discovered thanks to the exchange of good practices with our partners within the Erasmus+KA2 Digital Skills through Family learning project. 

During the activity, the older children acted as knowledge and history guides and the younger ones contributed their technological knowledge.  The result has been tremendously constructive and has brought out the best in both generations. The more than 20 pupils in the Primary 5 class formed small groups at each computer, each accompanied by an older person, who was the mentor and guide of the group, the children their hands.

All groups created a story, talked, laughed and learned and the children returned to school happy, asking to come back soon.

Learning is a lifelong process, no matter how old individuals are. The fact that individuals of all ages are in a continuous learning process is the real sign of their existence. Compulsory education processes are legally carried out by governments. However, an education/learning chance has not been given to many people, especially in the post-retirement lives of individuals over a certain age. As Nazhayat Association, we brought participants from different age groups together to eliminate the lack of digital competencies within the family. We enabled our youth and adults to carry out an activity by adapting to each other in harmony and in a family environment. We wanted to combine several applications that people do not yet know how to use, but they are needed in practical life.

We focused on the competencies of our participants in the following subjects:

• Usage of smartphones;
• WhatsApp app;
• Forming a group on WhatsApp;
• Google maps: finding a location, calculating the distance;
• Translation: Turkish -English (changing the language);
• Copying/pasting a  text;
• Sending screenshots.

Objectives of the training: 

• To contribute to the socialization of the participants;
• To let the adults learn harmoniously getting familiar with the technıcal devices (smart phone and application usages).

In today’s world, it is getting harder for adults to stay in daily life as members of society. The constantly changing technological developments and the periodical requirements and areas of interest of the constantly updated parts make this process even more difficult.

Adult individuals, who cannot get through this process easily and cannot adapt, begin to isolate themselves from society, even more, shutting themselves into their inner world, and having no expectations from their lives.

As an organization that carries out regional face-to-face activities, Nazhayat tries to solve these problems of adult individuals, who are voluntary participants, by using different applications. While presenting the new practices and methods we have obtained by participating in EU projects to our participants, we also share our own practices with our stakeholders.

As Nazhayat, we organize events at appropriate times in order to contribute to the solution of the problems faced by our adults regarding social and technological adaptation.

Among these activities, our application, which we think is the most effective, in terms of ‘Developing Family Related Technological Competencies’ consists of two stages.

1. Strengthening family ties
2. Technological development – collaboration

Strengthening family ties:

Due to generational differences, we have a lot of difficulties in understanding the problems of adult individuals who are our relatives, what they mean, and how they look at events in terms of different cultural values. Grandparents and grandchildren living in the same house have almost different worlds. Although they speak the same language, they cannot perceive the same things. Although they want the same solution, they can be hurtful when talking and completely lose their communication and establish different worlds in the same house.
In this regard, in order to contribute to the solution of the problems, we want our participants to come together by forming different age groups and make determinations about the subjects they want to offer their opinions on.
In this process, which is carried out once a week with the protection of the majority of the participants, each participant notes a topic that is important to him/herself and which he/she thinks cannot be understood the most by the family members. Then, using a ball of yarn, each participant explains their topic to the members of the group and receives comments.
In this process; Individuals are expected to approach events differently and to evaluate events through empathy. It is very important that they can express themselves without interrupting, use as much time as they want and think that they can be understood more clearly. They do not realise that the age difference is ignored, even for a moment. Everyone is the same age, and everyone becomes able to look at things as an adult or younger.