courses

WhatsApp for digital beginners

A short course for older learners

Four Monday afternoons
(2 – 4 pm)
9 to 30 October 2023

A step-by-step practical guide to using WhatsApp on a phone – for beginners – and people already using WhatsApp – and people who do not have a smartphone.

What you will learn to do or understand

For a detailed list of WhatsApp possibilities, look at WhatsApp features. Here’s our shortened list …

  • Texts, voice calls and video calls to anywhere in the world, using an Internet connection instead of an expensive voice and SMS plan.
  • Use a phone to send photos, videos, recorded voice messages and documents.
  • Join WhatsApp groups with family or friends.
  • WhatsApp Web – do it on a larger screen if your phone is too small for comfort.

Also …

  • How to protect your own privacy using WhatsApp.
  • How to manage your phone when WhatsApp starts filling it up with photos and videos.
  • Learn a lot more about phones and mobile tech in general.

Where

  • Mildmay Community Centre (address, map and traval information on our home page).

How to join the course, or ask for more info

  • Email info@50pd.uk
  • Phone / text to 07423 162019

Your personal security and privacy

  • This is important. You will use our safety-first training smartphones and SIM cards, not your own phone (so people who don’t have a smartphone will fit in perfectly).

Friday Learning Together

Fridays, 2 to 4 pm, Mildmay Community Centre

  • This is a new Friday afternoon project – September 2023 to January 2024.
  • Learning Together is for digital beginners, people learning for the first time, people who want to learn again because it’s 2023 — and people who might not be beginners, but would like to help others who are.
  • There is detailed information about this new project on page Learning Together.

See also page: Learning – courses and workshops

Learning with laptops

How to use our drop-in laptops

A double workshop at Mildmay Community Centre – Monday afternoons in February 2023

NB: this workshop has finished.

How to be a classier laptopper

We have recently acquired more laptop computers, which will help to double the number of people who can learn effectively at the Wednesday afternoon drop-in.

This workshop will help you understand how to use the laptops (new and previous) …

  • to do all the things you have always wanted to do
    • (especially word-processing)
  • as well as some of the things you didn’t know you could do.

We will also investigate the best possible use of the space in the main hall — as we did during the last smartphone course (we discovered that we should project onto the large drop-down screen – and that community centre should upgrade the main hall wifi, which they have done).

One workshop – two afternoons

  • This will be a single workshop, spread out over two sessions.

Organised by MRS – Independent Living (MRS-IL) – Digital Confidence project – 50pd.uk

Exploring the web with smartphones

A beginner-friendly introduction course

4 Monday afternoons — January 2023 — at Mildmay Community Centre.

NB: this course has finished.

About the course

A step-by-step practical guide to finding incredibly useful things to do on the World Wide Web – and how to do them on a phone – safely and sensibly.

As always, you will start with your priorities and ambitions – and you will finish with important digital skills that perhaps you didn’t know existed.

Just as important – you will be more confident in your own ability to keep exploring and learning.

Online safety first …

For your personal security – you will not use your own device, your own email address or your own phone number as part of the course.

Everyone will use our safety-first smartphones – set up for older people who don’t have a lot of internet experience – so we can all focus together on what is really important.

You are welcome to bring your own device if you want to – but we cannot offer 1:1 help with it as part of the course.

See also page: Learning – courses and workshops

How to be safe on the internet

How to be safe on the internet

Learn to use the Internet safely and sensibly

A beginner-friendly course at Whitmore Community Centre, Friday afternoons in December 2022

NB: this course has finished.

Enjoy all the advantages of being online – avoid the risks

You are an internet citizen now, so wouldn’t it be nice to spend your online time in those parts of the internet where there are no risks, no exploitation, no deceit?

It’s easily done, because that is still most of the internet. It’s still about contact and communication with friends, family and people you could never have met in any other way — inhabited by optimists who are expanding their horizons and learning more about the real world that they return to safely when they switch off their device.

Join our course, and use our safe smartphones to explore and understand how the internet works – for you.

Online safety first

This is about your safety concerns, not about devices. For your personal security – you will not use your own device, your own email address or your own phone number as part of the course.

Everyone will use our safety-first smartphones – set up for older people who don’t have a lot of internet experience – so we can all focus together on what is really important.

You are welcome to bring your own device if you want to – but we cannot offer 1:1 help with it. That’s because we don’t have time to help individuals when there are 11 other people on the course. This approach always works best for everybody.

Venue: Whitmore Community Centre

See also page: Learning – courses and workshops

How to be Smart with a Phone

Everything you always wanted to do with a smartphone

A beginner-friendly course at Whitmore Community Centre, Friday afternoons in November 2022

NB: this course has finished.

Plus quite a lot you didn’t know you could do

Think of this as a general-purpose smartphone course where we tackle the needs and interests of everyone in the group — and introduce creative new ideas for you to do or think about.

On your phone learning menu — choose from

  • Privacy and security (because so many people have justified concerns)
  • Music and radio
  • Maps and travel
  • YouTube and other video (including making it)
  • World-Wide Web
  • Photos
  • Podcasts and other audio (including making it)
  • Health and fitness
  • BBC
  • Languages
  • Plants, trees & bird identification
  • Reporting problems to your local authority
  • Documents, slides and spreadsheets (including making them)
  • WhatsApp
  • Your suggestions …

See also page: Learning – courses and workshops

Community Learning

Community-based digital for older people

Updated 3 October 2023

Our learning sessions are for small groups of older people, focussing together on one topic that is important to them.

We think Groupwork is a better way to describe what we do — it differentiates us from the common Adult Education model, in which everything is predictable and pre-plannned, with an abrupt ending for learners. Our Groupwork is co-designed, co-produced and delivered entirely by older people — and can be followed up at our weekly Digital Drop-in.

Mildmay Community Centre

Throughout 2023

  • Monday Creative Together — making content for the web and relevant short courses — Monday afternoons, 2 to 4 pm.
  • Friday Learning Together — internet basics and beyond, for people learning for the first time, people learning again because they want to catch up, and people who want to help their community — Friday afternoons, 2 to 4 pm — details at Friday Learning Together.

Coming soon

Completed