Older people challenging isolation and exclusion
NB: this event has finished.
Mildmay Community Centre will be open as usual Wednesday afternoon 25 January – but not for the Digital Drop-in.
Instead there will be an all-day Cost of Living event in the main hall – to which you are invited, of course. For more information, please visit page Cost of Living Event at The Mildmay.
50+ Digital is not involved in event arrangements, so there won’t be a normal digital drop-in — but the 50+ Data Bank will be open in the café area from 1:30 to 3 pm.
4 Monday afternoons — January 2023 — at Mildmay Community Centre.
NB: this course has finished.
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.
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
A beginner-friendly course at Whitmore Community Centre, Friday afternoons in December 2022
NB: this course has finished.
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.
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
NB (15 March): winter has officially finished, so has the funding for this winter project.
This is a perfect fit to our Wednesday afternoon Digital Drop-in, 1 to 4 pm.
The food is served in the café area, next to the kitchen (not in the Main Hall).
Our suggestion – get there early at 12:30 – replenish your vitamins and build up your stamina for the drop-in starting at 1 pm.
The free food is organised by Mildmay Community Centre, not by Fifty-Plus Digital.
A beginner-friendly course at Whitmore Community Centre, Friday afternoons in November 2022
NB: this course has finished.
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.
See also page: Learning – courses and workshops
Friday 28 October
NB: this workshop has finished.
Email is arguably the most important internet technology, because it’s the key that opens the door to everything else that you might need – including all transactions – shopping, health, utilities, work, education, local & national government – and all social media.
Email has been with us for a long time – but it was never intended for a small screen. Although the app designers have done their best, most older people struggle with phone-sized email.
At the workshop we will unpick your experiences — whatever they are — and find solutions – so you can go home at least one rung further up the email ladder, hopefully feeling better about yourself.
Venue: Whitmore Community Centre
See also page: Learning – courses and workshops
21 October 2022
NB: this workshop has finished.
The primary content of the World-Wide Web is information, advice, opportunities, inspiration, contact and communication — for everyday life as well as education and business. This workshop is about how you can actively search for what you need.
We will start with basic beginner-level web search, and then progress as time allows. We suggest a focus on the cost of living because it is a major concern now, but we can follow up any topic that interests the group.
Search engines have become very sophisticated — but sometimes quite challenging on a small screen. Formulating a good search query requires practice and a basic understanding of how search engines work.
Try these five cost of living search queries in the Google search engine —
Different results of course, but are they the results you would need for your search on cost of living information? If you put the same searches into other search engines (eg: Bing, DuckDuckGo) you might notice even greater differences.
If you use a small screen, you probably want to keep web search as simple as possible, and you might like to feel that you are in control — and perhaps you would appreciate results that are genuinely useful, accurate and unbiased. This workshop will help you get there.
Venue: Whitmore Community Centre
See also page: Learning – courses and workshops
14 October 2022
NB: this workshop has finished.
This workshop will tackle one of the most common problems for people who take photographs on a smartphone or tablet — what to do when the device is full — and anyway, how to manage hundreds, or even thousands, of photos.
There are many solutions for people who are not professional photographers. We will look at the easy solutions first because there is almost certainly one for you.
Venue: Whitmore Community Centre
See also page: Learning – courses and workshops
NB: this event has finished.
The aim of this event is to provide you with information and practical support on four priority areas affected by the cost of living crisis: money, energy, food and staying connected.
Organised by MRS – Independent Living
NB: these events have finished.
This was the first of two urgent sessions for older people who need help to apply for Council tax energy rebate or Pension Credit and cost of living payment — before it is too late to claim.
35 people turned up — most needing this extra support — so we were very busy. Even with nine helpers (including the industrious CSR team from Methods), we had not quite finished, so we will carry on next week.
We didn’t have time to make photos.