Older people challenging isolation and exclusion
See also page: Learning – courses and workshops
For creative senior citizens who want to make a difference – at Mildmay Community Centre – Monday afternoons throughout 2023.
A web presence could be a website, a blog, social media, podcast, internet radio, photo gallery, or something else you think would be helpful – or all of those things. And it always starts with content.
Your content could be writing, art work, photos, video, podcast, radio, or whatever you can think of – to promote yourself, a project, or even a business idea. Or perhaps creating an online community of people you know.
We can help you with ideas like that — most Monday afternons at Mildmay Community Centre.
Other people — we are happy to have you there doing your own thing — it’s part of our plan.
Maker Monday afternoon achievements are visible on the 50+ Microbloggers site.
Florence will show you how to do it.
For creative senior citizens who want a result – at Mildmay Community Centre – Monday afternoons in June 2023
NB: this activity has finished.
This is about understanding digital photos (and other images), so that you can use them effectively. We will provide the laptops and the initial photos. Keep reading …
NB: this activity has finished.
Organised by MRS – Independent Living (MRS-IL) – Digital Confidence project – 50pd.uk
A workshop for senior citizens at Mildmay Community Centre – Monday 24 April, 2 to 4 pm
NB: this workshop has finished.
Learn My Way is a website of free online learning for beginners, helping you develop digital skills to make the most of the online world.
This is a new version of Learn My Way. It’s obviously intended for people who don’t have much internet experience, but it’s not just for total beginners. We think you would like it — and it’s definitely a good drop-in activity.
So here is the link » https://learnmyway.com/ «
Workshop organised by MRS – Independent Living (MRS-IL) – Digital Confidence project – 50pd.uk
A course for adventurous senior citizens at Mildmay Community Centre – Monday afternoons in March 2023
NB: This course has finished.
This is a course about being able to do something useful or essential – apps used by work teams, individual entrepreneurs and creators. You will learn the basics of Google WorkSpace – a package of apps widely used by business and non-profit organisations.
The apps are designed for teams as well as single users – and (like most workplace software now) they all run in the cloud – where you can access them from any location – as well as the computer you are using at home or in an office.
You probably access your personal email in a cloud server. Workplace software extends that kind of access to everything you do at work – vastly increasing productivity – and (a key concept) simplifying immediate collaboration with other people you work with.
This is not new – but if your work experience is not recent, you might not realise how much has changed in the last 10 years. Your tutor has been using this system since 2007, for personal use, community projects, and as a part-time employee of charity MRS – Independent Living (which uses WorkSpace for internal and external processes).
Below is a list of apps that we will look at during the course. If you have email at seniors.org.uk or bold.org.uk, you already have all the apps. If you use Gmail.com, you have limited personal versions of most of them.
Obviously, you won’t become proficient in all of those apps during a short course. But you will know what they are, and how to get started.
Organised by MRS – Independent Living (MRS-IL) – Digital Confidence project – 50pd.uk
A double workshop at Mildmay Community Centre – Monday afternoons in February 2023
NB: this workshop has finished.
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) …
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).
Organised by MRS – Independent Living (MRS-IL) – Digital Confidence project – 50pd.uk
We have moved our Friday afternoon courses and workshops to Monday afternoons in the main hall at Mildmay Community Centre – the same large space we use for the Wednesday afternoon drop-in – not the small café area we occupied last year.
As we expected, the move was an immediate success. The currrent course – Exploring the web with smartphones – was guaranteed to be full because we were able to arrange an alternative activity for the course waiting list. As it happened, everyone on the waiting list joined the course.
Right now, we have 14 training smartphones – 12 for learners, 1 for the projector, 1 contingency. We think we can double the size of smartphone courses as we learn the best way to utilise the main hall, perhaps as soon as February.
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