One old-timer is the best teacher for another
The typical seeker for Internet advice is a 67-year-old woman
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By Tiina Rajamäki
A couple of years back, around half of an average IT lesson at the courses arranged by the Kalliola Settlement adult education centre in Helsinki used to be taken up with switching the machine on and grabbing the mouse.
"I discovered that I was the official IT Support for a good many elderly ladies", says Pekka Roni, who led such courses before taking up his current position at the head of a project on the elderly and the information society.
Kalliola recognised the problem and the need, and from last spring the Settlement's computer classes have made use of volunteer teachers who are themselves as old - or sometimes older - than the grandmas and grandpas who come in to learn about computers or to solve problems they have with the PC.
The Settlement project will continue at least until 2008.
The idea is to create a kind of seniors' portal on the Net, which would provide ground-up instruction in how to use computers, and mobile phones, too.
"To the older people, I'm just a young nerd, and anything I teach them is somehow not as reliable or as credible as what they could get from someone of their own generation. Information from peers is important. It's also important that some things - like using the mouse for instance - are taken slowly, and that the teacher calls things by names that mean something, and not some insider slang", explains Roni.
The Elderly and the Information Society has 14 tutors onboard, who turn up for duty in Kalliola on Mondays and Thursdays. Many of the tutors are also members of the senior citizens' IT support group Enter.
The average age of those coming in looking for help is 67, and the majority of them are women.
"We get a couple of dozen new people coming here every week", says Roni. The most frequently asked question is how to get the PC online.
At one Monday meeting in late March, e-mail problems are up for discussion. Around ten people are sitting in the IT classroom. Tutor Timo Puska advises Kalevi Piiroinen on how to modify e-mail account settings and user profiles.
A good many of the people who show up here are also gathering information on what sort of machine they ought to buy for home use.
They freely admit at Kalliola that those people who do come to courses are the ones who have already got the Internet bug, perhaps through seeing how easily their grandchildren navigate on the Net.
Pekka Roni dreams of a seniors' club where the threshold for coming in would be that much lower.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.4.2006
More on this subject:
 The over-60s are getting to grips with the Internet - often they have little choice
BACKGROUND: Fears about the advent of digital broadcasting
TIINA RAJAMÄKI / Helsingin Sanomat
tiina.rajamaki@hs.fi
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