A number of guys at Google acquired a wonderful idea. Let us create a series of videos that will help our parents to use the web. They launched a site that empowers people to teach their grown up parents how to use the web. It is a great step in helping older people to overcome their technophobia.
Age related digital divide is one of the items that make older people, and even late seniors, feel inadequate. What seems too many elementary, creates a paralyzing situation for elders at the most fundamental web based usage situations. Managing on their own, through a simplified adapted process of guidance that does not embarrass them in front of their children and grandchildren, not only answers their need to know, but provides a handle to confront the issue on their own, at their pace, without being pressured by their slow and hesitant learning curve. Knowing that those guides are there, always at reach and they can revisit if they forget, makes seniors confident.
Understanding items that usually are digital natives is intuitive, allows older people a sense of belonging and a feeling of being included in the digital society.
The joy of a grandmother that can press the Like button, be updated on her grandchildren status via Facebook, find her way through Google, chat on Skype and send emails, is not to be taken for granted.
Presenting these tools to instruct older people is a great plan to both children and parents.
On the functional level the videos, a natural beginner production, are not fully adapted to the needs and pace of the older population. The screenshots are blurred, not everybody has a Mac and the young presenters talk is not always coherent, yet it is a grassroots initiative and an admirable one. Their resource and awareness to the importance of enhancing the mature population to be more digitally savvy in a simplistic and intuitive way and contribution to a softer digital based bonding between generations.
And on exactly the same level, a similarly exceptional effort at Google is a beautiful guide that instructs young children about the web. I am sure much older children will be equally happy to learn about what and why around the web and not just take its existence for granted.
These two initiatives, borne from an inclusive mindset, connect the dots for digital immigrants and digital beginners. This factor to facilitate, familiarize and bond young and old to what is increasingly growing to become a natural part of our life fabric, is another step in adapting our web to make it a real web of life.
Author publishes articles frequently on clean web ecology. To help you comprehend more about User centricity, social web, contextivity, Return on Attention, user centered from Author pay a visit to - Icentered.com
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