ICT4 Elderly

 The ICT4 the Elderly Handbook serves as a toolkit and training space for trainers and trainees working on digital skills for the elderly 

ICT4 the Elderly is a European project that aims to facilitate a pathway for up-skilling the digital competences of individuals between 55 and 75 and to make them aware of some of the many opportunities that Internet offers. The ICT4 the Elderly Handbook is an online training space for trainers and trainees on specific digital skills. The goal of the handbook is to serve as a collaborative documentation space for all participants in our training activities. This is how we define our online academy: an open, public space, easily accessible, with useful content (scenarios, educational resources and results) for other people to reuse. It is our intention to create a community of practice around digital skills for the elderly. Our preparation activities include the collection of best practices from other successful projects to be used to develop a training manual and an online academy. Once the training materials are ready, individuals aged 55-75 will be selected through a call for applicants and will take part in the piloting as ambassadors of the project. Two pilots with 12 people each will take place in Malta and in Berlin. All these training activities will use the ICT4 the Elderly Handbook as their space of reference, documentation, collaborative editing and creation of new content.

In a nutshell, the ICT4 the Elderly Handbook aims to:


 * Help the participants of the program to learn and find information about the different subjects treated on the program;
 * Be the platform used by the participants to transmit what they have learned to other persons, interested by the themes treated in this course.

Introduction and background information on digital literacy
Digital literacy refers to "the awareness, skills, understandings, and reflective approaches necessary for an individual to operate comfortably in information-rich and IT-enabled environments”. It is the ability to ‘get around’ safely and effectively in the new digital environment. Today our knowledge-based society requires it: a person has to effectively perform tasks in this digital environment. Being digital and information literate is crucial in order to participate in modern society, although not every citizen has the necessary means and resources to achieve these skills.

The Elderly are one of the most disadvantaged social groups in this aspect, due to knowledge/practice gaps, differences in technology uptake, complex product designs, and other factors such as lack of motivation and intergenerational communication. Digital skills are also increasingly required for performing instrumental tasks, such as searching for contacts, medical help, paying bills and taking part in democratic processes. To ensure that no one is left behind in today’s fast-changing world driven by technological advancement, it is critical for global citizens of all ages to have a set of digital skills to live, learn, and participate in modern society.

Content of the Handbook
The content of this Handbook includes the curriculum content used by educators in the organisations that deal with the education of elderly, as well as by the elderly themselves, and the serves training activities as an Online Academy.

This learning strategy provides for the teaching content of the ICT 4 the Elderly project, introducing 6 Competences Areas. Each of these is further deconstructed into several modules. Two of these competencies – security and privacy, self-organisation – will be horizontally introduced into various work sessions and should be followed in every spectrum of advancing the digital skills through the curriculum: