Does Not Compute

On Silvers Surfers Day (May 15 2009) I was privileged to be part of the most exciting and stimulating event I have witnessed in my 4 years being involved with SSD. The event was hosted by Chesham HighSchool where residents from three sheltered housing schemes (part of Paradigm Housing Group) together with ‘Silver Surfers’ from the local public came to the school to ‘have a go’ at using the Internet, understand more about the capabilities of computers and the benefits of ‘getting on-line’.

The tuition took place in one of the school’s IT Suites and the instructors were Yr 9 (14 year) students who ensured they paired up on a 1-to-1 basis with the silver surfers and most competently helped them brush up on their computer skills or explained the basics if they were complete beginners. It was a pleasure to  watch the inter-generational interaction taking place.

One of the silver surfers was the Mayor of Chesham, Cllr Alison Pirouet, who opened the days’ proceedings. When attending the computer session The Mayor did the ‘reverse inter-generational’ tuition by demonstrating to the pupils, areas on the Chesham Council website which would be of interest to younger people.

The first ‘taster’ session was followed up, in a separate classroom, by a webcam link (via Skype) to a small rural village, Brenu, in Ghana where local elders and young students had gathered to participate in a debate about the inter-relationship between old and young within their respective communities. We were watching cultural differences come alive; the effect was mesmerising.

When the debate was over (far exceeding the time allocated!) we all waved good-bye to our new friends and reluctantly cut the link with the waving, smiling peoples of Ghana thousands of miles away.

Later in the day, after another silver surfer taster session the international debate theme was repeated, this time with a school in the suburbs of Paris - where a similar sequence of activities was repeated. This time the interchange using ‘simultaneous’ translation lent another interesting dimension and it was pleasing to watch the local Chesham students interact in fluent French.

In all and emotional and stimulating day – for old and young whether technophiles or not.

Well done to all at Chesham High, who also hold regular surgeries to help residents at nearby Cromwell House, for all the work in organising this event.

See this blog post for some of the ‘prep’ that went into the making of the event, here.

May 20th, 2009 brianeisenberg | No Comments »

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