Adult education and the use of social open source tools

November 2nd, 2007

While it is widely accepted that life experience which elderly people bring with them is very relevant in senior education, recent research indicates that this is also true for ICT and specifically to design effective learning technologies, methodologies and content for the elderly.

Taking this into account, the APADIS project has initially explored learning technologies to foster group activities instead of individual ones, and strengthen specific social relationships. Social Web 2.0 technologies can play a key role in that.

At the Ágora School of Adult People in La Verneda-St. Martí (Barcelona, Spain), which is based on participation, in fact we have built:

• A virtual gallery based on Yahoo! Flickr, an online photo sharing system, that allows the elderly students to store and browse previously downloaded pictures and to share them with their friends at the school, and with grandchildren and adult children at home, online.
• A blog based on WordPress which enables the elderly to work collaboratively with other students on the same or different projects online.

Both technologies enable old people to demonstrate their ability to use computers to their social circles (namely, their grandchildren who are a source of motivation and adult children, who can play a negative role) by using the Web, which we have found to be one of the most relevant indicators of digital literacy amongst the social networks of elderly people. These technologies also support online group-related educational activities, which are much closer to the elderly than those individually-centred activities fostered by traditional learning methodologies.

More information:

What is APADIS? APADIS is a project funded by the Spanish IMSERSO intended to design and develop an online virtual learning environment using open source technologies that meet the educational needs of elderly people in both online and traditional learning. APADIS builds upon ABE Campus, an online campus for Adult Basic Education, open source (http://www.basicampus.net/), currently being used in a broad array of courses at Âgora. The project is coordinated by CREA, http://www.pcb.ub.es/crea

The paper accepted for publication at the ACM Crossroads, Meeting some educational needs of elderly people in ICT: Two exploratory case studies. by Sergio Sayago, Patricia Santos, Maite Gonzalez, Miriam Arenas, and Laura Lopez, provides more detailed information and analysis. Contact Sergio Sayago at his e-mail address at upf dot es.

Sergio Sayago, Josep Blat and Toni Navarrete. Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain)

Entry Filed under: Social Software, Culture of Sharing, Web 2.0