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| Seniors go tech-savvy |
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With changing times, elderly people are now learning computer skills to keep themselves updated, writes Tina Susman
THIRTY senior citizens squeezed around a long table designed for about
20, the crush made tighter by canes, walkers and wheelchairs. As late
arrivals wriggled between others in search of a seat, snippets of
conversation floated from the chatty crowd.
“I don’t have a computer. I don’t have any of that Google stuff,” one
exasperated woman said. “Facebook? What’s that?” another asked loudly,
to no one in particular. “It’s a program. It’s a computer program,” a
man responded knowingly, displaying a confidence rarely seen in the
75-and-over age group when talk turns to laptops, PCs, iPads,
smartphones and all that comes with them.
That’s why these seniors had gathered at the Hallmark, their assisted-living facility in Lower Manhattan.
They wanted to begin the task of catching up with a technical world
whose rapid-fire evolution has left much of America’s oldest generation
isolated from its children, grandchildren and tech-savvy friends.
“It’s so hard to do. But at least I’ve stopped crying,” said Roz Carlin,
92, speaking for many as she described breaking down in tears when she
first tried using a computer. Like most of the students, Carlin
initially resisted the technology until her daughter forced the issue by
giving her an iPad.
Now, after mastering email, she was back to learn more. Their teachers
were students from New York’s Pace University who earn credits
participating in a programme to bridge the gap created by the computer
age. “Let’s face it -- 20 per cent of the population is going to be over
65 by 2050,” said Jean Coppola, a gerontologist and information
technology professor at Pace who launched the programme after officials
in Westchester County, north of New York City, asked the university to
conduct a computer seminar for senior citizens in 2005.
It proved so popular that Coppola expanded it, and it has become a model
for similar efforts nationwide. She now has more seniors clamoring for
the seven-week course, at senior facilities in Manhattan and in
Westchester, than she has students to teach them.
Like the seniors signing up for the once-a-week tutoring sessions,
Coppola knows that it is best to look outside the family for someone to
teach elders the art of double-clicking, dragging and dropping,
emailing, and ignoring spam that promises fabulous wealth or a free
cruise.
“A son or daughter can’t teach the 80- or 90-year-old computers,” said
Coppola, who tried to teach her grandmother computer tricks. “There’s
too much baggage there -- emotional baggage. People get very funny --
they don’t have the same patience with their mom or their dad or older
relatives that they have with a stranger.”
The gap between young and old quickly came into view as the seniors
introduced themselves to their tutors, most of whom were in their early
20s.
There was Dorothy, an elegant woman in a red vest, whose children had
insisted she get a computer. She compared using it to trying to
understand a second language. “It’s that foreign to me,” she said.
Several had taken the course before but had forgotten what they learned
or were hampered by poor eyesight and other limitations, such as
arthritic fingers and fading memories.
Virtually all of them, though, said they needed to learn so they could
keep in touch with distant relatives and friends, and see photographs of
children and grandchildren. “It scares me,” Edythe Eisenberg said of
her iPad. “But when I call my kids and grandkids they don’t call back,
so I have to use email.”
Before the one-on-one tutoring sessions could begin, students were put
through what Coppola calls “sensitivity training,” a class designed to
give the young teachers an idea of the ailments facing their elderly
charges.
It is conducted by Sharon Stahl Wexler and Lin Drury, registered nurses
and Pace professors who work with Coppola on the program.
“We’re going to have a lot of fun!” Wexler told the slightly
dubious-looking young crowd as she and Drury passed out props. They
included earplugs to stifle hearing; unpopped popcorn to put into shoes
to give the feeling of corns and calluses; tape to bind fingers into
arthritic-like claws; glasses to emulate vision problems.
For extra credit, there were adult diapers, which students were invited
to dampen and wear for a few hours while seated in front of a computer.
MCT News Service |
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