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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
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Marta Serra on Experiencing Web 2.0 for eInclusion
 Manresa was one of the first cities in Catalonia to draw up and implement a strategic plan to foster the information society. For the last two years, Manresa City Council has been working on the design, production, testing and implementation of a course especially tailored for senior citizens. The long-term objective is attempting to ensure that all people and generations have access to the Internet and a PC and possess adequate ICT skills. The addressees are mainly people who did not receive any vocational upper-secondary training. About 1,000 “senior” students – men and women in their 50s to those in their 80s - enrol for these courses every year. The main aim of this game-based learning approach is that the participants learn to use a GPS device, the Internet, Google Earth, Google Maps and communication tools like blogs, wikis, forums and flickr in an amusing way. Even though the GPS scene is quite young, we think that – alongside iPods, Weblogs and Wikis – it will become a very interesting device for people of all ages.  We offer various topics to make people acquainted with these tools. Moreover, the project focuses on basic skills like digital competence, communication, teamworking, conflict-solving skills and intercultural competence. One example is that participants create interesting content about their own regions. We see this as a real-world example of how Web 2.0 is transforming the learning process at all levels of education, from primary to lifelong learning. This would also seem to make it ideally suited to make people aware of diversity and improve their geographic literacy. What was rather charming and extraordinary about this project was that from the very beginning, some of the teachers were sixteen or seventeen-year-old students at one of the four high schools in Manresa. These young people took part in a course of twenty hours in which they learned how to teach adults, how to motivate them, how to explain things about ICT to them, how to speak in front of a class of adults, etc. Afterwards, they had to teach a class of twelve to twenty adults in pairs for twenty to thirty hours. The students were people who frequently produced comments like "I don't know the first thing about computers”, “I’ve never tried a mouse”, or “I'm afraid of all of this". In summary, the approach proved to be really great. Both sides, students and teachers, appreciated it a lot. Even better, some of these teachers still teach the adults. And the seniors for their part are also able to assist their mates in other classes now. The youngster-senior approach gave them self-confidence. Comments like, “We are not afraid to ask questions anymore”, “We feel like members of a family” and “These ‘teachers’ could be our sons or even our nieces” were heard frequently. For their part, the teenage teachers reactions included, “Now we realise how hard is to teach”, “This improves our understanding for our own teachers as well” and “Sometimes, you know things but when you have to explain them, you realise it's not so easy”.
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Marta Serra holds an Audiovisual Science degree from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The last five years she has been working at the Manresa City Council’s Information Society Department, concerned with promoting digital literacy among adults. She was previously a tutor and professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia) for three years. Widely experienced at presenting on a local, regional and national level, she has also participated in European projects such as ADAPT and Grundtvig. 
