Attached the summarized research and actions working with older learners.

Dear Shan,

If helps, I have centralized some of the information concerning the Romanian research activity in the report that I've attached to this message. Mainly the document contains information that I have uploaded on the website.

Kind regards,

Tina

Dear all,

I hope that you had a wonderful Easter break. In Timisoara the whether is changing from one day to another, but we had some very warm and sunny days, so Easter was a good period for relaxation.

Before we started the computer lessons we've created a small exercise with our learners in order to find out some information about their favorite activity on the web and about the things that they will like to improve. Starting from the language booklets, our learners written some of the things that they enjoy to do on the web (represented by a blue card) and the things that they will like to work on (represented by a yellow card).

Blue card: "I like to read and send e-mails", "listening to music", "write Word documents", "look for different information on Google"

Yellow card: "search and find information on the web", "download pictures from the telephone and/or digital camera to the computer", "send e-mails", "change my password", "create an folder on the computer", "create a website", "insert documents on the web", "send e-mails to more than one person", "create Power point presentation".

As a general remark we can say that the level of using a computer or Internet depends on the social activity one is involved in. Some of the members of our group that are still working or are students at the University have better knowledge in this field. Usually they are put in the situation of creating different educational projects or professional reports and had to acquire specific knowledge about how computers work. Even so, they still feel the need to learn information like how to insert a part of a text/article/document into another document. People age 50+ that don't deal so much with computers need to acquire information at a different level. Usually other people have the tendency to ignore their need to learn more and new things about modern forms of communication.

Keep in touch!

Tina 

What (US) people are doing in the web

I guess it's not very different in Europe...

Hi everybody,

On Saturday we had a very good meeting with our learners. We talked about the "how to" courses and search on the web information about - guess what? - Llangollen. So we have found out that on Saturday in Llongollen were 5 degrees and it rained

We also have some general remarks about the group dynamic of our learners:

Learning behavior

Most of our learners declared at the biginning of the learning program that they learn better if they are together with other persons. After four months of weekly meetings, the learners became more engaged into learning activities and more attached to each other.

They have formed specific expectations about this experience - at the biginning of the lesson: they arrive early on purpose in order to spend some more time together and talk about their recent activitites, usually they do not enter in the training room; - during the lesson: they start the program and at a certain point they need to tack a short break and at this point they enjoy very much a cup of coffee or tea and some small snakes. This is also the moment when the group is complete (biginners and intermediate); - at the end of the lesson: they spend just a little more time to share impressions and ideas.

The weekly meetings have become an important point in their personal agenda and they prepare for each meeting. On Saturday for exemple Mariana was at a training course all day. Even so, she attended the meeting. She took advantage of the fact that lunch was between 13.00-14.00 and came to the English lesson. For Neli Saturday was also an important day. She received an award from the Faculty of Physics for her contribution to science. After the ceremony she came directly to the organisation and shared with with us her joy. The only regret that she had was that she had forgotten her learning book at home. Lili is also one of the members of the group that makes a lot of sacrifices in order to attend the meetins. Each Saturday she's working with her team of handball players and after the practice she comes from Buzias, eats something very quickly and joins the rest of the group. Eli is in the same situation. She comes from Mosnita each Saturday and she is the person that never missed a meeting.

This seems to be a result of informal learning. Each member of the group is responsible for the learning process. They know that if they miss one meeting they are the ones that ask for the materials. They even meet with other members of the group in order to recover the class. They know that the program established at the biginning can be negotiated in a way in which the learning objectives are still accomplished.

Learner's motivation

So far the English courses were their main motivation to follow the learning program. At the biginning of the learning program the learners have declared that they want to learn English in order to communicate with others.

At old age people feel the need to be independent and to be able to manage by themselves in different life situations. For the Romanian elders this means involving in different activities. one of the members of the group for example refuses to change her living conditions because this means that she has to move in a house faraway from the city. For her this means that she will not be able to visit her friends or participate in other activities becouse she will constantly ne asking her daughter to bring her in the city.

Since we have started to plan the Learning week we have notice that each of our learners had became more motivated to surf the Internet. It seams that they have started to see the use of Internet once they found a personal reason.

ICT difficulties

In order to realize the "how to" courses our learners started to describe and structured the course. They have a lot of ideas. Some of them are not yet accustomed to searching information on Internet. The main difficulty is when they introduce a certain word, the computer gives them a million results and they don't know which one is the good one. We will work on how to use Internet in our own advantage.

Keep in touch and wish you all a great week.

Regards,

Tina

Dear All

I need you to look at the activity sheets 1,2,3 in the research book. These are to help us get our own action research and has nothing to do with the general academic resaerch you sent be outlines of earlier.

You should be using these now to get your learners to record where they learn informally, what are the barriers to them and what helps them take part. These activities help people make clear what were the barriers to them individually and what helps them take part in this project. We need this information every 3 months so we can record progress of our learners...I need it so I can show in our research how our project methodology enables learners to remove barriers to learning or it may show us new barriers...please try the activity sheets out with a small number and send to me with translation. I can send you an example that VIV di here if it will help you understand what we need.

Thank you...Shan

Hi all, Ive put up a new link in the Research Book for you to check out.

A wealth of information there..

Hi all, Shan and Sheila, yesterday I had a meeting to record how to do "scarpets" with one of our learners called Lorena. We used the time also to start completing the activity sheet and we found some difficulties on completing the enabling participants, learner activity 3 about "identifying blocks and barriers". Lorena, apart from learning how to dance latin music (that for the moment is an activity not available in the group because nobady knows how to do it), has no interests, not on using ICT tools or digital cameras or video cameras or doing some communication learning or mentoring one......how can I continue with her on completing sheet n. 3 .

Another question is the learning activity 3 to be developped with contents of what they want to learn? Am I right?. Sara