The Digital Immigrants Survival Kit (the DISK project) was disseminated last week 27-28 January 2021at a Nordic Council of Ministers NordPlus conference in Sweden (online) hosted by the Swedish National Association for Distance Education (SADE). SADE is a partner in the NORDPLUS project How seniors learn digital skills in the Nordics and Baltic NPAD-2020/10169 funded by NORDPLUS Nordic Council of Ministers. The conference was a combination of the first partner meeting, but was also organized as an open conference. Read more about the conference and the preparatory events here (in Swedish). The presentations are available here
The aim of this thematic network project is to strengthen and develop co-operation between Nordic countries and Baltic regions on life-long learning for seniors and to learn and share ideas of digital skills teaching for seniors in different countries. Each participating organization organizes a meeting for other participating organizations to introduce its education, teaching methods and topics of digital skills. These meetings are intended for pedagogical staff and representatives of adult students (seniors) from each organization.
Expected outcomes of this project are sharing ideas of teaching digital skills and themes for new courses. Another important aspect of this project is to find new partners and get the possibility to continue partnership in the future. Participants are also getting to know the Finnish Geronet-project coordinated by Jyväskylä Summer University, which aims to promote seniors digital skills in the whole Finland (funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education)
The conference gathered some 35+ participants from Nordics, Baltics, other countries in Europe like, Portugal, Austria and Italy and even India was represented. Invited external speakers were Cecilia Bjursell, ENCELL, National centre for lifelong learning, Jönköping University Sweden, Susanne Iwarsson, Centre for Ageing and supportive environments Lund University (CASE), Lund University, Sweden and Ulli Samuelsson, Jönköping University Sweden. The partners from Finland, Ville Hirvikoski, Lithuania Jurgita Rotomskiene and Norway Sturla Bjerkaker shared their experiences from their organizations. SADE hosted the conference and Ebba Ossiannilsson (V President) and Ulf Sandström (President) moderated the conference and shared experiences and current initiatives of what is happening in Sweden.
The EU Project Digital Immigrants Survival Kit was presented by Ebba Ossiannilsson. The interest among the audience was very high, as the DISK project is very much aligned with the project discussed at the conference How seniors learn digital skills in the Nordics and Baltic NPAD-2020/10169. As both the project coordinator Pedro Ferreira and the initiator Peter Mazohl attended the conference there were possibilities to deepen the discussion, which was very lively and with a lot of questions and interest.
Program
Day 1: 27 January 2021 time 13.00 -18.15 CET
13.00 Welcome Ebba Ossiannilsson and Ulf Sandstrom, Swedish Association for Distance Education (SADE)
13:30 Introduction Ville Hirvikoski Project Coordinator, Summer University of Jyväskylä, FI.
14.00 Sturla Bjerkaker NO Seniornett, NO
14.15 Jurgita Rotomskiene, U3A, LT
14.40 EC Digital Action Plan
14.55 Futures of education: Learning to become. Swedish examples (among others Digital strategy plan Sweden)
15.45 Susanne Iwarsson, GenerationTech – Ageing, Technology and Health from a Generational Perspective. Centre for Ageing and supportive environments Lund University, SE
16.55 Reflections and Discussion
17.35 Mingel Partner meeting
Day 2: 28 January time 10.00 -13.00 CET
10.00 Reflections from day 1 Partner meeting
10.30 Cecilia Bjursell, Lifelong learning later in life, National centre for lifelong learning ENCELL, Jönköping University SE
11.00 Ebba Ossiannilsson Digital Immigrants Survival Kit (DISK EU project)
11.45 Ulli Samuelsson To be seen as a learning human and not a technical issue, Jönköping University SE
12.15 Lifelong learning
13.00 Reflections, actions forwards
14.00 Closing addresses, Partner meeting
The conference was held online and as a flipped conference, so a lot of materials and information were provided, both professionally and socially as PRE ENGAGEMENT EVENTS. As a conclusion of day 1, some social events were held, for example culture, music, nature, quiz, etc. During the conference, a renewed application to the Nordic Council of Ministers. for continuation and deepening of the current initiative was discussed, and could be submitted in time on 1 February 2021. Topic of the new project is DIGITAL SUPPORT: Guidelines for training the trainers to support seniors towards making daily life more easy in digital world.