Connection Generations Through Technology

Our Student Technology leaders from our grade five classes would like to offer a series of workshops to Seniors from our community which would help them to be able to use their computers to be able to connect with relatives and friends more easily. The students would present three separate sessions (and perhaps more depending on the demand and response), which would focus on using Email, Skype and Facebook and Internet. The sessions would be held after school once a month for three months and would be an hour in length. The Grade five kids would be trained to present these sessions beforehand and would then be able to demonstrate their leadership skills by interacting and educating the seniors attending their sessions.

Update (March 21, 2012)

Connecting Generations Through Technology - The grade five boys and girls who had signed up to be part of our Student Tech Team got together a few times a week to put together a special presentation on setting up and using a Gmail Account. They all took parts of the presentation and made slides and a final power point presentation which they would discuss during the Gmail workshop.
The kids created advertisements for the Connecting Through Technology workshop and with the assistance of our Senior Centre in town, we posted them up throughout the community to get the word out. Thanks to the local newspapers we were also able to advertise through the media. We received 15 registrations for the workshop who all called the school to sign up and attend the Gmail session and many expressed an interest in also attending the other upcoming three sessions as well. The day before the session, a group of the kids phoned all the registrants to remind them of the session and welcome them to the school!
Our first session was held March 20th after school and we had coffee and tea and snacks available as the seniors came in to the workshop with the kids doing all the hosting, seating and signing in. They met them at the front door of the school and escorted them to the library as well, they had made posters and signs to put around welcoming them to the school. We also had name tags made up for all the kids.
The presentation was held and the kids were all extremely excited and a bit nervous, but they shared their slides and then all the kids sat down with the seniors to help them actually set up a gmail account. Of course, as with all technology, there were a few glitches along the way, but overall it was a super experience and we are now ready to meet with our next group in order to put together a presentation on Skype, and then our other two sessions on using Facebook and exploring the internet.

Update (June 15, 2012)

Connecting Generations proved to be a very successful program and was a rewarding experience for all involved. The kids were able to present a session once a month on the topics of Gmail, Skype, Facebook and searching the Internet. We had roughly the same amount of seniors attend each session and the kids were able to phone them prior to each session to remind them of the date and welcome them back. There were some important ties made between the community and our school kids and I know that the social interactions between the seniors and kids was an integral component of this program's success. This was something we plan to do again next year and even had one senior offer to provide funding if we needed it to help support it again! Even though the budget went over, our school was able to subsidize the cost of this worthwhile project. This project also had a very important leadership role for students in that they did the majority of the work and were extremely excited to put together the advertisements for the session (which were posted around the community), make the certificates to give the seniors, provide notes and sign in sheets, direction posters for once they were in the school and much more. They loved making the coffee and tea for the participants, welcoming them in the front doors and sitting with them to teach something new. This was probably one of the most successful and worthwhile projects we have run at this school with a great positive outcome for all!