Multiplier Event

On July 27, 2019, DIAL Conference on Senior Digital Skills was held at the Riga Vef Hotel, Riga. During the event, anyone interested could learn about the project’s goals and results, learn about the importance of digital environment management nowadays, find out about good practice examples of senior citizen involvement in social activities in Latvia and Portugal, and get to know visual recordings with Dace Andersone.

The DIAL project on Senior Digital Skills is running from October 2017 to September 2019. This Erasmus + Strategic Partnership project has reached it’s set goals, i.e., conduction of a senior citizen survey in four European countries, which concluded what computer skills seniors want to learn, resulting in the creation of digital learning materials. Attendees of the conference (both in-person and in the virtual environment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jle-R7qsMY&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1kF14sb_NpjAcbCnA4EUqnlOTZCHYAv7QCKOTTFtZF) were informed about survey collection, result analysis and material development processes. It has already been reported that the developed training materials will be available to any senior who wants to learn basic digital skills on the Moodle platform (http://moodle.dialproject.eu/).

Ina Gudele, member of the board of the Internet Associatio of Latvia, gave an insight into how digital our daily lives have become, presenting both opportunities and threats and what future trends in this area will affect each of us, including seniors. Liga Miķelsone, Head of Business Support Unit of Zemgale Region Competence Development Center (ZRKAC), shared examples of good practice with senior citizen involvement in social and lifelong learning activities in Jelgava County, including a review of the training session organized by the DIAL project in July 2 2019, bringing together the two target groups of the project, seniors and young people, to get familiar with and use the learning materials developed in the DIAL project.

The DIAL project helped raise awareness not only of the need and interest in seniors’ digital skil development, but also of seniors’ opportunities to be active overall. Drawing on the good practice from the DIAL project partner RUTIS (Portugal) on running Senior University for many years, DIAL’s Leading Partner, Project Net, decided to live by their example and announced that they will introduce the Senior University or in other words the Third Generation University also in Latvia. During the conference, it was solemnly announced that in the autumn of 2019, a branch of the Latvian Senior University would open its doors, meaning that it would be the 347th branch of its kind in the world.

During the conference, visual recordings were made by Dace Andersone, stimulating participants’ interest in the technique. Andersone took a moment to give visitors a glimpse of the concept of visual recording, inviting participants to try their hand at using visualization techniques with practical examples.

“DIAL” is an Erasmus+ strategic partnership project in the Adult Sector targeting mainly elderly people. The main aim of the project is to provide intergenerational and Life Long Learning opportunities to grandparents to acquire essential digital competences that will enable active ageing and access to the e-word.
The Erasmus+ project “DIAL” is co-funded by the European Union. Find out more about Erasmus+ program on https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/node_en
This publication reflects the views of the author. The managing authority of the programme is not liable for how this information may be used.