EduWeb News
On the 20/6/18 in Bournemouth University, the Eduweb event on adults’ education was successfully delivered. The event was part of Bournemouth University’s 3-day-long Festival of Learning attracting thousands of visitors. Combined with the "Ageing well: innovations for greater health and wellbeing" event led by BU's Ageing and Dementia Research Centre, a whole day was dedicated to offering a unique experience in personal development, education, well being and inclusivity.
The 3rd Multiplier Event was entitled: Combatting identity theft amongst silver surfers using Eduweb, placing a particular focus on cyber security and leveraging the expertise of the BU’s team, as well as addressing one of the main concerns of the Senior citizens community on identity theft following a tax return phishing scam.
The day commenced with the Ageing well workshop, where the adults participated in a number of physical activities, including Tai-Chi and during the afternoon they moved into the cyber space, practicing their skills in detecting phishing attempts and dating scams, through the EduWeb elearning platform. The enthusiasm and participation of the pupils of the Winton and Glenmoor Academies is noteworthy.
In preparation to this event, the Assisted Learning Technologies Symposium on the 21st of May 2018 was a critical milestone where the pedagogical aspects of the project were presented to an audience of 40 experts – such as Professor Nigel Harris from Designability, who create products to increase dignity, confidence and independence for over 250,000 people with reduced abilities. The feedback received contributed to the delivery of a successful event.
This project explores the gap in knowledge amongst the elderly and technology. For the majority of elderly people’s lives technology did not exist and many have not adapted to the newly connected world, leaving them digitally illiterate. Current technology is evolving rapidly in a way that many day to day activities are becoming solely online signifying that getting online is crucial. However, although elderly people are starting to successfully use the internet, they do not have any knowledge of the dangers associated. Elderly people are classed as a vulnerable demographic and therefore exposing them to the dangers of being online increases their vulnerability. There are few pedagogies available for the education of elderly peoples online safety, and those that are available do not get utilised. This paper is examining the current solutions for this problem area and proposing a new pedagogy in which young, educated individuals teach the elderly about their online safety.