One Digital Participants Making Waves: Part 1. East Renfrewshire

Volunteer Abigail Peters and I attended the Making Digital Everyday Training in East Renfrewshire on 7th March 2016. We run weekday day care clubs for seniors living within our community. These clubs are run by staff with the support of volunteers and I hoped to gain an understanding of how we can make better use of basic computer skills within our day centre. Our task now is to pass that information to our volunteers using our own workshops, who will then in turn be able to offer guidance to clients attending the clubs. We enjoyed meeting other volunteers and hearing how they use I.T. with their service users and the benefits they have experienced as a result. We were able to share lots of handy hints, tips, websites etc. The most important learning I gained from the day, was the need for internet safety with respect to personal information. Attention was also drawn to how people understand and process information and that we don’t all learn things in the same way. We run a variety of clubs at the day centre e.g. Arts and crafts, Culture Club, Discussion Groups. Our service users do sometimes ask for help with computer skills but we mainly use Skype, Google, YouTube to look up images, information and resources. We have recently secured funding for I.T. which we are hoping to use for tablets within the day centre. The internet is now such an important and useful tool for many reasons. We enjoyed taking part in the workshop; it was very motivational and informative. With the information given on the day and the online support offered, we should be more than able to make up a presentation for our volunteers. Many thanks for this opportunity. Jennifer Watson and Abigail Peters, Jewish Care Scotland. *If you would like to get involved in the One Digital training please take a look at our webpage for more information.