Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

kopiascsaba.hu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 98 posts

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#21

Post by Dr3xus »

kulshan wrote: post #19

I manage a Digital Literacy Program for seniors. This is a great idea. But for example, most seniors I work with are total beginners. Simply getting to signing up for an udemy course and figuring out player controls on this course are pretty big obstacles. The long running "Easy Tablet Help for Seniors" is much simpler and free. Sorry! Don't want to discourage your work though!

Can you share resources which you feel are the most useful for a beginner? I've been looking for course material for my mother.

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#22

Post by iamben »

Hey this is great - just had a look for my mum! Couple of questions (which without watching are hard to answer) - why the modules on the F-Droid App Store and Firefox? As a (young(er!)) Android user I've used neither and would be unlikely to. I can't imagine my mum would use anything other than Play and Chrome, so it feels a little 'too far' for me, confusion for the sake of it?

Also a suggestion - pretty much everyone uses WhatsApp in the UK, mostly everyone I know will be in a WhatsApp group with their parents (and/or grandparents!). Definitely worth adding that as a module!

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#23

Post by kulshan »

Dr3xus wrote: post #21
kulshan wrote: post #19

I manage a Digital Literacy Program for seniors. This is a great idea. But for example, most seniors I work with are total beginners. Simply getting to signing up for an udemy course and figuring out player controls on this course are pretty big obstacles. The long running "Easy Tablet Help for Seniors" is much simpler and free. Sorry! Don't want to discourage your work though!

Can you share resources which you feel are the most useful for a beginner? I've been looking for course material for my mother.

Overall, Senior Planet from AARP has some great resources. They even run support groups for victims of fraud. https://seniorplanet.org/on-demand/

Generations is pretty good if not a little dated but all free. http://www.generationsonline.com/

Drive your learning is great collaboration between AT&T and Digitunity. I'm uncertain if every course is free but I'm really loving their cybersecurity lessons. http://www.driveyourlearning.org/

Oasis has some great videos as well. Again, I appreciate their safety lessons. https://connections.oasisnet.org/Safety/

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#24

Post by pessimizer »

kcsaba2 wrote: post #11
quasse wrote: post #4

Did you test your course on any elderly people as you were developing it? What did you learn from that, if so? Did it require changes that were surprising?

I wanted to:) And you know what the funny thing is, if i give the course for free, no-one watches it. I did reach out to several people in my friendship, gave them free the course just to get feedback. None of them watched it, so thats very, very surprising for me. Maybe i should go up to random strangers and PAY THEM in order to give them something that would benefit them - and maybe get some feedback:)) But on the…

> Maybe i should go up to random strangers and PAY THEM in order to give them something that would benefit them

It may not benefit them, it hasn't been tested. It will benefit you, because it will provide testing.

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#25

Post by bloomingeek »

As a now retired guy who grew up loving to question almost everything, it was easy for me to get into electronics when I was able to. (I was a little late, not until my mid thirties.) I especially love reading manuals from the things I purchased.

However, I noticed that a lot of people my age didn't share my interest in this area. I helped as often as they would let me, but to a man, they just weren't willing to take the time to get interested. They just wanted their stuff to work. They also had no idea of all the features their products were capable of performing. (Cellphone anyone?)

I've often wondered if it was the way I was 'wired' or if I just had the urge to know these things. Well done on the project!

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#27

Post by suzzer99 »

RankingMember wrote: post #3

I love how exhaustive your approach to documentation is here, because (like you said) it really does need to be to be truly useful. If the user doesn't know how to get to "Contacts", saying "Start by opening Contacts" does them no good and just discourages them.

Yes. My dad needs very explicit step-by-step instructions. Even to the point of I can't just say hit Ctrl-C. I have to tell him to hold down the Control key and then hit the C key while still holding down the Control key.

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#28

Post by cruffle_duffle »

pinum wrote: post #18

This looks like it could be very valuable for quite a lot of people- thank you for making it! Just a couple first impressions from your site... loading it on a phone, the first thing I see is this: https://imgur.com/4maP1vV (1) The entire contents of the site is completely covered by a cookie warning. This is honestly quite annoying even for an SWE like me, never mind your target audience. I know at least one older p…

People should just stop including those warnings. Unless they are a google, FB or some other juicy politically rich target for the EU to make an example of, they are a complete waste of time. Nobody is going to hassle you about it.

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#29

Post by kcsaba2 »

pinum wrote: post #18

This looks like it could be very valuable for quite a lot of people- thank you for making it! Just a couple first impressions from your site... loading it on a phone, the first thing I see is this: https://imgur.com/4maP1vV (1) The entire contents of the site is completely covered by a cookie warning. This is honestly quite annoying even for an SWE like me, never mind your target audience. I know at least one older p…

Thank you so much for the feedback, that pesky banner indeed. I have fixed both issues. I mean the banner is still annoying, but way smaller.

Re: I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

#30

Post by kcsaba2 »

bloomingeek wrote: post #25

As a now retired guy who grew up loving to question almost everything, it was easy for me to get into electronics when I was able to. (I was a little late, not until my mid thirties.) I especially love reading manuals from the things I purchased. However, I noticed that a lot of people my age didn't share my interest in this area. I helped as often as they would let me, but to a man, they just weren't willing to take…

I understand that, I'm like that as well. And not many in my circles are similarly wired. I like to tinker with electronics and different systems and also as a SWE coding random stuff, but not everyone is wired like that.

Long time ago when we were moving, i found an old school book of mine from 7th grade elementary: there was a kid with a wrench repairing a bicycle on the front cover. I remember thinking: thats not really a thing anymore.

Post reply on HN