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Designing an Innovative Intergenerational Educational Program to Bridge the Digital Divide: The Cyber School for Grandparents Initiative

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Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Technology in Everyday Living (HCII 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13331))

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Abstract

The digitalisation of society may pose major challenges for active ageing promotion, representing a source of social exclusion for many older people lacking the basic digital skills. Older Italians are amongst the least digitally savvy in Europe. In this context, there is an urgent need for accessible and inclusive digital educational programs, targeting specifically the frailest group of the old age population. The Cyber School for Grandparents initiative is an innovative intergenerational educational program aimed at training secondary school students to become cyber tutors for their grandparents. The aim of this work is to present all the steps performed to design and implement the intervention in the school context and to perform a feasibility study on this educational experience, assessing pre-post changes on older adults’ digital skills, use and attitudes as well as monitoring students’ participation and learning outcomes. The study is ongoing and will provide useful information for the implementation of similar initiative in other contexts.

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Acknowledgements

The project was supported by the BiUniCrowd program and by Fondazione Comunitaria del Ticino-Olona. We are grateful to all of our donors, with special thanks to Lions Club Abbiategrasso and Manuela Magistrelli.

We thank the teachers of the Bachelet Institute for their valuable contribution to the project: Paola Cucchetti, Sara Mazzetto, Alexia Scimè, Laura Platti. We finally thank Elena Bitetto for her support during the crowdfunding campaign.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Golgi Cenci Foundation, Corso San Martino 10, 20081, Abbiategrasso, MI, Italy

    Elena Rolandi, Mauro Colombo, Roberta Vaccaro & Antonio Guaita

  2. Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 11, 27100, Pavia, Italy

    Elena Rolandi

  3. University of Milan-Bicocca, Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126, Milan, Italy

    Emanuela Sala

Authors
  1. Elena Rolandi
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  4. Roberta Vaccaro
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  5. Antonio Guaita
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elena Rolandi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Qin Gao

  2. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jia Zhou

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Rolandi, E., Sala, E., Colombo, M., Vaccaro, R., Guaita, A. (2022). Designing an Innovative Intergenerational Educational Program to Bridge the Digital Divide: The Cyber School for Grandparents Initiative. In: Gao, Q., Zhou, J. (eds) Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Technology in Everyday Living. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13331. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05654-3_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05654-3_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-05654-3

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