An interesting method in Italian schools

Italian primary and secondary school students are taught to computer over the age of sixty-five. Three thousand students participate in digital education. 

"I don't know if the computer has changed my life, but it is certain that I feel connected to the world. I looked up on the Internet what kind of illness my husband has, I can check my bank account and I also read news portals," said 81-year-old Maria Di Caro, one of the students of the computer courses launched for the third generation, to the press.

More than four thousand people over the age of 65 have joined an educational program called Nonni su Internet (Grandparents on the Internet). A total of one hundred and fifty schools have launched a computer training course at the Mondo Digitale (Digital World) Foundation, which has organized more than 12 older students in the last ten years to learn web skills. The thirty-hour course starts by turning on the computer and ends using Skype.

Schools provide the space, students teach, and the elderly try to keep the rhythm dictated by the young. "The first thing they want to learn is how to use e-mail. I thought they would be boring and slower, but the elderly follow their instincts just like us young people, and they also don't like it when they think they are not capable of something," said a 16-year-old teacher about his experience. Last year, ninety percent of 18-year-old Italians used the Internet, and a quarter of those between sixty and sixty-four. Their proportion in 2006 was only twelve percent.

Source: MTI