Free IT courses for pensioners, housewives, retired Croatian Homeland War veterans, disabled war veterans and other disabled persons last for 40 hours, and we asked the course-takers who’ve been attending the courses for three weeks in three IT centres in Rijeka about their experiences so far.
The IT class of the education centre “Astoria” was the place for some course takers where they accessed PC-s for the first time, while the others, already had some previous knowledge. Although for a majority of them PC handling was the great unknown, the initial fear of the unknown disappeared already at the beginning. They said that the patience with which their course instructor held the course had largely helped them.
The course-takers are very satisfied with all that they learnt about PCs and the Internet, and although they have just slightly opened the door to information technology, they have already put in practice the acquired knowledge – namely one course-taker bought a PC as soon as the course started, the others received PC-s as a gift and some of them applied their first knowledge about PC-s in their associations and clubs dedicated to third agers.
Namely, part of the course-takers, comes to Astoria from the Kantrida Elderly Club, where recently, during the inauguration ceremony, the IT Institute of the City of Rijeka donated one PC with all the belonging equipment and the installed programmes. In this way, all the club members who attended free IT courses have an opportunity to use their knowledge, while the course-takers are already impatient not only to find out everything that the PC can do, but to transfer their knowledge to other people.
Course instructor Vitomir Maričić confirmed that the participants were very motivated and interested in the course, and the course-takers themselves affirmed that they were mostly interested in the Internet. They have already “googled” all about Vitomir and his sports successes – ready to adopt all that the Internet offers, with equal persistence and wish with which their instructor last year conquered Mount Kilimanjaro.
The interest expressed by course–takers in free IT courses was best illustrated by Marino Čikeš, an education instructor at the Youth Centre Rijeka, who after a completed two-hour lesson can again hear the same words: Can it be over already?!
By all means, their high motivation stems from the same reasons that pushed them to enrol in the course – first of all, to keep up with the times! The third agers who are most often course-takers are particularly attracted to possibilities that PC-s and the Internet offer, like for instance, simpler and cheaper form of communication with relatives and friends scattered around the world, reading news at no cost. They also joined the course because they were driven by the desire to gain further education or a possibility to keep fresh their brains which over years became addled. One course-taker recognised that at the beginning she did not know how to operate the mouse, but now it seems to her that her friends who know nothing about PC-s and the Internet live in the Stone Age.
The lessons learnt during the lecture, explained by a very patient and systematic instructor, are repeated on an available PC. Some of them decided to use one of many PC-s used by their younger family members only after completing the course, while some of them can hardly access PCs because of younger family members. Some of them decided to acquire a PC and submit an application for Internet connection, and some of them repeat the acquired knowledge at the clubs for pensioners and elderly people. One course-taker thought that all the costs relating to the purchase of a PC and payment of internet transactions were too high in regard to her circumstances as a pensioner, but her daughter and granddaughter managed to persuade her in the end to enrol in the course and she has never regretted it!
Not only do they have an opportunity to learn something new and useful, but information courses are also places of socialisation, and some course-takers shared their secrets with us how they were thinking of sending an application for an advanced IT course to be able to further socialise.
The main reason of the group attending the advanced IT course at the Centre of technical culture Rijeka was the wish to deepen the acquired knowledge. Thus, among others, they learnt how to send photographs with an attachment, "burn" CD-s and arrange photo albums and their course instructor Milica Vlaisavljević-Maćešić, for whom they have only words of praise, discovered some secrets of digital photography, among others, how to take pictures through a window.
In addition to the fact that the knowledge acquired from the course will help them to use PC-s in an easier manner and to easier communicate with the world via e-mail and Skype, they are particularly rejoiced at the fact that their family photo albums will be much more beautiful and organised in a more quality manner. One course-taker did not know anything about digital photography until the course, and now she takes great pride in showing her colleagues photos taken during excursions.
As they say, the actual application of everything they have learnt will follow after the course has been completed. The participants thanked the City of Rijeka for having enabled them to attend basic and advanced courses. Apart from the fact that PC-s and the Internet will make their everyday life easier, many participants will transfer their knowledge to other people. Namely, these persons are very active in pensioners’ clubs and war veterans’ associations, and their participation in courses, in a certain way, is a gift for their great activity, as well as a certain impulse that in their surroundings they become those who will teach other people IT skills.
The participants in the advanced course are familiar with the EGOV4U project, based on the huge enthusiasm with which they attend the course, and some of them already help their colleagues in their clubs or associations, we believe that they would contribute to the successful implementation and realisation of the final goal of the E-Government for you project : that, by using PC-s and the Internet, the largest possible number of people are connected and activated, thus avoiding that any person is left out of the social life due to his/her old age or any other circumstances.
(S.R.)