Hello Israel

Tonight we were fortunate in having a web conference with Itai in Israel who has designed software specifically for senior users to access their email. We were able to see a demonstration of the software and our very own eloquent senior student, Robin was able to add his viewpoint too. It was really useful to consider the design features that Itai had identified as we are in the process of building our own website so want to make sure like Itai that we have considered all the factors. We are going to trial the software and send our feedback to Itai at Red Stamp Mail. Also, as we are part of the Digital Inclusion Network we have sent him details of our contact at Age Concern so that other silver surfers here in the UK might take advantage of the software features.

It was such a positive experience and good to know that all sorts of individuals and companies are looking for ways to attract the older population to digital technologies.

Plans for 2011

We started the year with a planning meeting before launching into lessons again. We have split back room duties between marketing and the web team as there is a lot to do besides our regular teaching slots. Good job there are eight of us now!
On 11th we were glad to see our regular students return, as eager as ever to learn more about emerging technologies. Also, we had a visit from Alex who works for Bournemouth County Council - he spoke with us about our training and spoke to our students too. He was really impressed by our work and said he would "spread the word" as best he could to encourage more folk to come along. After that our business partners Redweb came by to catch up on progress for the BIMA challenge. Beccs came with Martin, as she is a project manager and wanted to show us how we could use Project Manager to schedule our work. It was really interesting but also quite a shock how quickly we arrived at the end of April. This is our deadline for the web build, so we now know just how important it is to do the planning. Ellie was elected project manager and Martin said she will have to shout and be bossy to keep us on track ;o)