Perhaps one of the most rewarding moments in my life, came from teaching Seniors how to use the Internet.

This summer, I spent 3 months teaching weekly classes to seniors at a Senior center in Menlo Park. My students ranged from 70 to 88 years old. Most of them came in with limited internet skills but some minimum computer skills (they knew how to use the keyboard and mouse and most had some knowledge of email).

They started with very little. The ability to log into an email when the page showed up on their browser, and the ability to reply to emails. In many cases their children or grandchildren had created the accounts, configured their home pages and made it simple to do the same repeat tasks and then gone away/lost interest or had no time or skill to take them to the next step.

It was inspiring to see how the seniors did not think that the simple 'reply to my daughter's email' kind of internet usage was enough, they knew there was more and wanted to learn. Over the 3 months, they moved to an entire new level - from searching on Google, to looking up the weather, to getting directions on Yahoo Maps, to playing scrabble online and of course to many happy hours of YoutTube videos! I once had to move my 88 year old student away from Amazon and remind her that she was only allowed window shopping!

They enjoyed working together, discussing weather in their home towns, showing off images of the street they grew up on, and sharing recipes and health tips by sending web site links to each other.

I know they learnt a lot, but I think I learned a lot more. I learnt how to be patient, how to explain our unfriendly interfaces and our ever changing, poorly designed  web sites and most of all, I learnt that there is always more to learn. I hope that one day, I will be that 88 year old in some class somewhere, still learning.

p.s. I created notes for my class based on direct input from the seniors. (Seniors like having all instructions written down so they do not have to remember it all). These notes were not copied from anywhere, and are not necesarily the best comprehensive guide to the Internet, but they have been tested and used by actual seniors. They are available to anyone (you do not have to be a senior) online.

Check out http://learninginternet.pbwiki.com