When my father retired, he wasn’t happy! A very active man, he turned his attention to turning from Medic to Geek! His office is full of the latest from Apple and he is a regular learning about technology in the Apple store in Manchester UK.

He was telling me his story of sharing his new found “geek” skills with his local community. It is a wonderful story that brings every aspect of “social” together, online and offline. It also shows the appetite for our older citizens to get on the technology revolution.

With high disposal income and time, they are a demographic that are lest forgotten, but are the fastest group adopting technology and social connections to make life easy from in-home shopping to staying in contact with their loved ones.

For politicians “Will a Perth Granny tweet Gillard or Abbott to glory” to companies wanting to market their goods, our older generation are online and readily able to absorb this technology and are actively seeking to do so.

Here is a very local story of silver surfers and social “media” in its most authentic sense – enjoy.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH SILVER SURFERS By Gordon Yates

In our village of some two thousand inhabitants we were very lucky to get appointed a new vicar who had great enthusiasm for her job and for the whole of the community. She was concerned that the church should be an important part of the community and make itself available to folk of all religious persuasions, or of none. Her very honest, down to earth and sensible approach was much appreciated and the villagers began to see the Church as a meeting place and a venue for all sorts of activities as well as the usual Christian services.

One of the vergers at the church wrote in the parish magazine that it was felt that many of the older members of the parish were losing out on the technological revolution that was taking part all around them and the church having now got broadband installed would be prepared to offer computer classes for anyone who felt they needed to learn how to use these machines and to catch up with the digital world which was surrounding them and by and large leaving them behind. So many of our elderly inhabitants feel they are drowning in a www world.

The notice in the magazine t our surprise brought a group of some twenty four elderly and middle aged parishioners to the first meeting. Some had tried attending classes at local libraries or colleges but had come away from these even more confused than when they started. We realised that one to one tuition on the student’s own laptop with the student doing all the manipulation was the only satisfactory way for them learn and retain their abilities. There is nothing more frustrating than having someone else, usually a grandchild grab the keyboard and flash their fingers all over it and produce a result leaving Granny utterly mystified

I was delighted to be asked to be one of the tutors and we made arrangements for a waiting list so that each person got to handle a laptop on their own with a personal tutor being available to point the way. For many it was a matter of how to open the case and switch on the computer. Having helped our students to perform this task without the fear that had initially accompanied this task we tended to ask what they would like to do rather than make them go through a formal course of lessons. Thus a pupil might say that they would like to be able to communicate with a family member by e mail. In this case we would help them to open up the e mail programme and find a few addresses and get them to type their first e mail. Sometimes it was a matter of sending an e mail across the room in the church to another pupil. The great joy to me was to see the pleasure on their faces as they left the church after an hour’s session feeling they had actually sent their first e mail. Others would request help in using a word processor and would then go home delighted with the ability to create their own customised letter heading.

As time progressed there was much fun to be had with the use of Google and I was thrilled to see the way some elderly lady, for example, when asked about any particular interest would say ‘cross stitching’ and then I would persuade her to get to Google and type in ‘cross stitching’. To get more than half a million references to her enquiry in the blink of an eye was wonderful to behold.

As we progressed several of our pupils asked about Skype and later told us of the excitement of speaking to (and seeing) their grandchildren in some distant part of the world. Google earth was a very popular download and for some of the elderly disabled they were introduced to on line shopping with huge enthusiasm. To shop without leaving the house was miraculous.

It is now just over a year since we started our village Silver Surfers service and a waiting list still remains. Our little gatherings have got a reputation beyond our village and we are now getting requests from the surrounding areas.

We made it clear that the whole project was free to all who came but a voluntary collection box was made available with the clear intent to everyone that half of any proceeds would go to the Church funds and pay for the broadband etc. The other half would go to a charity nominated by each of the tutors in turn. I was really delighted when it was my turn to nominate a charity and the sum of around £400 was sent to “Help for Heroes” thus making a little contribution to the welfare of our boys in Afghanistan.