Bridging the generation gap in Austria (BGG)

“Bridging the Generation Gap” is a project that brings together the younger generation with elderly people. Pupils and students explain elderly people the use and need of ICT.

Policy Context

The school project Bridging the Generation Gap was launched and engaged by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture and the Austrian Commission for UNESCO in the context oft the eFit-Strategy Austria and carried out by KulturKontakt Austria and education highway as technical partner in 2006. It was based on experiences made in the Austria-wide school project Bridging the Digital Divide in 2005 as a resault of The World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 in Geneva. Another impulse has been given by the Ministerial Declaration on the occasion of the Ministerial Conference “ICT for an inclusive society” in Riga in 2006 that emphasized the fact that many Europeans still reap few or no benefits from ICT and there are resilient gaps in ICT use, for example only 10% of persons over 65 use Internet, against 68% of those aged 16 – 24.

Description of target users and groups

Elder citizens lacking dital literacy

Description of the way to implement the initiative

Austrian primary and secondary schools, with special focus on UNESCO-schools, and also senior citizens institutions were invited to form tandems and participate in the project in the context of information gathering now and then; emancipation and mobility through knowledge; communication in january 2007. The pupils helped the elders to try out ICT and find out the specific surplus for their generation. The senior citizens told the pupils about how communication worked in former times. The interested teachers sent an application containing theme and reason, plan of activities, timeline, partner institution and financial plan until March 15th, 2007. A jury consisting of supervision of school, Austrian Commission for UNESCO and senior citizens association chose the projects which received funding up to euro 750,-. The tandems school/senior citizens managed their projects and documentated not only the final results but also the process using a technical platform in the www. They were supported by the technical partner education highway and the project bureau at KulturKontakt Austria. The projects were meant to be finished until May 25th. On June 20th the final event took place in Vienna, each participating school was invited to send one teacher, two pupils and two senior citizens to Vienna.

Technology solution

Within the project a flexible community tool with various modules for communication and publication was used as technical platform. The teachers and students received userIDs and passwords from the technical partner and could then easily logon to their subcommunity to use a weblog, a photo gallery, a HTML online editor. The communities‘ modules were closed during the project period and opened up to the public at the end of the project after the content had been finished by the schools. The secondary schools developed whole websites for this project to document their work done with their tandem institution. Therefore they received an account for webspace (supporting PHP4, Access- and MySQL databases) administrated by the technical partner. Technology choice: Standards-based technology

Main results, benefits and impacts

The project aims to enable elder citizens to discover the possibilities of ICT and use its potential to take part in civil processes and to tap digital information.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

The project is advertised on the website schule.at and promoted via a newsletter, presentations at schools and nursing homes and various events in Vienna.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - The establishing of partnerships between schools and senior citizens is possible if orientated as regards content and financially supported. Lesson 2 - Both pupils and senior citizens gained a great deal from the project: the pupils learnt from the elders‘ experiences and broadened their social competencies. The senior citizens lost their inhibitions of the ICT and felt taken seriously and highly regarded. Lesson 3 - The schools‘ possibility to take part in this project was strongly connected to the previous school’s ICT equipment and the teachers‘ knowledge – "beginners“ didn’t get enough support. Lesson 4 - The participation of less mobile senior citizens sometimes made complicated transportation solutions necessary. Scope: National