Ljubljana

The meeting was convened at STEP headquarters in the center of Ljubljana. We started earlier than anticipated and after the introduction of new participants  went straight to business. 

We presented the agenda and invited Isabel from Casa do Profesor to present the findings from the questionnaires that were administered during the training in Braga. The key insight is that participants were very positive about the training. They learned many new skills and liked the way the contents were presented. The WeCare project team came to the conclusion that the training could be even longer and perhaps done in shorter blocks, making it easier to follow for senior participants.

The Italian partners presented the website structure. We liked the simplicity of the project website. All key contents were there, and enough emphasis was placed on MOOC contents. We suggested some minor improvements and discussed the promotion of the website. We agreed that the webpage will be heavily promoted within our existing social networks as it will be very hard to count on high SEO rankings and organic growth of visitors.

After lunch, we went very thoroughly through the MOOC course. The MOOC parts were nicely edited and very clear. We discussed some minor improvements and talked about translations of videos. 

The last part of the first day was dedicated to dissemination. We agreed on a dissemination report and discussed additional promotional activities we can use. In the last part of the project, when contents are already settled, dissemination will be our main focus.

The second day was dedicated to ideas for future Erasmus+ projects. We envisioned many additional ways to build on the key project insights. We agreed that the WeCare! project was a very good base for a highly important topic. We aimed for a very simple approach, but for total beginners, we should aim for an even simpler, slower presentation of key contents. If we imagine a 75-year-old senior with no knowledge of technology, the contents will be harder to follow.

Another insight was related to technology. Laptops are the most intuitive tool for seniors, while smartphones are the most complicated to use. But ironically, seniors possess many more smartphones than laptops. One line of work could follow a step-by-step adaptation of the digital world on seniors' smartphones.

We could also put much emphasis on the practical use of technology, focusing on a few typical applications like e-banking, e-administration, or e-health. 

At the last line of thought, we explored the idea of using more advanced senior users as trainers for seniors who possess no such skills. We can learn and empower senior trainers to spread knowledge to beginners in the digital world.

We concluded the meeting with an overview of the final report and suggested improvements.