Silver Surfers

by Julie Burgmeier

I headed out to La Conner Retirement Inn this morning with an agenda and an open mind.   What can be so hard about teaching seniors how to use facebook?  My mom is 77, and I taught her how to use facebook.  She has been using email for years, so picking up facebook was pretty easy for her.  I walk into the community room about 30 seconds before 10:00 thinking to myself  “Just Ship It”.

A couple of residents were in the community room eagerly awaiting my arrival sitting around the one community computer.  I quickly realize  the computer is under-utilized.  Issue #1:  The DSL line had to be taken out of the employees computer and plugged into the community computer in order to go online.  Issue #2:  There wasn’t an internet explorer icon on the desktop.  Issue #3:  The home page was internet explorer’s set-up questionnaire.  Issue #4:  Because the monitor was small and the font made large, the right page scroller was barely visible.

By the time I have things up and running there are seven residents sitting in a semi-circle in front of the computer.   Within about 5 minutes 1 resident was sleeping and 1 resident left abruptly.  That left me with Floyd (age 94), Alma (age 88), June (age 92), Terry (age 60), and Jeanette (age 84).   I  instantly become friends with them all.  They are so happy I am there, genuinely interested, and (except for Floyd) are starting with absolutely no knowledge of computers.   I am feeling like I’m some kind of computer rock star.

I start out by talking about the benefits of facebook gearing it toward seniors.

• stay connected & share photos with friends & family
•  form online communities
•  new friendships
•  share knowledge, wisdom and life stories (more on the life stories later)
•  explore your passions
•  play games to build your brain and challenge others

“Let’s get started!”,  I cheer.  We start with a quick facebook tour and walk-thru the set up process.  “I need a volunteer to go first,” I declare.  Who wants to go first becomes a group discussion topic.  The consensus is to have Floyd go first because he has the most computer knowledge.  But Floyd doesn’t want to take the limelight, and so we decide to start with June who is sitting closest to the computer.   June is sweet, gracious, and you just want to give her a big hug.   What I didn’t realize is that my conference goers would not even have an email address.  First order of business is to get June a gmail account.  Then it’s onto facebook set-up.  All goes smoothly.  We find June’s daughter-in-law and send out a friend invite.  June is looking satisfied by this first facebook experience.

“I want to find news online…How do you do that?” Alma asks.  Alma doesn’t want to sign up on facebook, but she does want to use the computer for news.  I surf to npr.org.  She wants me to click on health care, world news, and politics.  She seems satisfied.  The hour flew by, and I start to wrap things up.  My five attendees make it very clear that they want me back and make a point to line up the next two Mondays…same time, same place.  I ask them their thoughts on calling our group the Silver Surfers.  They chuckle and say they are okay with that name.  I was checking to make sure “silver” was not offensive in anyway to them.  What I realized later is that I didn’t explain why I was calling them surfers.   I guess we will cover that next Monday.