This month, September 2023, my PhD research project came to life in a number of ways, largely due to the support of the Ideas Academy team of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland. I was fortunate to be part of a like-minded community of peers on the programme, all of us hoping to make a social impact with our projects. This week there was a graduation event with gifts, symbols, photos, speeches, poems, cake and lots of social media communications. Having had the experience of a module on social media with the wonderful Renée Mackey, I resisted the temptation of a celebratory post. Instead, I opted to take some time to reflect on the programme and share a blog post across the social channels, familiar and new, where I hope people will learn more about my Ideas Academy experience. Since I like to keep blog posts to about 700 words I will save content about my fledgling social enterprise Learning. Digital. Together. along with its pilot intergenerational learning project, Digital Drop-In, for later.
During July we had our first two modules expertly facilitated by Eileen Diskin, to understand the problem that as social entrepreneurs we have identified, and to and refine our planned solution to the problem. Note to self: I really have to get to grips with calling myself a Social Entrepreneur (with capitals) rather than referring to my social enterprise called Learning. Digital. Together. I’m getting there! Having identified a shortlist of my core strengths, take home work set by Claudia Geratz ahead of launch day, I was able to use these to think about the exercise Eileen set us, to arrive at a list of core values from an initial 230! For the record, mine are community, openness, learning, growth, quality. I then developed a core value action statement that ties in with the vision, mission and values of Learning. Digital. Together. – Encourage older adults to recognise everyday life learning as an opportunity to enhance quality of life.
Empathy research was central to Module 2, using observation, interviews and bodystorming. Of course I had my PhD interview data to leverage so this was useful. Alongside this interview data, I used observation and bodystorming to tell the story of a woman, let’s call her Maggie, whom I telephone on a daily basis as part of a volunteer programme. Maggie has used a few different mobile phones in the two-and-a-half years I have been calling her, does not use text messaging features, and cannot make an outbound call. Her daily helpers are unable to assist with any aspect of the phone and she relies on incoming calls for communication. CSO data from 2021 and 2022 indicates that almost half of those aged 75 years and older had never accessed the Internet, and it appears that many may not wish to. So, from a position of empathy, my project aims to support those who are already online and wish to develop and maintain their digital literacy skills. Digital Drop-In as proposed is not designed to help those without a digital device. My brand name, Learning. Digital. Together. also excludes this cohort of older adults. What to do? I can write a journal article using data from my PhD research and get it published as a starting point to focus on the recommendation above. Note to self: add to publications plan.
Alongside the module work for August, reading week at the Ideas Academy was scheduled towards the end of the month, and given the stage my website development was at, it felt like an opportune time to locate and read up on various policies necessary for a website that would translate well into the policies and statements page of learningdigitaltogether.com (we weren’t advised that we needed to read books or articles so I interpreted Éabha’s guidance loosely!).
I had been struggling a little with cookies policies during August and have to thank my colleague Hanching, from the wonderful Senior Paws (check out their website seniorpaws.ie) who set me on the right path looking for a WordPress plug-in to suit. There were many so I chose Complianz | GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent by Really Simple Plugins in the hope that it would be simple to set up, and it was! Thanks Hanching (pictured with me at this week’s graduation event) and Michael! Feel free to check out my story on the experience of building the website.
September for me was storytelling month with the wonderful Clare Murphy. I have always been aware of the power of telling a story and used vignettes in my PhD thesis to convey that ‘onliners, offliners and midliners‘ are real people with different experiences of using technology (see subsection 5.1 if interested in reading more).
As Tim Griffiths, CEO of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland said at our graduation event, ‘you are all now part of the SEI family’ or something close to this, and here’s the family photo. I like to think of us as a community-of-peer learners 😉
Until next time, Sandra
P.S. If you’re reading this on 1 October it just so happens to be the United Nations International Day of Older Persons, ‘an opportunity to highlight both the opportunities and challenges of later life.‘ I hope my work is making a contribution in some way.
P.P.S. Just under 900 words, five minutes to read, a bit longer than planned – sorry.
Sandra Flynn 
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