Introduction
Throughout time, technology advances with each passing generation, however, with each generation there is something lost. Whether it be in translation, the actually technology itself or the fear of technological advances and advantages that cone with our ever changing environment Which leads us to the purpose of my research: to aid in the advancement of the senior citizen knowledge of technology and to obtain a better quality of life for the ones with health issues and disabilities. This will help senior citizens obtain a better relationship with technology, and in return gives the senior with disabilities and health issues a better quality of life. This allow senior a chance to live by themselves with smart home technology and over come disability and health issues. Families with disabled senior citizens are very interested in this research because it will allow their family member to stay home by themselves knowing that they are safe at home. This also cuts down of the cost of having personals nurses or sending their family member to nursing homes. This approach is different from the current research, because it attempts to teach the basic of computer literacy with computer literacy class. Allowing them advance on their knowledge of technology while interacting technology itself.
Approach: Computer Literacy
As it was mentioned in the introduction this research computer literacy classes were given to any participating senior citizens. In all we taught five computer literacy classes. The first computer literacy class was called: Mousersize. This lesson was to teach them not to be afraid of the mouse and that its ok to make mistakes when using the mouse or technology in general. It was important to make this the first lesson, so they could learn the how to maneuver on the computer screen and know the difference between right and left click, links in text vs regular text. The next lesson was about key combination. This allowed the seniors to have a different way to navigate through the different screens. From my observation the seniors like using the key combinations better than the mouse because it allows them to move at their speed. In the third lesson we talk about web browsing, the dangers of the internet, and computer privacy. This lesson was to educate the senior citizens on the trade off of using the internet and giving them the ability to access your online searches and how to avoid adds. When this lesson was being taught everyone in the senior center turned and listened as the lesson was being taught. In the final lesson we discussed email, which proved to be the most difficult. The email lesson proved to be difficult because of the different section of the mail and having the ability to type without looking at the keyboard. When we first told them to log into the email they were very skeptical because they had never used emails before and thought they needed one to learn this lesson. In this lesson we provided temp emails that allowed them to send email back and forth with Dr. Anderson. In the instruction we gave them step by step instruction and pictures demonstrating how to write and send an email to Dr. Anderson. The other objective besides teaching senior citizens how to send emails was incorporate the skills that they have learned into one objective. The senior citizens cleared every objective set for the computer literacy classes. By the end of classes every senior citizen felt more comfortable with using computers and browsing the internet.
Approach: Designing a Pearson Email Service
While the regular email services such as gmail, yahoo, or AOL are great for the younger generation for sending and receiving emails, but not for senior citizens. When senior citizens try to use regular email service they are overwhelm with all the extra links and buttons on the page. One solution besides giving them extensive email classes is to design and build a email service that uses the original email form google and reorganizes it to show it in a more simpler format that only shows the inbox, compose, and sent box. The first step in doing so is to find the back end of an email service. Which leads to the emailjs-imap-client github repository. The second step was to find a web application that was flexible with a node.js web application framework. The list of applications were Express, RainLoop, or RoundCube. In the end we used express as our web application because it specifically did not use plugin, which were use for different applications. After that node and npm are required to help with operations of the email services. Node is a application that is used to build network application, and npm which is a node package manager used to organize the packages needed for node to work. Once all the required programs are downloaded you have to plug in all the different pages in their right folder locations. In these folders there are JavaScript, Jade, and CSS files. Each file is used to complete the overall look and feel of the email service and the interaction between each file with another. One part of the java script file is to link the jade file to itself, so that is can apply the information listed into its correct location on the web page. The jade files are a temple engine used to place each element of each page of the email and to add the different buttons and links to each page. Another function of the jade files is to link the corresponding CSS files to it. The CSS are the style sheets of the email service, which give it color and allows to section off parts of the page for certain information. Once all the files are created and designed the email service can be launched through the command line using the command npm start.
Conclusions
Even though senior citizen have different challenges every day, technology shouldn't be one of them. The only way to close that gap is to educate the elderly so they can use technology to their advantage. Once we can completely close the fear of technology we can implement it in aiding them, especially who are either disabled or have health issues. Technology is always helping humanity in our daily lives, now is time to put it to use for many senior citizens who need help in their daily lives.
Citations
1. Brite Schiffhauer, Jasmin Bernotat, Friederike Eyssel, Rebecca Brohl, and Jule Adriaans. Let the User Decide! User Preferences Regarding Functions, Apps, adn Interfaces of a Smart Home and a Service Robot. Bielefeld : s.n.
2. Emailjs-Imap-Client. GitHub. [Online] GitHub.Ink, 2012. [Cited: May 30, 2018.] https://github.com/emailjs/emailjs-imap-client.
3. Jade Language. jade-lang.com. [Online] [Cited: June 7, 2018.] https://github.com/emailjs/emailjs-imap-client.
4. w3schools. w3schools.com. [Online] schools.com. [Cited: July 2, 2018.] https://www.w3schools.com/css/.
Throughout time, technology advances with each passing generation, however, with each generation there is something lost. Whether it be in translation, the actually technology itself or the fear of technological advances and advantages that cone with our ever changing environment Which leads us to the purpose of my research: to aid in the advancement of the senior citizen knowledge of technology and to obtain a better quality of life for the ones with health issues and disabilities. This will help senior citizens obtain a better relationship with technology, and in return gives the senior with disabilities and health issues a better quality of life. This allow senior a chance to live by themselves with smart home technology and over come disability and health issues. Families with disabled senior citizens are very interested in this research because it will allow their family member to stay home by themselves knowing that they are safe at home. This also cuts down of the cost of having personals nurses or sending their family member to nursing homes. This approach is different from the current research, because it attempts to teach the basic of computer literacy with computer literacy class. Allowing them advance on their knowledge of technology while interacting technology itself.
Approach: Computer Literacy
As it was mentioned in the introduction this research computer literacy classes were given to any participating senior citizens. In all we taught five computer literacy classes. The first computer literacy class was called: Mousersize. This lesson was to teach them not to be afraid of the mouse and that its ok to make mistakes when using the mouse or technology in general. It was important to make this the first lesson, so they could learn the how to maneuver on the computer screen and know the difference between right and left click, links in text vs regular text. The next lesson was about key combination. This allowed the seniors to have a different way to navigate through the different screens. From my observation the seniors like using the key combinations better than the mouse because it allows them to move at their speed. In the third lesson we talk about web browsing, the dangers of the internet, and computer privacy. This lesson was to educate the senior citizens on the trade off of using the internet and giving them the ability to access your online searches and how to avoid adds. When this lesson was being taught everyone in the senior center turned and listened as the lesson was being taught. In the final lesson we discussed email, which proved to be the most difficult. The email lesson proved to be difficult because of the different section of the mail and having the ability to type without looking at the keyboard. When we first told them to log into the email they were very skeptical because they had never used emails before and thought they needed one to learn this lesson. In this lesson we provided temp emails that allowed them to send email back and forth with Dr. Anderson. In the instruction we gave them step by step instruction and pictures demonstrating how to write and send an email to Dr. Anderson. The other objective besides teaching senior citizens how to send emails was incorporate the skills that they have learned into one objective. The senior citizens cleared every objective set for the computer literacy classes. By the end of classes every senior citizen felt more comfortable with using computers and browsing the internet.
Approach: Designing a Pearson Email Service
While the regular email services such as gmail, yahoo, or AOL are great for the younger generation for sending and receiving emails, but not for senior citizens. When senior citizens try to use regular email service they are overwhelm with all the extra links and buttons on the page. One solution besides giving them extensive email classes is to design and build a email service that uses the original email form google and reorganizes it to show it in a more simpler format that only shows the inbox, compose, and sent box. The first step in doing so is to find the back end of an email service. Which leads to the emailjs-imap-client github repository. The second step was to find a web application that was flexible with a node.js web application framework. The list of applications were Express, RainLoop, or RoundCube. In the end we used express as our web application because it specifically did not use plugin, which were use for different applications. After that node and npm are required to help with operations of the email services. Node is a application that is used to build network application, and npm which is a node package manager used to organize the packages needed for node to work. Once all the required programs are downloaded you have to plug in all the different pages in their right folder locations. In these folders there are JavaScript, Jade, and CSS files. Each file is used to complete the overall look and feel of the email service and the interaction between each file with another. One part of the java script file is to link the jade file to itself, so that is can apply the information listed into its correct location on the web page. The jade files are a temple engine used to place each element of each page of the email and to add the different buttons and links to each page. Another function of the jade files is to link the corresponding CSS files to it. The CSS are the style sheets of the email service, which give it color and allows to section off parts of the page for certain information. Once all the files are created and designed the email service can be launched through the command line using the command npm start.
Conclusions
Even though senior citizen have different challenges every day, technology shouldn't be one of them. The only way to close that gap is to educate the elderly so they can use technology to their advantage. Once we can completely close the fear of technology we can implement it in aiding them, especially who are either disabled or have health issues. Technology is always helping humanity in our daily lives, now is time to put it to use for many senior citizens who need help in their daily lives.
Citations
1. Brite Schiffhauer, Jasmin Bernotat, Friederike Eyssel, Rebecca Brohl, and Jule Adriaans. Let the User Decide! User Preferences Regarding Functions, Apps, adn Interfaces of a Smart Home and a Service Robot. Bielefeld : s.n.
2. Emailjs-Imap-Client. GitHub. [Online] GitHub.Ink, 2012. [Cited: May 30, 2018.] https://github.com/emailjs/emailjs-imap-client.
3. Jade Language. jade-lang.com. [Online] [Cited: June 7, 2018.] https://github.com/emailjs/emailjs-imap-client.
4. w3schools. w3schools.com. [Online] schools.com. [Cited: July 2, 2018.] https://www.w3schools.com/css/.