Once again, Grandma Mariella, is attending the digital literacy course dedicated to the elderly held at the F. Magellano School in Acilia, but this time her role in rather unusual.
Mariella is a special grandmother: she’s not repeating the course, she has become a tutor, a reassuring figure who will help other senior citizens get more comfortable with computers.
Mariella attended the first Grandparents on the Internet course in 2003. In reality, she had contacted the school hoping to take an English course as her daughter had moved to California for work and she wanted to learn the language, but the school could not offer her such a course. What they did suggest for her, though, was a Computer course! And that is how she enrolled in Grandparents on the Internet.
Mariella immediately gota long with the teacher, Gisella, with whom she shared many common interests and passions, so much so that once her friend had very successfully completed the course, Gisella suggested that her friend could act as a tutor, the first senior tutor. Mariella accepted and has discovered how to teach her equals, people with the same difficulties, a great challenge to perfect her knowledge of PCs.
How did such a strong passion blossom?
Mariella says that she was “tired of feeling stupid,” in her family’s eyes. They always used words she had no idea about. Now, her dream is to make a digital album recounting her family’s history. She has collected and scanned many photos to create thematic presentations to give to her relations on birthdays and anniversaries.
