Word: seniornet
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That is beginning to change. Across the U.S., thousands of aging Americans are happily tapping away at keyboards and trading floppy disks, thanks to a new wave of computer-literacy programs designed with the elderly user in mind. The largest of these is SeniorNet, the first national organization dedicated to bringing senior citizens into the information age. Since it was founded at the University of San Francisco in 1986, the nonprofit organization has trained nearly 4,000 of the elderly at 26 sites in the U.S. and Canada, including doctors' offices, retirement homes, senior centers, high schools and colleges...
...initiation fee, SeniorNet members receive a two-month, hands-on training course and a quarterly newsletter. Hundreds have hooked up to SeniorNet's computer network, which costs $6.90 per hour of use during evenings and on weekends. To seniors in isolated areas, the price seems cheap for the ability to communicate with people their own age through electronic mail, bulletin boards and computer forums on topics ranging from gardening to health-care legislation. "It's their window on the world," says Cindy Schwehr, SeniorNet coordinator at the Sheyenne Care Center in Valley City, N. Dak. "The residents stand by their...
Mabel Osborne, 85, had spent two years sick in bed when she read about a SeniorNet class in Dallas. She signed up and made an important discovery. "I wasn't sick," she says. "I was just bored to death." Osborne quickly mastered basic computer skills and went on to study word processing at a local community college. "She bought a word processor and is now writing the history of her life," says Florence Wetzig, 69, a former beauty-salon operator who taught Osborne how to compute. "She has said to me many times that I saved her life...
...employed her computer to write a book about her collection. A numismatist has electronically cataloged , his 65,000 rare coins. A beekeeper in Hawaii is putting out a newsletter using the latest technology for desktop publishing. "It has been a ball," says Clark, who recently started a new SeniorNet center in Bellevue, Wash. "No matter how old you are, a guy's got to have his toys...