Pinterest - WKTV Journal

By Peg Cochran

Marketing Communications Manager, Holland Home

In May 2017, a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that approximately 67 percent of seniors over age 65 use the internet and that number continues to grow.

“We have residents that are very involved in emailing their family and friends or even using Skype to connect with family members who are unable to visit,” said Nancy Venema, Life Enrichment Coordinator at Holland Home’s Fulton Manor. “We have a 97-year-old resident with severe vision and hearing impairments who has taken our computer classes, so she could learn how to email her family who live outside of Michigan.”

What are the tools available today and how should seniors use them?

Email

Email is a wonderful way to stay in close contact with family and friends. It’s easy to set up a free email account at gmail.com, yahoo.com or various other sites. You can email messages, as well as photographs, documents and videos. And it’s virtually instantaneous, so there’s no waiting for the mailman to come.

Facebook

While Facebook use is declining among young people, 45 percent of seniors in the 65 and older age group are using the social networking service. Facebook is another great way to stay connected with family and friends. The newsfeed, which appears on every user’s homepage, highlights information including personal profiles, upcoming events, and birthdays of the user’s friends. It’s easy to share pictures, and to provide updates to several people at once. Facebook has a variety of privacy settings allowing you to choose how public you want your information to be. Registering is free and requires a valid email address. By accepting or not accepting friend requests, you can control who sees what you are sharing.

Twitter

Twitter is another online social networking site where you can send and receive “tweets” or updates limited to 140 characters. Users may subscribe to other users’ tweets – this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers. Unlike with Facebook, you cannot control who “follows” you on Twitter.

Messages can be categorized by using the # symbol, known as a hashtag or keyword. It is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. For instance, “Check my Facebook page for a great #recipe for #apple #pie.” Anyone interested in recipes, apples or pies can search for those hashtags and follow the conversation.

Registering for Twitter is also free.

Skype

Communicating with someone via telephone and being able to see each other used to be the stuff of futuristic cartoons, but it is now a reality with Skype. The service allows users to communicate by voice using a microphone and by video by using a webcam, the camera that feeds an image to a computer. While Skype is not a form of social media, it is a wonderful way to stay in touch with family. Imagine being able to see, as well as talk, to your grandchildren or other distant family members who may be hundreds of miles away.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board where you can collect photos and links to things you want to save like recipes, DIY projects or travel destinations. By downloading the Pinterest “Pin It” button, you can click on a picture on the internet and save it to your bulletin board. When you click on the picture again, it automatically links back to the original site. You can have multiple bulletin boards, and pins can be collected according to themes.

“Technology is now a way of life,” said Michael Loughman, Director of Sales for Holland Home. “We have made computer classes available on all our campuses, and have volunteers who are willing to work one-on-one with our residents.”

Even if you decide not to try any of these social media tools, you will be able to surprise your children and grandchildren when you understand what they are talking about when they say they’ve been tweeting or Skyping or pinning or friending on Facebook!

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By Erin Albanese

School News Network

Ashley Lopez jots down books she wants to read

It was a tranquil, cafe-like setting: a darkened media center illuminated by an image of a fireplace on a projector screen. Soft jazz music played and artificial candlelight glowed atop tables covered with red-and-white checkered cloths. Students enjoyed the ambiance while busily discovering a buffet of books.

Wyoming Junior High English teachers Shantel VanderGalien and Katie Sluiter, dressed as wait staff, offered Book Tasting to all eighth-graders. The tasting included a sample of 10 books, all with multicultural flavors, for their in-class book clubs. From table to table, students munched chocolate chip cookies and considered menu options – book summaries – to please their reading palates. Entrees included “The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom, a verse novel set in Cuba,” by Margarita Engle and “One Crazy Summer,” by Rita Williams-Garcia.

“I feel it’s different. It’s engaging the students more in reading the books,” said eighth-grader Ashley Lopez, a fan of dystopian fiction. “I’m excited to have a whole list of books to choose from.”

For teachers, the Pinterest-inspired event was a way to offer diverse literary ingredients to inspire students.

“We are big fans of giving kids choice for what they read,” VanderGalien said. “We wanted all of our students to be represented in the literature, so the books we chose have an African American female protagonist, a girl from India as a protagonist, a Latina protagonist. We wanted our students to experience other cultures as well so they can see themselves in literature.” Assigned books last semester had male protagonists.

Malikye Anderson looks over his book list.

Thought-Provoking Reads

Having multicultural books available in the classroom at the diverse school has helped students blossom as readers, VanderGalien said. “It’s brought powerful conversations to the classroom, a deeper understanding for each other and various cultures.

“It’s powerful when students who read about a person who has a similar story to them because maybe they felt alone or isolated, experienced poverty, homelessness or leaving a war-torn country.”

English teacher Katie Sluiter said book tasting is a fun way to expose students to different works, create a community of readers and have them expand their reading repertoire. “They might have never read a book about their own culture, or they might choose a book that’s a window to something they’ve never heard of before.”

Added VanderGalien: “They are able to say, ‘me too, I’ve had that shared experience. Here’s my experience.’ In sharing their voice, students who have been marginalized or quieted find a place in the classroom.”

Eighth-grader Aubray Palma called the book tasting “cool.”

“Usually you get books offered to you that are one genre or culture, and it’s nice to get books from multiple cultures to learn about different things,” she said.

Eighth-grader Trista Werkema jotted “Never Fall Down,” by Patricia McCormick, and “Homeless Bird,” by Gloria Whelan, on her list of books choices. She liked the idea of choosing from multicultural options.

“When our teachers give us hands-on experiences we get more out of our learning,” she said. “It gives us a chance to learn more about what other people around the world are going through. It gives us an outside look because we tend to think only about our own lives and culture, and not consider what other cultures go through.”

Check out School News Network for more stories about students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan.