http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/nc/hc-wlkcomputers1007.artoct07.story

Surfing Lessons Aimed At Seniors

By PAUL MARKS
Courant Staff Writer

October 7 2002

WINDSOR LOCKS -- Walk into the main activity hall at the senior citizens center, and the new IBM computer just inside the door is sure to grab your attention.

There's a senior-friendly look about the images on the monitor. Screen icons are larger than normal. Call up a Web page and you'll see type that's twice the usual size. Step-by-step prompts lead the user along.

The computer was installed free by Generations Online, a nonprofit group devoted to fostering use of the Internet by the post-retirement set.

Already, center director Suzanne Cannon said, people are sitting down to use it, some of them making their first foray into cyberspace.

"We already have people looking at it and getting curious, talking about signing up for computer classes," she said. "So it's already starting to generate interest."

Generations Online, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit group founded in 1999, says research indicates that only 16 percent of the 35 million Americans age 65 or older use the Internet. Compare that with a national average of 44 percent of the population at large - 55 percent for teenagers and 94 percent for college students.

The machine came with Generations Online's self-training software, written in plain language for use in senior centers, libraries, retirement homes and other locations where older people congregate. Normally the cost to the centers is $250, but that fee was waived for Windsor Locks, said William Hamilton, a volunteer who teaches computer classes at the senior center.

Hamilton, who has created websites for the town government, the school district, the public library and the chamber of commerce, sees growth on the horizon for the computer training, which already has served more than 400 people. In an upstairs training room, he recently installed 10 new Hewlett-Packard computers with new keyboards. Those were bought with a $7,000 grant from the SBC Foundation, the charitable arm of SBC Communications Inc., which is the parent of the former Southern New England Telephone Co.

Downstairs at the Generations Online terminal, Hamilton offers quick tutorials on the use of e-mail - it starts with calling your grandchildren for the e-mail address, and don't forget the @ sign - and the possibilities for easy online research. Links listed in large type offer access to newspapers, weather, genealogy, travel guides, stock quotes and information on Medicare and Social Security.

"The best point about it," he said one recent morning, "is they see you working on it, and they start asking questions."

Seniors as old as 89 have signed up for classes, Hamilton said. One woman used it to keep in touch with a daughter working in Siberia. Another wrote to a brother who was a priest stationed in South America.