Making digital fun for older learners
Fun ways, tools and apps to engage and help older learners to learn digital skills.
Why is it important to make digital fun for older learners?
Making learning fun is great advice for any audience, but it’s especially important for older learners who might:
- Feel uncomfortable in a formal classroom setting.
- Feel worried about or resistant to using digital.
- Find it more difficult to learn or remember new information.
- Be more socially isolated.
Everyone’s idea of fun is different but there are lots of creative, engaging activities you can try to “hook” your learners, word games and crossword puzzles, drawing and colouring, group games and quizzes, and much more.
Cristina Rapcea at HMR Circle aims to keep digital sessions short and engaging, with lots of opportunities for fun and to come together as a group. She recommends getting to know your learners and their interests so that you can find engaging and entertaining digital activities that spark their interest, and introduce new digital skills in the process.
Useful tools/games
There are loads of fun ways to engage and help older learners to learn digital skills. A few are highlighted here. We have a longer list available in our Digital games and tools for older learners resource.
Dominos crosses cultures and language barriers. This app can help people to learn how to use a touch screen to select, drag objects, etc. This link is for Android devices but versions are available for other devices from the relevant app store.
Art colouring book. Google Arts has loads of creative activities to engage learners. This one is great for people who enjoy painting by numbers. It can teach people how to use a mouse to click, and about common icons like “Undo” and “Delete”.
Wordle viral word game can be played on a PC, tablet or phone. It’s a great activity for people who enjoy word games, and as a new one is released every day, it can become a social activity and conversation topic too.
Simple piano. No experience is required for this simple piano playing app. There are lots of similar apps that help people to learn to play famous tunes. This works best on a tablet or mobile.
Quizizz, Kahoot and lots of other great apps can be used to create quizzes for group sessions whether online or face-to-face. They can be lots of fun and can help to consolidate learning or just to get a bit of a competition going.
Final thoughts
Focusing on fun digital activities can be a “digital by stealth” approach, removing the initial motivation barrier. Rather than, “let’s learn how to use a search engine”, what about “let’s look up the lyrics to this song so that we can do a sing-a-long”.