Broadband for Seniors - Tutor Resources

My name is Geoff Greig and I and the contact person for Broadband for Seniors (BFS) for Queensland. My official position is “The Broadband for Seniors Networker for Queensland” In this position I help Volunteer Tutors with professional development and to meet the needs of the Seniors they tutor. Professional development is where you as tutors have the opertunity to learn more about the technology you teach as well as methods of teaching the seniors you tutor.

The purpose of this video is to show you the resources that BFS makes available to you, and how to access those resources.

What we will be covering in this Video:

1. - The BFS WEB site. Where is it and finding it using Google
2. - Online Seminars that you can attend called Webinars
3. - How you can communicate with other Tutors in the BFS initiative (BFS Google Groups)
4. - Another special linked to Website that has non BFS produced training material and where you can put you own training material (BFS Wikispace)
5. - BFS training documents
6. - Online Lessons
7. - Documents to help tutors with volunteer recruitment, marketing, tutoring seniors, and supporting different needs
8. - How to contact me or other State Networkers

It is at: http://bfseniors.com.au/

But if you cannot remember that you can enter in to Google Broadband for Seniors and it should be the first item that comes up.

On the Home page of the BFS web site point at For Kiosks and then click on Helpfull Resources. Scroll down the page and you will see the Icon Webinars Click on it.

There are two buttons. Upcoming and Recorded. Point at the Upcoming button. Then click on upcoming. Then point at BFS Webinar events. A lisk of the upcoming webinars will be presented.

Webinars are basically online seminars and are usually held fortnightly and this page give you information on how to register for a webinar, id you click on Find out More

When you connect to a live webinar the screen may look like this:

As the webinars are recorded you can view previously recorded webinars by click on this link:

As webinars have been presented since 2010 there are Over 80 that have been recorded by a range of presenters covering a range of subjects and technologies including Ipads and Android devices. You can scroll through the list to see an item you may be interested in.

Here is a seperste video on how to watch recorded webinars:

Fixed up to here

As there are over 1,500, what are called, BFS Kiosks, around Australia, their is a wealth of knowledge, both on technology and on how to teach seniors the technology. If you have a question about technology, ways of teaching the technology or may be are wondering how other BFS Kiosks tackle a particular issue the BFS Google Groups is the place to go. Google groups is a email list. By joining or subscribing to the list when you send an email to the list it goes to all member of the list. With over 200 members, if you ask a question you are sure to get an answer.

After clicking on the For Seniors or For Kiosks, on the right side will display, Quicklinks. You may have to scoll down to see it. On of those click links is: Join the BFS Google Group. Click on it to get information on how to join.

When you join you will have the option to receive emails or to work from the Google bfsvolunteer page, that looks like this:

A link from the BFS web site home page via Resources, Wikispace will take you to this page:

As you can see a Wiki is space on the Internet where likeminded people can share information, ideas, images, links, videos, etc. in one convenient easy-to-find location. To that end it has a lot of non BFS produced training material on a wealth of areas that will be of interest to you. Currently the BFS wikispace looks like this.

But it can also be used as a repository for you to place you own training material that you can share your students or other BFS kiosks. To be able to do so you will need to join by pointing at the top right of the Wikispac page and clicking on Join. You will be asked for a User name and Password (that you invent) and an email address. After the site administrator has accepted you, you will be able to create you own pages.

The BFS training documents that can assist you in training your students. From the BFS Home page clicking on Training Resources then Training Documents will give you this page:

As you can see there documents covering a lot of relevant subjects.

The online lessons, accessed from the BFS home page by clicking on Training Resources and then Online lessons brings up this page:

These are designed to be used by your students with or without your supervision in a self paced basis. They can be accessed on any devise that has an internet connection, so that students can use them from there own home.

So as to keep track of how students are progressing and so they know which lessons the have partially of fully completed a user ID and password is require.

This page describes how to go about creating them. Student can do this themselves or you can do it for them.

After logging into the lessons students, or you, have a wide choice of lessons to select from.

Here are some examples:

The lessons do not use the functions of the computer or devise, but are a simulation of what happens when using the devise, so that a some point the student has to transfer from the simulator to to real thing.

This information can be accessed from the BFS home page by clicking on Kiosk Document under the heading Program Notices. and this page will be presented:

Clicking on Staying Connected [August 2014][PDF, 0.7KB] will show this PDF document:

What we have covered in the video is:

1. - The BFS WEB site. Where is it and finding it using Google
2. - Online Seminars that you can attend called Webinars
3. - How you can communicate with other Tutors in the BFS initiative (BFS Google Groups)
4. - Another special linked to Website that has non BFS produced training material and where you can put you own training material (BFS Wifispace)
5. - BFS training documents
6. - Online Lessons
7. - Documents to help tutors with volunteer recruitment, marketing, tutoring seniors, and supporting different needs

But if you have any more questions or wish to discuss anything to do with BFS you can contact me or your BFS Networker by clicking on Support and then BFS Newworks from the BFS Home page. Scroll down and you will see this.

Good bye.