Breaking Barriers, an ERASMUS+ project, was born out of the realisation that adults taking literacy classes were being faced with a distinct gap between the work covered in the classroom and the way society is functioning. A toolkit for adult educators to make use of the ideas and strategies for teaching literacy in class, was developed and may be found here: http://www.breakingbarriers.eu/index.php/en/

• We would welcome even more examples of adult learning initiatives where digital learning plays a role.
• Furthermore, it would be good to find crosslinks between projects and initiatives. For instance on intergenerational learning (for instanceSINDI and "My Mom is learning to use computer" both relate to intergenerational learning)

Looking forward to the next days' discussion!

It's good to hear that the project has had a positive effect on older person's digital communication and helped them to connect with not only their friends and family but also their local community.

The following contribution is written by Onno Hansen-Staszyński, chairman by Stichting Ezzev, and he is involved in a Erasmusplusproject. 

Regards from Serbia, 

Migration ist und bleibt ein zentrales Thema Deutschlands und der gesamten EU. Für viele langfristige und dadurch auch erfolgreiche Integrationsprogramme sind ehrenamtliche Helfer*innen unerlässlich. 

The quality of adult education and practice, which is based on digital adult learning, can be ensured when it is derived directly from practice, from practitioners who, in addition to possessing appropriate IT knowledge and behaviours, evaluate their teaching process through and with IT and their role in it, with professional support and through processes of mentoring, monitoring, evaluation and (self-) reflection. 

SINDI – Social inclusion through digital literacy and intergenerational learning The project was implemented by partners from four countries: Austria, France, Poland and Latvia. The coordinating organisation was the Malpils municipality council. PROJECT OBJECTIVES: promoting social inclusion and the motivation of older people through innovative integrated approaches, such as intergenerational learning at local, regional and international level, and increasing the level of digital competence of older people, promoting innovative digital skills teaching techniques, developing and disseminating learning materials and tools that are also applicable in other European countries. Project TARGET GROUPS included adult learners/seniors 55 +, adult learners and young people who were prepared to volunteer for digital education for seniors. The project has carried out 48 international mobilities organized in two staff training activities in Latvia and France and two blended mobilities in Austria and Poland for senior learners. In the course of the project, a wide variety of local activities took place, and the main one was several months of digital skills 121 digital courses for the elderly, led by young people, volunteers from the secondary school of Malpils county. Each senior had his teacher so that the training could take place according to each specific needs and opportunities. Forms were created for tracking the contents of the lesson, in which young teachers recorded what they learned in each lesson. Collecting these records shows that seniors have learned skills such as creating and using e-mail addresses, moving photos, music and videos between different media, sending and storing them in folders, creating and using social networks profiles, using Skype and WhatsApp, finding, downloading and storing information on different sites, creating presentations, creating and using documents from Word and Excel design, teaching in the Internet environment, as well as the diverse capabilities of touch phones and tablets. The main conclusion of the teaching participants - the seniors: “befriended with computers and phones!” In the course closing questionnaires, 100% of seniors replied that their contacts with friends and relatives had increased and that they would recommend such courses to others. 90% of young teachers would recommend testing the role of teacher for other young people, and 70% were interested in taking parental lessons and learning something from their former pupils. Therefore, we also organised other educational cross-sectoral events in the project, including those where “teachers” and “pupils” were in changed roles: young people learned cooking skills. We have also created a new form of training for seniors during the project. The principle and rule of once-a-month training are simple: their participants need to find information and prepare a narrative of a completely unknown area/sector that has not been associated with their professional activity or with past hobbies. When meeting together, mutual learning participants share new knowledge, answer questions, familiarize themselves with the other information they have prepared. Since the SINDI project enabled them to acquire digital skills, they are currently used to find and present information. 6-8 participants participate in each lesson. Duration of the lesson - 2 academic hours. The first lesson took place in April 2018, there have been five for that moment, and the sequel will certainly follow, because it is a fascinating feeling when well-known people who seem to know everything about the interests of work and leisure, as in the countryside, suddenly talk about topics that would never come to mind. In addition to the educational impacts of the project, we have also developed a number of “tangible” results, such as the “Seniors and IT” study, which jointly analyses, summarises and distributes information on the current situation, experience, challenges and digital learning opportunities for seniors in partner countries; digital skills training records that can be used by other teachers and teachers, not only in the partner group, but also in other countries; project journal with a summary of all major events and their participants' reviews; web document sets on all partners' websites; common database with associated partners in all countries to encourage further networking and searching for young seniors' educational innovations at European level; Internet materials (EPALE, FB, partners' home pages, project storage www.dropbox.com and Google Drive); PPT, questionnaires, photo galleries, newsletters, questionnaires. The greatest future potential of this project from a management point of view is that not only the current partners but also other stakeholders and organisations can use the methods developed and tested in the course of the project in their future work, without the need for large financial contributions. Part of the local activities developed and validated by the project requires “only” voluntary work, premises and, sometimes, technical equipment and the purchase of working materials. In practice, the SINDI project showed that simple ideas worked very well, not only leading to significant educational impacts, but also bringing together people of different ages, different occupations, people of different beliefs, promoting real social inclusion of seniors and young people, and the positive emotional environment and development of the local community as a whole. This is also confirmed by the fact that all our partners are motivated to continue their cooperation on future projects and jointly organise local events for seniors: AUSTRIA: Students were very fond of teaching elderly people using their smartphones. Therefore, on November 25th, 2018, the school opened a Junior Company, Handycaffee, which offers training for the use of digital devices (smartphones, tablets and PCs) for older people. Knowledge transfer is carried out using the 121-digital method. The school has purchased some tablet computers for that purpose. Other nearby schools were also notified of this business model and are motivated to offer a similar service. On the other hand, one of the local associates, the farm owners' association, will host some Thermomix courses tested in the project, which will learn how to eat cooking skills using modern technologies. FRANCE: We believe that the 121 digital approaches can be used in IT courses offered to our association pensioners. We will continue to organize photoshops. We also distributed our activities to adult education project partners, social centres and associations active in promoting the welfare of older people and planning future joint activities in this direction. POLAND: The trainers have developed new methods for working with adults, especially with seniors, and will use them in their future work. Interested organisations in our region (Koszęcin Cultural Centers, Solec Kujawski) are already using project experience and results to plan new events for seniors. Another 121 digital courses were launched in November 2018. Other stakeholders (NGOs) are now more interested in cooperation with us, want to learn more about international projects. On the other hand, we continue to offer our seniors the successful measures we have tried in the course of the project. Following the closure of the project, the next individual digital skills courses for seniors enrolled in training by eight young people have already taken place. The monthly interpersonal training sessions' Learn and Tell 'and the English language courses with the funding of the county council will continue, because existing and potential participants in international training are highly motivated to attend these courses. The project is over, but intergenerational education cooperation is continuing.