Page 28 - Storytelling - Storylistening

VII. Reminiscing Ideas for Recovering Golden Memories
6. Family members, volunteers and staff write down the residents’ personal memories and post them juxtaposed
with the other appropriate dates, facts, images and artifacts on the time line.
7. A notebook is placed near the display for viewers to add their own recollections and comments.
D. Computers and Internet – When Barnard learns a patient has a particular interest, she researches the subject on the Internet. When one man told her he had a bit part in Gone With The Wind, she downloaded the list of characters from the 1939 movie classic and gave it to him.
“He started talking about each one of those individuals like they were his best buddies,” she recalls.
Some long term care organizations have set up computers and training programs for residents to use for writing their life stories, researching the World Wide Web and communicating with family and friends by e-mail.
It need not require a huge investment for the organization. In their book, I Remember When: Activity Ideas to Help People Reminisce, Thorsheim and Roberts suggest setting up a used computer for residents on a trial basis. It should be placed on a counter near a phone line with room for several persons to sit and learn simultaneously.
(A tape recorder could be set up in much the same way and residents taught how to use it to record their life stories, suggests Barnard.)
Young volunteers from among the families of staff and residents might be recruited to provide training and technical assistance, as children often are endowed with considerable more computer expertise than adults. This also provides opportunities for contact between elders and youngsters. However, warn Thorsheim and Roberts, make sure the young instructors are patient and enjoy working with elders.
They urge going slowly with the training process, focusing on one topic at a time, and organizing demonstration projects as follows:
1. How to use the computer.
2. Going online and using e-mail.
3. Researching on the web.
Porch Swing SeriesTM Culture Change Workbooks ©Action Pact, Inc.2005-2006 p.24