Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
Skip to main content

Advertisement

Springer Nature Link
Log in

The firekeepers: aging considered as a resource

  • Long Paper
  • Published:
Universal Access in the Information Society Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Technology can improve the quality of life for elderly persons by supporting and facilitating the unique leadership roles that elderly play in groups, communities, and other organizations. Elderly people are often organizational firekeepers. They maintain community memory, pass on organizational practices, and ensure social continuity. This paper reports studies of several essential community roles played by elderly community members—including the role of volunteer community webmaster—and describes two positive design projects that investigated how technology can support new kinds of social endeavors and contributions to society by elderly citizens. Finally, the paper speculates on the utility of intergenerational teams in strengthening society’s workforce.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Carroll, J.M.: The Blacksburg electronic village: a study in community computing. In: van den Besselaar, P., Koizumi, S. (eds.) Digital Cities 2003, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3081, pp. 43–65. Springer, Berlin (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B.: Participatory design in community informatics. Des. Stud. 28, 243–261 (Special Issue on Participatory Design) (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B., Farooq, U., Xiao, L.: Beyond being aware. Inf. Organ. 19(3), 162–185 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B., VanMetre, C.A., Kengeri, R., Kelso, J., Darshani, M.: Blacksburg nostalgia: a community history archive. In: Sasse, M.A., Johnson, C. (eds.) Proceedings of Seventh IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, INTERACT 99 (Edinburgh, August 30–Sept. 3), pp. 637–647. IOS Press/International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), Amsterdam (1999)

  5. Convertino, G., Farooq, U., Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M.: Old is gold: integrating older workers in CSCW. In: Proceedings of HICSS 38: Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, (Hilton Waikoloa Village, January 3–6). IEEE Digital Library (2005)

  6. Convertino, G., Farooq, U., Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M., Meyer, B.J.F.: Supporting intergenerational groups in computer-supported cooperative work. Beh. Inf. Technol. 26/4, 275–285 (Special Issue on designing computer systems for and with older users) (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Convertino, G., Ke, F., Lin, Y., Carroll, J.M., Meyer, B.J.F., Swain, J., Harwood, J.T. Computer-mediated intergenerational collaboration: a multi-case study on consultation interactions. In: Poster & Abstract Presented at the Human—Computer Interaction International 2007 Conference. Beijing, P. R. China (2007b)

  8. Cooperrider, D., Avital, M. (eds.): Advances in Appreciative Inquiry: Constructive Discourse and Human Organization. Elsevier, Amsterdam (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Czaja, S.J.: Technological change and the older worker. In: Birren, J.E., Schaie, K.W. (eds.) Handbook of Psychology of Aging, pp. 547–568. Academic Press, London (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Druin, A., Bederson, B.B., Quinn, A.: Designing intergenerational mobile storytelling. In: Proceedings of ACM IDC09 Interaction Design and Children, pp. 325–328

  11. European Commission, DG Information Society and Media: EU: Measuring progress in e-Inclusion—Riga Dashboard 2007. http://www.epractice.eu/en/library/281311 (2007)

  12. Hoffman, L.: Issue Brief: Increasing Volunteerism Among Older Adults: Benefits And Strategies For States. NGA Center for Best Practices, pp. 1–13. www.nga.org/Files/pdf/0805CIVICENGBRIEF.PDF

  13. Kase, S., Zhang, Y., Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B.: Sustainable informal IT learning in community-based non-profits. In: Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2008 Extended Abstracts, (April 5–10, Florence, Italy), pp. 3435–3440. ACM Press, New York (2008)

  14. Johansson, I.: Intergenerational relations at work in Sweden and the UK. In: Kumashiro, M. (ed.) Aging and Work, pp. 143–152. Taylor and Francis, London (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Jones, A.: Adult learning: the often overlooked aspect of technical training. In: Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM SIGUCCS Conference on User Services, pp. 4–6 (2003)

  16. Lee, R.S., Daly, R. (eds.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge University Press, New York (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lindenberger, J., Stoltz-Loike, M.: Why Mentor? Mentoring is a Strategic Business Imperative, Human Resources, The Lindenberger Group, LLC and SeniorThinking (2005)

  18. Lindenberger, J., Stoltz-Loike, M.: Mentoring and Baby Boomers. Human Resources, February 28, 2005 (www.lindenbergergroup.com/art_mentor_babyboomer.html) (2005)

  19. Merkel, C., Farooq, U., Xiao, L., Ganoe, C., Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M.: Managing technology use and learning in non-profit community organizations: methodological challenges and opportunities. In Proceedings of the 2007 Symposium on Computer Human interaction For the Management of information Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 30–31, 2007), p. 8. CHIMIT ‘07. ACM, New York (2007)

  20. Merkel, C.B., Xiao, L., Farooq, U., Ganoe, C.H., Lee, R., Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B.: Participatory design in community computing contexts: Tales from the field. In: Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference (Toronto, Canada, July 27–31), pp. 1–10 (2004). ACM Press, NY

  21. Rosson, M.B., Ballin, J., Nash, H.: Everyday programming: Challenges and opportunities for informal web development. In: Levialdi, S., Bottoni, P., Hundhausen, C., Tortura, G. (eds.) Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing 2004, pp. 123–130. IEEE, New York (2004)

  22. Rosson, M.B., Ballin, J., Rode, J.: Who, what and why? A survey of informal and professional web developers. In: Zhang, K., Erwig, M., Schürr, A. (eds.) Proceedings of Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing 2005, pp. 199–206. IEEE, New York (2005)

  23. Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M.: Learning and collaboration across generations in a community. In: Huysman, M., Wenger, E., Wulf, V. (eds.) Communities and Technologies, pp. 205–225. Kluwer Academic Publishers,The Netherlands (Amsterdam, September 2003) (2003)

  24. Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M., Messner, D.: A web storybase. In: People and Computers XI—Proceedings of HCI’96, pp. 369–382. Springer, London (1996)

  25. Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M., Seals, C.D., Lewis, T.L.: Community design of community simulations. In: Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems: DIS 2002 (London, June 25–28), pp. 74–83. ACM, New York (2002)

  26. Smith, D.C., Cypher. A.: Making programming easier for children. In: Druin, A. (ed.) The Design of Children’s Technology. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (1999)

  27. Strauß, J., Kuda, E.: Action Tool: Teamwork and Older Workers, Leonardo Project. Report published by Metall Vorstand, Industriegewerkschaft Metall, Department of Vocational Training and Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund Research Institute. Translator: Ilse Davis-Schauer. Frankfurt/Dortmund, March 2000 (2000)

  28. Vicente, K.J.: HCI in the global knowledge-based economy: designing to support worker adaptation. ACM Trans. Comput. Hum. Interact. (TOCHI) 7(2), 26 (2000)

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a series of grants from the US National Science Foundation (0355212, 0353097, 0353075, 0113264, 0081102, 0080864). Gregorio Convertino is now at the Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304-1314 (convertino@parc.com). Umer Farooq is now at Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052 (umfarooq@microsoft.com). Yu-Chu Lin, Bonnie J. F. Meyer, and Fengfeng Ke were collaborators and contributors in our study of intergenerational teams.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Information Sciences & Technology, Center for Human-Computer Interaction, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    John M. Carroll, Gregorio Convertino, Umer Farooq & Mary Beth Rosson

Authors
  1. John M. Carroll
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gregorio Convertino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Umer Farooq
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Mary Beth Rosson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John M. Carroll.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Carroll, J.M., Convertino, G., Farooq, U. et al. The firekeepers: aging considered as a resource. Univ Access Inf Soc 11, 7–15 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-011-0229-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-011-0229-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation