Digital education for older generation non native users: a focused ethnography study of a pilot project

Older non natives are often excluded from using new technological devices and little research literature is available on their ability to interact with technology. This research aims at studying how people excluded from technological use because of their education and age interact with each other and with a tablet during new technologies training courses. A Focused Ethnography approach was used to study 6 groups of 18/20 participants to a training course for tablet use. Four focuses were considered for ethnographic observations: 1. relationship between trainer and the group of participants, both mediated and non mediated by the tablet 2. relationship between the trainer and the single participant, both mediated and non mediated by the tablet 3. interaction between participant and her/his tablet 4. interaction between a group of participants and the tablets. Results help us to understand what are the difficulties in interactions between tablet and trainer. Evidence is shown that most difficulties in training sessions were related to the translation from digital culture to participants’ culture.