The AK SeNeT (Seniors and Internet) had been founded in Summer 1996 following a seminar during the Springtime-Academy 1996 on the use of the new communication technologies by elder people. This Working Group is part of the activities of ZAWiW in the area of "Learning through Research" and "Learning in Later Life".


During the past years a large number of senior students at the ZAWiW had been involved in several projects concerning the use of the Internet by elder people. One was work on a small booklet called "Einstiegshilfe", a short instruction guide showing how the Internet can be used by seniors. One of the larger projects was to accompany the "Senior Info Mobil", a bus with 8 PC-places, in its information campaigns in Germany, intended to show elder people all over Germany how the Internet can be used. During these activities more than 80.000 elder people in more than 60 cities in Germany had been informed about the usage and the use of the Internet.

  
In the meantime, many of the seniors of this group helped as "Tutors" during courses and lectures for seniors on subjects such as how to use Personal Computers or how to use the Internet for finding special topics of interest. For the AK SeNeT it is very important to master the usage of the Internet in such a way, so that also the contact to younger people via the Internet is possible.

The more than 30 members of the AK SeNeT is organised in three Project Groups: PG Online, PG Service and PG Tutoring. PG Online is supporting the activities of online-projects, for example the Online Journal "Lerncafe", PG Service is helping other groups to create their homepage for the Internet, PG Tutoring is preparing materials for the education of seniors in using PC and Internet.

The members of the AK SeNeT have a meeting every month, the so called "Plenum", to exchange information about the activities of the last period. The main tasks of the members are handled within the above mentioned Project Groups of the AK SeNeT. These Project Groups are meeting every two weeks to develop their tasks and their aims for education of other elder people.