––By Doris Reeves-Lipscomb
Fascination with the Fountain of Youth has inspired writers and artists, and maybe Ponce de Léon, a Spanish explorer, who reportedly looked for the Fountain of Youth in Florida but to no avail. However, with more than 4.3 million people over the age of 55 in Florida—more than 27% of the state’s population—and with most of us vigorous, happy, healthy, self-sufficient, and engaged in work and/or our community, we have found the fountain of longevity instead. What will we do with all of this extra time? Three of us boomers would like to show you how curiosity, confidence and vision fueled by experience, and a desire to help others learn online has led to a unifying passion, purpose, and someday, a paycheck for us.
IT STARTS WITH LEARNING ONLINE . . .
. . . made easy by computers as the primary tool for learning online. Computers are ubiquitous. They are on desktops, in tablets, smart phones, cameras, digital music devices, cars and cabs, and TVs. When they are connected to the internet, they give us access to the web—luscious content, most often free, to read and use with proper attribution to reimagine, expand on, elevate to a new level of clarity, and give back to the commons—as well as low-cost ways of connecting with peers and experts to accelerate our learning.
THE LEARNING REVOLUTION IS HAPPENING ONLINE
It’s one that allows us to rise above age, job, unemployment, or geographic constraints to attend classes FREE at Harvard or Stanford and other prestigious schools through MOOCs (massive open online courses). It is an individuated-networking-to-learn that allows us to follow our interests, not those dictated to us by state standards or supervisors. This revolution requires us to identify our learning goals and use various tools to gather information, make sense of new ideas in private or public spaces online, and share what we believe to be true with others. This meta-learning skillset will enable us to participate in robust learning online and apply what we know in real life.
WHAT IS THIS META-LEARNING SKILLSET AND HOW DOES ONE GET IT?
Books can help.
Howard Rheingold’s Net Smart: How to Survive Online offers five digital literacies for aspiring online residents. He reminds us that “. . . present day literacies are not just the encoding and decoding skills an individual needs to know to join the community of literates but also the ability to use those skills socially, in concert with others, in an effective way.” These literacies, very much summarized, are:
- New attention habits and information handling skills
- Crap detection skills of knowing how to check claims and triangulating to verify sources
- Recognizing that participating on the web “enables you (and everybody else) to act in your own self-interest in ways that create value for everybody.”
- Collaborating online. It requires leadership skills to negotiate, communicate intent, and sustain forward movement in groups to produce valuable benefits, economic and social.
- Networking, not speed dating events with drink in one hand and business cards in the other, but relying on social media and other structures that encourage “people to seek support, information, and a sense of belonging from sparsely knit, loosely bound networks as well as” more close-knit groups.
READING BOOKS AND BLOGS WILL GIVE ONE INSIGHT. BUT WE NEED PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE, TOO.
Recognizing that there is much to learn and try out to be effective and efficient online, three of us—Lyn Boyer, Lisa Levinson, and I—came together in 2012 to develop the Women’s Learning Studio, a place where women (and men) could safely experiment with online learning and internet tools and develop online leadership skills. We called it a studio on purpose—a place to practice, make mistakes, practice some more, get it right, learn.
Our path as entrepreneurs to build this business with its highly social overtones has been a learning journey; in practice a learning community that pulls and pushes each of us to do our best. And we are writing a bigger story for our lives with the Studio to help others travel more easily online and benefit with new knowledge, skills, and connections.
Another post later this summer will focus on Studio’s offerings. In the meantime, the book Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose (Leider, Shapiro) may give us something to think about: Baby boomers “today have a lot more time before they become elderly. With that time, we believe that their biggest personal challenge will be to reinvent themselves for what this longevity could mean.” Please join us in the fountain of longevity online to figure this out.
When not building the Women’s Learning Studio with Lisa Levinson and Lyn Boyer, Doris consults with and volunteers for nonprofits and public sector organizations as Groups-That-Work LLC. She can be reached at doris@womenslearningstudio.net or 727.723.7714.
The implications for non-profits extend to how they recruit volunteers as well as what skill level they seek. This includes how job posts are written. This also requires a shift in how non-profits train and manage skill-based, longer term volunteer assignments. The payoff and opportunities for making this shift can be tremendous. Contributions from properly recruited, trained and managed volunteers have direct financial impact on the organization.
Recently, I was asked to participate on a panel at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg to discuss the topic of communicating with boomers about lifelong learning and continuing education. The week of the event, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman published a column called 
Our last blog covered an important aspect of discovering who you are – your strengths, values, character etc. This can be extremely helpful to see what you “bring to the table” in terms of finding your encore.