Students help seniors get with the programs
Computer course at Woodmere school bridging the generation gap
By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer

PHOTOS BY JEFF GRANIT Christopher Dong (above r) explains to Lorraine Hughes how a laptop computer works. Hughes and Dong are participants in a class at Woodmere Elementary School where students teach seniors the ins and outs of computers.

EATONTOWN — Anthony Legregni had nothing else to do. Margery Scatuorchio wanted to get with it. Claire Brown finds it better than watching television. Vera Strub was encouraged by her children.

All these seniors are learning how to use a computer and how to go out on the Internet. Their teachers are students in the Woodmere School from the third through sixth grade.

The program is the creation of Agnes Zaorski, who began it in the borough two years ago in the Meadowbrook School and continued it this year at the Woodmere School after her transfer there. The Community Center bus even delivers the seniors to the school from the center and from the Meadowbrook senior residence on Wyckoff Road.

Zaorski, a teacher for 37 years, has been using computers in the classroom for the last 22 of those years.

At right, Christine Sandbach, 8, a third-grader at Woodmere, shows her grandfather, Sandy Sandbach, what the programs on the computer can do.

She serves as the backup to the student tech team, or "key pals," who show the seniors what to do.

"The kids are very patient," she said.

When Zaorski was asked why the children are so good with computers, she replied, "They have no fear. They just jump into it.

"The students are also excited about sharing their knowledge," she said. "The seniors are learning better from the kids than they would learn from other adults. The kids make the adults do it hands-on."

Sandy Sandback, 73, listened closely to what his granddaughter, Christine Sandback, a third-grader at Woodmere, was telling him to do. They are one of several grandparent-grandchild combinations in the class, which is held after school every Wednesday.

"I was completely computer illiterate," the elder Sandback said about when he started. "I didn’t even know how to turn the thing on."

On this day, he had advanced to learning how to draw pictures on the computer.

"I like the mechanical drawing you can do with the thing — it’s amazing," he said. "I can see how they have computer-assisted design."

Nearby, Legregni, who at 89 is the oldest member of the class, listened to instructions from fourth-graders Jackie Van Wagner and Kristin Travers on how to draw.

Asked why he had signed up for the course, he said, "I have nothing else to do."

Jackie later worked with her grandfather, Nick Fillou, as he struggled to learn how to use the Internet.

Her father, Mark Van Wagner, president of the Board of Education, who had stopped by to pick Jackie up and take her to a softball game after the computer class, mused about the trade-off between Jackie and her grandfather.

"He’s teaching her to pitch and she’s teaching him about computers," he said.

Scatuorchio, who was learning how to draw a picture on the computer with the help of fourth-graders Karli Ipsen and Kelly Gnadinger, called the program "a modern Etch-a-Sketch," a throwback to pre-computer days. The girls, who were very facile with the drawing component, said they had been working with computers since the age of 4.

Scatuorchio, like Sandback, found it all "amazing." Asked what spurred her to take the class, she said, "I want to be with the new world — the new technology."

Lorraine Hughes, who was assisted by fourth-grader Chris Dong, said she signed up for the class because "I just wanted to have an idea how to turn it on and off."

Mildred Johnston, who was receiving a lesson from her grandson, Kevin Johnston, who’s in the fourth-grade, said she wanted to learn how to do more than play games on the computer.

She said her family had given her a computer as a gift.

"I play solitaire on it, and that’s about it," she said. "So I’m trying to learn to do more."

Kevin allowed as how his grandmother was a good student.

Three women from the Meadowbrook senior complex were having fun surfing the Net.

Claire Brown was reading about eggplant and studying recipes made with it.

It’s a member of the nightshade family, some of whose members are poisonous, she observed.

"I love eggplant," she added.

Brown admired the skill of the students on the computers. But, she remarked, "they can’t add up a column of figures on a paper bag like we used to do" and rely on calculators instead.

She was enjoying her excursion on the Internet, nonetheless, and said, "I’d rather do this than look at television."

Lillian Melio was amazed in her venture onto the Internet to learn that Madonna had a new CD out, but because it has a war sequence in the video, she withdrew it.

"You think all they want to do is make money, but evidently not," she said.

Strub said her children gave her equipment with which she can use her television screen for the Internet and she took the class to learn how to use it.

"My children said I should learn" about e-mail and the Internet, she said. "I get letters from my children. That’s all I need."

Zaorski said each of the students in the class has been given Internet sign-ons with an address at the school. She said that one of the first positive results of the class’s excursion onto the Internet was finding a new Chihuahua for Scatuorchio to replace her pet that died.

"We found a woman who does Chihuahua rescue, and one Sunday she came to her house with a 6-month-old Chihuahua," she reported.

Zaorski also said the drawings the seniors were making with the help of students were going to be compiled in a coloring book that will be made available to ill children at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch through the Ronald McDonald House.

Zaorski said the class, which began in January, will run through the end of the school year in June.

"Hopefully, we’ll start up again next year and make it an ongoing thing," she said.