A service-learning proposal in the initial training of social educators: closing the older peoples's digital gap

Service Learning (ApS) is a powerful educative methodology into higher education in our country. In this article we present an experience based on the ApS. Where we analyze the different phases through which this methodology passes in a specific case at the University of Valladolid. The experience was carried out with students of the Bachelor Degree in Social Education in the subject of ICTs Applied to Education in the first year and a group of some forty Elderly People in the Municipal Centers of the City of Valladolid. The main objective of the educational process is to cover a demand of older people who attend these centers over the digital world through a training process that includes the use of different apps, online services and other digital tools. The objective for the univesity students was that they are capable of developing social and civic competences, acquiring an ethical commitment and a social responsibility through the transfer of their theoretical knowledge to the practice, elaborating a design of a proposal of media literacy for elderly people and their implementation in the university classrooms in a morning session of coexistence.