The Burraga Foundation attended the Tech Savvy Elders event in Bermagui where we had a great day with the students from Bermagui Public School, the Bermagui Local Aboriginal Education Consultative Group, and elders from that community. A big thank you to everyone involved.

Tech Savvy Elders is an event where students and elders come together to talk, listen and learn about technology from the past to now.

We start by having a yarn about writing letters and compare that to email and text messaging and how quickly people get messages now. We then continue with how things were and how they are now:

• Communication by telephone then and now. Wow! How things have changed from when we had landlines in our homes and offices and phone booths around the streets. Today we mostly have different kinds of mobile phones that we take everywhere with us.
• How our TVs were these big boxes with black and white screens, and then we had colour TVs, and how there were knobs to turn the TVs on and off; and now, today, how TVs are flat and long with remote controls so you can sit away from the TV and change channels easily, and so many more stations and how we now watch TV on our phones.
• How music was played on record players, tape decks and walkmans but today we have CD players, iPods, phones, and download music off the internet.
• How computers were such bulky, boxy machines in offices and how now we have flat screens, laptops, iPads and tablets.

Students listen to elders talk about what it was like back in the day so they can learn about the past and how things have changed. Elders learn from students by checking out iPads and finding out what they are used for. Students demonstrate how iPads are used for things like finding music, addresses, and information about themselves. Students show how games are played, video clips on YouTube, how to search the internet, take photos and record videos and stories.

With permission from the elders, the students record stories about the past from the elders so that the stories can be shared with future generations to remember the past. It’s a wonderful experience for both young and old alike.

Story contributed by Melinda Brown, MGoals Project Officer. Story published in 2018.