Family, social life, belonging, love, relating to better quality life as grow older.
If you’ve had problems trying to explain to your remote loved one how to setup or use an application on their iPhone or iPad while talking to them on the phone, you may want to consider a solution that allows you to remotely view what is being shown on their screen. You can do that using Zoom.
Although my mom really does enjoy video calls from me on her Echo Show, I have problems getting the rest of my family members interested in Alexa Calling as they are only familiar with Zoom calls. I arranged it so my Mom can Zoom on her big screen TYV. Here is how to do it.
In my mind, there is a compelling argument that the right gadgets and technology can make aging in place more successful and less expensive. And by more successful, I am thinking in particular of higher quality of life, more autonomy, and less dependence on the kindness of strangers. I don’t think this argument gets made much in the media or by the aging services industry though. So here it is.
A partial solution to this problem is to create an Alexa Calendar for your parent. Here is a detailed "How to" published by Frank Engelman on Tech-enhanced Life.
This solution is for people who want to be able to help a parent with appointments; or possibly enter joint appointments into a calendar that they are able to see; or generally facilitate them being able to use Alexa for calendaring issues.
It’s a common situation: an aging parent starts needing help from family members organizing things like doctors visits, or other care-related or social activities. How do you set up and maintain some type of mutually convenient, calendaring solution that maintains the right balance between “collaborating” and “helping” and “keeping things simple”?
Photo by Steve Philpott on Unsplash Normally, I visit my Aunt 6-7 times a week. I count on these visits to “check up” on her, get her things she needs, and generally make sure she is OK. BUT, . . . In Wisconsin we have snow! And, I travel for work. I live in … Read more
We have recently been exploring ways to leverage “shared photos” as another way to encourage remote interactions among family members, and we wanted to find ways that an Echo Show could be used for photo sharing. The good news: there are several ways to do that, and this solution explains how.
Having the right lighting in the right place at the right time is a very important detail for both safety and quality of life. Think burglars, or being able to read, for example.
But some older adults, as they become forgetful, or develop mobility issues, can end up with the lights turned off when they should be on, or the wrong lights for the “job at hand”. We wanted some “smart home” solutions that can help with this.
As we explore various smart home solutions useful for “better aging”, we get requests for some specific “kit lists” that contain a collection of the products needed to implement some of the DIY solutions found on this site. This page is where we keep the lists of products for each of those “kits”. Each kit … Read more