"When they get email they're getting pictures from the grandchildren, and when the grandchildren go on their OEs they're firing off photos saying 'Here I am at the Eiffel Tower'.
"Email opens up a whole new world for them," SeniorNet Otago tutor Valerie Steele (68) said.
Miss Steele is one of eight tutors at a two-week summer school programme at the group's Green Island base.
The course offers a range of modules, from learning how to print documents, to using Google Earth and the web-based telephone system Skype.
She said the desire to learn how to operate a computer could be the result of an older person receiving a second-hand computer from family members and not knowing how to operate it.
"They're given it, and then their families say, `Right, now you can email us'," she said.
But many older people did not even know how to turn on the computer.
She said older people were often nervous about entering education after such a long time, so class sizes were kept to a maximum of four students to give them as much one-on-one time as possible.
Nigel McPherson (79) said he was "anxious to learn", and everything he knew about computers he had learnt from SeniorNet.
He said he could imagine his life without his computer, but it would be hard to go without the convenient communication it offered.
Another student, Margaret Rusbatch (67), started learning about computers as a way to keep her brain active and, like many other students, had begun to research her family tree online.
-Charlotte Hilling
