Forget-me-not allows users to create a digital memory box used in Reminiscence therapy. FMN users can upload photos, videos, comments and sound into a secure portfolio, which is then used as a resource for reminiscence – a soothing conversation recalling bygone memories. 
This platform can be used by individual users (for personal use only and ability to collaborate on a friend’s profile) or by organisations (for professional use and ability to create patients’ sub-accounts, as well as to collaborate with care professionals)
You can invite family members, friends or designated carers to collaborate on a dementia sufferer’s portfolio by adding content and creating more memories for them to reminisce over. Think of photos that may trigger memories, recordings of loved ones telling personal stories, videos of important moments or just a text note reminding them of an event.
Remember that you will not only be helping someone with failing memory to remember their life, but you will also relive those happy moments while uploading them to the portfolio. Help them stimulate their brain and resist dementia by reminiscing about the days gone by.
For the most appropriate use of Forget me not, please, refer to the Suitability Tool and the accompanying Activity Plans. They will allow you to adapt your work with FMN to best suit the communication and memory abilities of the reminiscing person, thus avoiding moments of disappointment or failure. 

Along with the FMN digital memory box, users are encouraged to use the additional tools and training materials available in the Project section of the website.

TRAINING MODULES and REMINISCENCE DISCOVERY WORKSHOP

There are training modules on dementia, care for patients and the use of the Forget-me-not platform for reminiscence therapy. These training modules can be used for free by care providers or non-professional carers as they are adapted for both self-learning and face-to-face teaching. 

TRAINING VIDEOS and BITE-SIZE TUTORIALS

Various videos in the resources section, as well as in the instructions section help users make better use of the platform and support improved understanding of reminiscence sessions against dementia. 

SUITABILITY TOOL

It is a questionnaire for the carer of a person with memory issues. This questionnaire is designed to identify the most appropriate level of use of the Forget-me-not platform as a reminiscence tool. The questions are answered by the carer (not by the patient) and if not all answers are clear yet, the carer should take more time to observe the patient until the responses are sufficiently well-informed. As a carer, your honest and accurate answers about the person’s communication abilities will allow you to adapt your use of Forget Me Not in order to maximise the positive effect of future reminiscence sessions and avoid situations of frustration. At the end of the questionnaire, you will be guided towards best recommended practice that will suit both the person with memory issues and you as their carer.

ACTIVITY PLANS

A set of activity plans supports carers in institutions and day care centres who don’t have experience with reminiscence using FMN. These plans are downloadable in PDF format and carers will just need to follow them based on the communication levels established by the Suitability tool. It is expected that these “ready-made activities” will inspire carers and give them confidence to be creative with their own Reminiscence work.

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY FOR CARE PROVIDERS OR DEMENTIA SUPPORT GROUPS 

For those wishing to implement FMN on a larger scale, there is an Implementation strategy for residential care providers, day care centres and other dementia support groups presenting managers with a clear institution-wide roadmap. With engaging information and practical strategies managers will support the reminiscence team along their journey.  This set of documents could also be used with organizations and individuals wishing to become local hubs/champions on the use of FMN.

As with every online service allowing users to store personal data and stories, all measures have been taken to ensure maximum security of users’ accounts. These are password protected and users are responsible for safeguarding the password and for any activities or actions under their password. All data are held on servers in England, so the terms of use of Forget-me-not shall be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales. 

There are two types of Forget Me Not accounts:

INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS

Individual accounts on FMN are typically created by or for people experiencing troubles with their memory, possibly diagnosed with dementia in early stages. They could, and often should, be assisted by their carers, family members and friends. The account is created using the identity of this person, as it is their account, storing their memories. However, often a person close to the main user would like to contribute and create memories for them, in which case they should be invited by the user as “collaborators”. 
Collaborators would typically be carers, family members and friends, who know the person with dementia well and would like to create more memories in the owner’s account, which can then be used in reminiscence sessions. There are different levels of access that collaborators can be granted, giving them rights to either add or edit all memories, or create new memories and edit only the memories they have created.

ORGANISATION ACCOUNTS

These accounts are created by care institutions with a two-fold purpose. To start with, a team within a care home or day-care centre can have access to the same organisation account collective memories based on popular themes, which are then used with service users in small group reminiscence sessions. In addition, the care professionals can create sub-accounts for their elderly service users in order to work together on their own memory boxes for one-on-one reminiscence sessions. This should be done with the agreement of their family. 

The access rights are governed by the Terms and Conditions and the Privacy Policy which are available on the Forget-Me-Not platform. As explained above a user can create an account, or have an account created in their name, which will constitute their personal digital memory box. 
Separate memories can then be added to this memory box, and it can be done in several ways:

INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS

• The account holder adds their own memories personally or with direct support of a carer while the account holder is present. 
• The account holder invites one or more Collaborators to add and edit memories on their behalf into the account holder’s memory box. 

ORGANISATION ACCOUNTS

• A professional carer, or activity coordinator works on a general set of memories to be used in group reminiscence sessions. These are stored in the organisation’s account.
• Care home residents are supplied with a sub-account memory box, which is created and managed by the team of the care home (or activity coordinator in a day-care centre) with agreement of their family / legal representative. 

The Forget-me-not platform is accessed at this web address: www.forgetmenotdigital.com

WATCH THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS:

 How to register and confirm your account

 How to log into your account

 How to delete your account

 How to use the accessibility feature

The Forget-me-not platform can be accessed at this web address: www.forgetmenotdigital.com

WATCH THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS:

 How to register and confirm your account

 How to log into your account

 How to delete your account

 How to use the accessibility feature

 How to create and navigate between sub-accounts for users associated with your organisation

Depending on the type of user account, memories can be organised in different ways: 

• memories in a personal memory box
• memories in an organisation’s account for group use 
• collective memories prepared by professionals and stored in a library

Personal memories are stored in a memory box within a personal account, or within a sub-account of an organisation. 

How to navigate a personal memory box

Memories for group use are created by professionals within an organisation and then used for reminiscence sessions in small groups.

How to navigate memories created in an organisation account

There is also a Library of collective memories in several languages relating to the shared past from the last ten decades. You can browse through these and save them onto a personal or organisation’s account.

How to view memories in the Library and save them to your account

There are two ways of involving other people in the creation and use of memories in Forget me not. 

• Direct sharing of created memories between personal or organisation’s accounts 
• Collaborating on a memory directly in a memory box.

Share a memory with another user by entering their email address below and clicking on the Share Memory button. The user then receives a notification and chooses to add your memory or not.

How to share a memory with another account

An account holder can also invite one or more collaborators to add memories on their behalf into the account holder’s memory box. For example, if the account holder lives in one place, but his/her family members are far away, they can be invited as collaborators and they can add memories, which will appear in the account holder’s memory box. 

Collaborators can be easily invited by clicking on the button Invite Collaborators.  
This will open a simple form, which will be used to invite a collaborator by an automated email. An account will be created for the collaborator if they don’t have one and they will receive instructions at the provided email address. 

The account holder retains control over collaborator’s access to their memories. In the section View Collaborators, the account holder can allow the collaborator to either have editing access to all the memories, or select only specific memories. The collaborator can add new content and edit it as well. 

How to invite and manage collaborators

After logging in and selecting the green button Memories, the user is taken to the main page with the memory rotation menu. In the left upper part of the page, click on the green button +Add Memory. This will create a new memory, which you will need to give a Title. It is always good practice to think the title through first so that it’s descriptive of the memory, but also unique and recognisable. For example, “Birthday” or “Jane’s Birthday” is descriptive, but not unique. “Jane’s 50th birthday 2004” provides a detailed description of the memory and is instantly recognisable among other birthday memories. Once you’re happy with the title, click the Save New button. Now you will be able to edit the content of your new memory. 

How to create a new memory

To delete a memory, open it and click on the Edit Memory button. 

Scroll to the bottom of the memory in editing mode and click on the red button Delete this memory and all items. 

There is a warning before the memory is deleted permanently in order to avoid a deletion by mistake. Once the user has clicked YES, there is no return and the memory and all its content is deleted.

How to delete a memory

A memory can be as simple, or as rich as its creator would like it to be. A memory can be composed of one or more of the following elements:

• Text
• Hyperlinks as part of the text
• Image 
• Sound / Recording
• Embedded video from YouTube
• Home-made video recordings via YouTube
• Presentation slides made into a video via YouTube

Images, sound files and embedded videos can be described in a short caption, which appears just under the file in a memory. If the caption box is left blank when editing the memory, the file will be displayed without a caption.

An example of a memory with all these items

The role of text in a memory is to provide reminiscence context and enough information about the memory. Here are a few prompts on what to write:

• When?
• Where?
• Who and who with?
• What led to the memory?
• What were the consequences?
• How did it happen?
• What emotions did it provoke?

There are two approaches to entering text. The user can simply click in the text box and start typing. When done, just click on Save text item button. This allows for simple descriptions of the memory in just a few words or sentences.

The other option is to use the choice of format options allowing users to make their text appear in a format defined by them. This allows for more elegant longer texts, providing more detail about the memory and thus creating a pretty story to be read during reminiscence sessions. 

The text editor uses standard text formatting buttons:

The selected text will appear in Bold.

The selected text will appear in Italic.

Bold and Italic can be combined to form a text in both formats together.

The selected paragraphs can appear as a bullet point list.

The selected paragraphs can appear as a numbered list.

The Undo button can reverse your last formatting or typing. It “undoes” the last input.

The selected text will be cleared of any previously applied formatting.

Select your sentence, or part of text, then on click on on one of the three alignment buttons to align it in the centre, to the left or to the right.

To add a hyperlink to the text, first highlight the word(s) leading to it and then click the hyperlink symbol to add the destination URL (the address of the website). See detailed description below.

How to add and format text

Some websites may be useful and interesting to use during a reminiscence session, so why not add them to a particular Forget-me-not memory item. Let’s say the person with dementia is interested in WWII airplanes. Instead of always searching for photos or websites about these planes, the person creating the memory could include a hyperlink to a particular website and use it every time the memory item is used at a reminiscence session. 

After writing text in the text box, you need to select (highlight) a word, or several words referring to the website.

• Once the part of the text is highlighted, click on the hyperlink button in the text format bar. 
• This will open a box where you need to write, or paste the exact URL (website address) and save it. 
• The hyperlink is created. You can now access the website just by clicking on the hyperlink every time you open the memory item. 

How to add a hyperlink to a website of interest

Images and photos can be uploaded in both most common formats JPG and PNG. Users don’t need to worry about file size or dimensions as all images are automatically reformatted when uploaded. 

Scroll to the Images section of a memory, then under the text Upload new image, click on the Choose file button, which opens an upload window allowing you to browse your files system and choose the image(s) you wish to upload. It is possible to upload more than one image at a time by selecting more images and then finish the upload by clicking on the button (Open) at the bottom of the upload window. The images are then uploaded and displayed. It may take a moment depending on the size and number of images, as well as the upload speed of the internet connection.

When uploading more than one image, you can choose which image should be set as Default Image by clicking on the star icon under the image. The Default Image will appear in the main memory rotation menu. 

You can also rearrange the photos in a preferred order, so that they display in a logical way. This is done by a simple drag and drop of the photos while editing the memory. 

You can also add a caption below the photo to describe or identify the photo. Captions can be added to photos only when they are uploaded as single photos, one by one. When multiple photos are uploaded at once, only the first photo will display the caption. 

How to add and organise images

Memories can also be triggered by watching a video, an extract of a favourite film, or a private recording of a family event for example. To minimise used storage space and benefit from the wealth of videos online, the Forget-me-not memory tool is using YouTube to store the videos, but they are displayed within the tool itself. It is not possible to upload a video file onto the platform directly, it will always have to go through YouTube.

To upload an existing video from YouTube:

• Open a web browser or the YouTube app on a mobile device and go to YouTube’s main page.
• Search and locate a video that you would like to embed in your memory item.
• Copy the URL (web address) from the address bar at the top of the YouTube window.
  • Select the URL, right click to display the menu and click on COPY)
    Alternatively: Select the URL and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C
    You can also copy the URL from YouTube’s Share button below the video.

• Now that you have copied the URL of the desired video on YouTube, return to the Forget-me-not tool, where you’re creating a memory and paste it into the “YouTube Links” box.
• You can add a short description of the video in the Caption box. It will appear under the video, when displayed as part of the memory.
• Save the embedded video by clicking on the button “Save YouTube Item”
• The video preview should appear in your memory item now.

How to embed a YouTube video in a memory

To upload a video from your computer or device:

• As explained earlier, due to security measures, users cannot upload video files directly from their computer or device. There is, however, an easy way of doing it through YouTube.
• Users should create a profile in YouTube, or just sign in with their Google login details.
• The process of uploading a video is not difficult and is described in detail HERE:
• After uploading the video, make sure the Privacy setting of your video in YouTube is set to UNLISTED. This way other people cannot discover your video, but it is available for upload onto the Forget-me-not tool.
• Once your video is uploaded on YouTube, you can proceed in the same way as with an existing video, as described further up. 

Presentation slides made into a video via YouTube

Sometimes family members create presentation slides with photos and text in an attempt to help their loved ones orientate in their memories. These presentations can be converted into a video and uploaded onto YouTube, to be then embedded in a Forget-me-not memory box. 
This will be useful mainly to people, who have already created such presentations and would like to integrate them in a digital memory box in a more modern way. Depending on the type and version of your presentation software (PowerPoint, Keynote, Impress) there are online guides to help you convert your presentations into simple videos that you can run from the digital memory box, instead of being opened in another piece of software just to view that presentation. You can search online for guidance or check out these few links:

• Converting PowerPoint presentations into videos (Windows / Microsoft Office users)
• Converting Keynote presentations into videos (iOS / Apple Office users)

There are two ways of uploading sound into a memory:

• Upload an existing audio file
• Record your own audio directly into the memory

Sound files can be added to a memory in a similar way as images. The platform supports the most popular music file formats MP3 and WAV. If the recording is not in MP3 or WAV, it can be converted in few clicks using sound editing software or even more easily through a website like: https://audio.online-convert.com/convert-to-mp3

How to convert an audio file

Scroll to the Audio section of a memory, then under the tab Upload audio, click on the Choose file button, which will open an upload window allowing you to browse your files system and choose the sound file that you want to upload. The sound file is then uploaded and displayed. 

You can add a short description of the sound file in the Caption box. It will appear under the sound file icon, when displayed as part of the memory.

How to add a sound file

To record an audio, there is a very simple to use recording app built into the memory editor. Just follow the instructions on the screen.

Click the 'Start recording' button and begin to speak into your microphone. Once you are finished, click the 'Stop Recording' button. If you are happy with your recording, this will save to your memory. To allow this feature to work you must have a device with a microphone plugged in and when prompted allow your browser access to this device.

How to record audio directly in the memory

To find easily a memory in an account with dozens of memories, it is recommended to tag your memory with the appropriate categories. 

For instance, when creating a memory about a proud achievement at work which happened in 1976, you can use the category tags:

Time periods -> 1970s
Life stages -> Work
Location -> Work
People -> Colleagues

Later on, when you search for this memory in the rotation menu, use the filter with any of these tags and the memory will come up. 

How to assign category tags to a memory