The Digital Villages Research Network

Blimey…….what a day!!!

Really good and lots to go over, ill put together a precis as soon as possible. There is a great deal of high level interest but also, crucially i think, lots of comments about making ICT relevant and ‘for the people’. Martha Lane Fox commented about all the ICT schmes that having all these ideas is good but that the UK had “more pilots than BA” which I think is a brill way of summing up the constant drive for new ways of doing things. Often when its already been tried!!!

I’m enjoying the conference, particularly the networking sessions. I’ve met quite a few interesting and useful contacts.

On an afternoon coffee break, to restock on energy.

So many people and lots of views on ICT and its use. Not everyone is of even slightly the same opinion and there are some very strong views about where the UK is heading with its ICT use. Also who whould be leading on whether that should be groups, government, centers like Destinations or other learning providers, or individuals.

Central Government has come in for some persistant criticisms!!

Hi all from the 5th Natinal Digital Inclusion confernce from London. Roger, Nick, Sue and I are here listening to some of the latest issues and themes in Digital Inclusion. Already had a couple of MP’s talking as well as Helen Milner who I was able to have a brief chat to about the project and who I am meeting for a fuller talk later.

More details later as well as some piccies when Ive a little more time!!

There has been a change to Loftus Digital Village. The  Image archive has grown very large and is not simply a Loftus Image archive. SO – it is now known as the East Cleveland Image Archive and it’s still at http://www.ecol.org.uk/loftus – John Hannah’s team at Loftus Library will continue to beaver away at the archive. There is now a new site for is Loftus Digital Village is http://www.ecol.org.uk/loftusdv – Pages pertinent to Loftus are there and Loftus specific images. The site is in its infancy.

I’ve started to implement another other strategy and you can see the idea here http://www.skinningrove.tv/image-archive/ NB the images are not actually on the Skinningrove site – merely displayed there

Others have been added

STAITHES http://www.staithes.org.uk/image-archive/

BROTTON added  http://www.brotton.org.uk/image-archive/

CARLIN HOW -   http://www.carlinhow.org.uk/old-carlin-how-photos/image-archive/

LOFTUS    http://ecol.org.uk/loftusdv/image-archive/

MARGROVE PARK   http://www.margrovepark.com/images/archive-images/

SKELTON http://ecol.org.uk/skelton/

SALTBURN http://saltburn.org.uk/image-archive/

This is a fabulous resource for East Cleveland

On Wednesday and Thursday this week a group of us will be going to the National Digital Inclusion conference  .

Its now a pretty prestigious event and along with speakers from the ICT and social inclusion groups being there, all main political party leaders will be giving addresses.

The digital inclusion Taskforce head, Martha Land Fox will be a Keynote speaker as will members of Direct Gov and Nhs.uk

With the event being part sponsored by one of our dissemination groups, UK Online, this is a great opportunity for te project. Outside of the main event I will be meeting with the UK Online team as well as members of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, and DC10, highlighting our project and the DVN concept.

We hape to be posting direct from the event so watch this space…..

On Friday some of us met in Destinations to discuss the interview schedule and consider the sort of questions to be asked.
Another helpful session with many useful things to come out of it. I particularly liked the tips we got from Carrie drawn from her many experiences of this. Can’t wait to give it a go ourselves so long as I don’t have to interview Carrie!

‘The lack of mobile phone reception and broadband coverage in rural areas has become the No 1 issue in dissuading young people from staying on in the countryside, the chair of the Commission for Rural Communities has said.’ (Guardian 04.03.10)

Read the article

Is this happening in East Cleveland?

Is digital technology really the no. 1 reason/issue?

For European Get On Line Day March 4th we’re organising a Day of Cultural Blogcasting from Destinations, Saltburn UK. We’ll plan to use the “live blogging” approach employed for the recent Saltburn Community Animation event so that media is released throughout the day to a schedule. The site is here: www.destinations.uk.com/gold

At this short notice it’s unsure how much content will come from Europe but we at least expect items from Latvia and Finland, possibly Greece. We’ll be firing up 5-10 min videos, some audio stuff and perhaps image galleries: all hoping to reflect who and where we are. If anyone has anything they would like to have considered for inclusion contact me direct on s.d.thompson@tees.ac.uk

Yesterday at Carlin How Community centre , Carrie, John, Marion, Roger, Katherine and myself attended workshop 7 ( Designing an interview schedule)  , an informative  discussion was made and great fun towards the end was made designing questions we thought would be needed for interviewing. Looking forward to workshop 8.