The Digital Villages Research Network

I went to Moorsholm last night for the second digital postcard evening arranged by Lynne and Steve. It was a great evening. Lots of people came to the village hall to look at the pictures and add their stories to the postcards. Some people brought old photographs of Moorsholm. The ways that the village has changed over the years are so interesting. Steve’s pictures of Moorsholm are fantastic and really capture the different places, activities, histories and memories that even a small village can have. Well done to both for organising these successful events. I look forward to developing this further for new areas of East Cleveland and online.

Just to say thanks from the DVN team to all of the survey participants in Moorsholm and Stanghow and to Terry for his hard work on survey distribution.

There was a 43% response rate, which is an excellent postal survey result. We are really grateful to everyone who took the time to fill in the questionnaires.

We also look forward to sharing our findings with you.

Saltburn researchers, Cheryl, Kathryn, Colin and John, met at Destinations on Wednesday to put the finishing touches on the strategy for the survey and are now ready to go. Following a similar approach to Redcar, we divided Saltburn into zones, and each researcher is working in one of the designated areas.

Barry was also at Destinations on Wednesday and has reported 20 completed surveys in Skinningrove and a further 50 currently being filled out by local residents.

Moorsholm and Stanghow’s survey is now closed and the prize draw takes place tomorrow. We are pleased to report that just under half of the surveys were returned by post to the team – thanks for your participation in this.

Thanks to everyone in communities across Redcar and Cleveland for your support of, and participation in, this phase of the project.

The network continues to grow with new researchers Martin Jefferson and Cheryl Sanderson joining the project. Yesterday, Martin, Cheryl, John & Colin joined Paul and me in Redcar for an introduction to the project and an overview of research ethics.

Great news in Moorsholm – Terry has delivered all 150 surveys to households in the village and in Stanghow. We are very grateful to those who have returned completed surveys and are looking forward to finding out how people are using computers and the internet.

The prize draw for Moorsholm takes place soon – Friday 27th November. Keep a look out for the winning number…

Skelton and Redcar researchers will receive their surveys this week and we look forward to starting there. Meanwhile, Carlin How and Skinningrove are making good progress and we look forward to the results from these villages.

The surveys went out to Terry in Moorsholm, the Carlin How researchers and to Barry in Skinningrove yesterday.

We hope everything goes well for our researchers when they start distribution (including the weather!) and we are really looking forward to collecting our findings.

Thanks everyone for being supportive in this busy fieldwork stage.

We went to the Toad Hall Arms in Moorsholm today for a research workshop on the community survey. Moorsholm and Redcar researchers, Terry and Nick, planned their community strategies for distributing and collecting the questionnaires in each place. It is really interesting to see how the different urban and rural areas will require strategies which are similar in some respects and different in others, as the pictures show. As an example, personal safety is more of an issue in urban areas where researchers are less familiar with some of the streets. Each community will have their own particular approaches which reflect the local population and geographical and social landscape.

We are pleased to report that the DVN project is now moving into its second phase of research – the computer and internet survey.

Phase 1, which included developing a community research network and mapping local ICT provision, has been a success. The community researchers and the DVN team have accessed a wide range of local services to find out what ICT provision is on offer. We are currently working on the analysis of this data and will report our findings in the autumn.

Our digital map of ICT provision across Redcar and Cleveland is under development with support from Prof Mike Lockyer from the School of Computing and Maths at Teesside University.

Some of the community mapping will continue into the second phase and we are currently broadening our network of community researchers. Adverts have gone out in the local press and we look forward to meeting potential researchers in the coming weeks. New researchers will join the existing network and start on phase 2 activities. They will receive initial training on the DVN project, ethics and safety and digital media for social research before going on to assist with the survey.

Our existing community researchers have evaluated their initial training sessions and we are pleased to report that the workshops have been a success.

The household survey will begin in October 2009. Community researchers have taken part in workshops 4 and 5 and are currently preparing their survey distribution strategies. The survey will take place in Moorsholm, Redcar, Skinningrove, Carlin How and Saltburn. It aims to generate information on computer and internet use within these communities. We aim to answer questions such as, ‘How many people currently have broadband access in the home?’, ‘How often do people use the internet at home?’ and ‘What are people using the internet for?’.

We would like to thank everyone who has taken part so far in phase 1 of the research and community researchers for helping us to successfully deliver the first part of the project. We look forward to starting phase 2 in the autumn (2009).

With help from the The Digital Villages Research Network an On Line Quiz was  recently arranged between the Toad Hall Arms Moorsholm   and the Maynard Arms,Carlin How.After a sound check with Barry Hunt doing a rendition from Frank Sinatra the quiz commenced.The night was a great success with support messages coming from as far away as Norway and a rig in the North Sea.It was interesting to see how quickly teams at Moorsholm worked out a system to best use the computors and the evening ended on a sweet note with Moorsholm ending up winning and Terry at the  pub selling copious amounts of alcohol!!!!!!!!