Digital Circle

First post says:

This site has been created to help a group of collaborators to work on the development of the role of Digital Mentors, which was raised by the UK government department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) in their white paper in 2008, Communities in Control.

The white paper stated of the digital mentors:
“Government will pilot a ‘Digital Mentor’ scheme in deprived areas. These mentors will support groups to develop websites and podcasts, to use digital photography and online publishing tools, to develop short films and to improve general media literacy. The Digital Mentors will also create links with community and local broadcasters as part of their capacity building, to enable those who want to develop careers in the media to do so. Depending on the success of these pilots, this scheme could be rolled out to deprived areas across England.“

This has echoes of some other projects which are planned for the next year in Northern Ireland. I’ve signed up to the mailing list and would encourage you too.

On this subject,
Claire White (whitellama) writes:

All people need is access and time. This is a big ‘all’. Unpicking this, use of social media is a luxury. Access to basic equipment is enough for basic interaction, but the technology you have dictates whether you can access features like broadband. When internet access has a price, time becomes limited. Your ability to have an ambient awareness of the passing world depends if you are near a screen much of the time, for example in a job that is both computer-based and where access to social sites has not been blocked.

Joining in the many-to-many conversations online takes longer than face to face, but it is at least more possible than actually moving to the same gathering points. Twitter’s strength is that it is virtually as quick to post as it is to read updates, so many-to-many conversations have become quicker and more open than email. Unless you protect your updates, you open up your interactions for anybody to follow. When Twitter becomes widely accessible by mobile phone again it will become easier for this to happen away from computer screens.

There is an opportunity for Digital Circle to perform as a community creator, not just enabling those who are ‘in the business’ to collaborate, but also to introduce those who are excluded who may bring new prespectives, new ideas and new “wealth”.

Tags: digital mentors

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 12:56 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.