ICT Without Computers
Carry was conducting interviews this evening, so I plan to arrive a little later. Delayed by traffic I arrived even later than expected and when I walked in, clearly, I interrupted, a session to microphone, which was unfortunate, because it appeared to destroy the intimacy of the session. However carry her to leave soon so all was not lost. We proceeded to have a discussion, and there seemed to be no urgency to lay out the laptops. The main topic of the discussion was a funding bid that Marian wanted to put in but around this was woven several other topics as is the usual nature of these sessions. Marrian seemed to be very clean to fill in the bid document electronically rather than filling it in by hand, but all she had was a paper copy and I had forgotten to bring at the software. I had to order about to be able to do this. However, I figured out another way, which was to scan the bid document, and then put the images into a Word document. This seemed to work okay, but there was always a risk of the image becoming displaced whilst over typing. I therefore adopted another method which was to make each image, a watermark in individual documents which could then be over typed.
Here’s some of what we came up with.
The Village Association is in partnership with a UK on Line project, who have funded a BT line and internet connection until 31st March 2008. Who have also provided laptops on loan on a sessional basis.
During training we have created our own Web site www.margrovepark.com. Which to date has had 1970 visitors. Currently the site is very much a Heritage site, includes history and images, and is attractive to visitors.
We would like to continue this kind of work in order to attract visitors to the website but we would also like to extend the site to serve the community. For example, we would like to run a computer club whereby the community could come into the centre and be assisted in using ICT for job search. This is important to Margrove Park because being a rural community. There is no other way that people could find out this information without a visit to Loftus or Guisborough etc. We would also like to extend the usage of the website to include the promotion of local businesses and in this way promote economic growth in the village by encouraging people in the village to use businesses and services that exist in the village and nearby.
Services available online include, Job search, Renew Road Tax, passport or TV License. Contact your Council, NHS Direct, Consumer Direct. Citizens could club together and place grocery orders with one of the supermarkets doing home delivery.
In a village that has no shops or post office by providing services shopping, Training and job search online the village hall could become a virtual post office, corner shop, job shop, and schoolhouse.
