Does Not Compute

Fiona Syrett

Are you shopping online for your Christmas presents this year? Millions of us are -  it’s convenient, there’s more choice and you can often save money.    It’s also safe and secure so long as you take a few simple steps first.

Ofcom has today published a video setting out the steps we can take and things we should look out for when shopping online this Christmas.  The video can be found here.

The video forms part of Ofcom’s support for Get Safe Online week (16-20 November), an annual event to raise awareness of internet safety issues. You can read more about that here

Katya Coupland here, Director of River Tales.

This Age Concern intergenerational oral history project had a huge ambition – to help re-connect a whole county to their rivers and to connect the generations. The plan was to hold 50 River Tales reminiscence workshops, interview people on camera and involve three schools in the project. A DVD would then be distributed to groups – coffee mornings and care-homes; libraries, museums and heritage centres – to spark more memories and get people talking as well as a CD-ROM created for the schools of Herefordshire and Worcestershire, fulfilling national curriculum requirements and giving children an appreciation of their local rivers and showing older people in a whole new light. Read the rest of this entry »

A note from David Over of the Royal Geographical Society.

Hope you don’t mind me getting in touch. I run a series of talks (21st Century Challenges) here at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London, aimed at engaging the public and younger people in important issues that face us as society.

The RGS is a registered charity and therefore this series is not-for-profit series. The next one I am doing is on the digital divide in the UK.

We have got Martha Lane Fox, Government’s Digital Inclusion Champion and co-founder of Lastminute.com, Professor Tanya Byron, psychologist author and broadcaster and Rory Cellan- Jones, BBC Tech correspondent on our panel.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are starting work on the resources to support Event Holders for Silver Surfers’ Day 2010. We’d like our readers help to make sure that what we do will provide materials that are useful for Event Holders and Visitors.

We have drawn up a short questionnaire, which you can complete online – click here.

We’ve sent the link to last year’s Silver Surfers’ Day Event Holders, but we’d like to hear from as many people as possible.

The questionnaire covers the Event Holders’ Resources, the Learning Guides and some ideas that we have for the website. We can’t promise that we’ll be able to develop everything that is suggested, but we hope it will help inform our decisions on spending the funds that we have available.

It will only take a few minutes to complete. If you did not hold an Event, you may not be able to answer all questions – that does not matter if you have ideas for 2010. It’s your chance to make Silver Surfers’ Day 2010 better than ever before, so please follow the link and fill it in.

If you’d like to refresh your memory about the SSD 2009 resources, you can find them here.

The Learners’ Resources are on the Learning Zone here.

Get online day '09

Get online day is taking place this year on Friday 23 October. Over 750 Get online day ‘09 events will take place at participating UK online centres across England between Monday 19 and Friday 30 October.

If you’re already online but know someone who’s not, Get online day is the perfect opportunity to Pass IT on and encourage offline loved ones to attend a Get online day event for help and support with computers and the internet.

Get online day ‘09 aims to encourage thousands of people across England to join their friends and family online, making October 2009 the month they get to grips with computers and the internet.

Get online day ‘09 helps people who have never used the internet before to be a part of it and take their first steps with computers and the internet. Search for a participating centre at http://www.ukonlinecentres.com or call 0800 77 1234.

UK online centres provide millions of people with access to technology and support in using it. They offer free or low cost access to the internet and email, deliver online courses and encourage people to progress onto further learning. For more information please visit http://www.ukonlinecentres.com.