Wednesday 12 November 2008

How do you measure digital inclusion?

So tonight the Wordpress training starts at a library here in Brighton. We've designed a very simple opening session so that we can work out some basic stuff, including:

  • what are the skills of the group?
  • what sort of website do they want?
  • what sort of support will they need in the coming sessions.
I've set up a test site for the group to play with, as well as a Surveymonkey survey to capture some basic details about them. I'm hoping this will help us think about how this training is helping to tackle digital inclusion, so I've included questions about how much they use technology.

Questions include:
1. Tell us about your computer skills.
For each question please choose one answer from:
Never tried, Need some help, Comfortable, Do it all the time
  • Basic computer use - saving files, clicking folders, etc
  • Browsing the internet
  • Sending email
  • Using a digital camera
  • Viewing videos
  • Putting pictures or videos on websites like Flickr or Youtube
  • Running my own website
2. How often do you use technology?
Choose from: Never, Not very often, Every week, Every day
  • Mobile phone calls
  • Text messaging
  • Sending and receiving email
  • Surfing the internet
  • Working on my own website
  • Contacting friends or family through social websites
  • Posting videos or pictures on a website
There are other questions about what they like about the internet, their skills, and what they think are the barriers to people using new technologies.

I'll post up some replies once we've collected them but I wondered whether there any other suggestions for other ways of asking questions now which we can use to judge digital inclusiveness in the future?

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