Relevance

[Mary]

Hi Everyone

The Minister emphasised the importance of giving people an individual reason for getting involved with technology. Motivation is critical to all forms of learning - what reasons can we give people to become skilled in using ICT?

Cheers

Alan

[Tim Keeling]

In my experience it is, staying in touch with friends and family, viewing their photos, emailing, skype or msn video phone, facebook, flickr, etc. Making contact with people generally. Web 2.0 is now more important than office applications.

Keeping up with the family, grand kids etc.

More and more often saying " I really thought I ought to have a go now". This is a tough one as they don't know what they want to use one for.

As well as internet shopping, learning, news, renewing tax disks etc.

Biggest obstacles is the getting to grips with internet installation (making it all work in the first place), cumbersome over complicated software, the cost of equipment and broadband, (only a couple of hundred pounds is beyond many people), frightened of breaking the computer (particularly if it is shared with someone), too much information on the screen, knowing what to do when it goes wrong, file management and picture transfer, making backups.


Phew! No wonder people are digitally excluded. I heard somewhere that the problem with computers is that they are a bit like having a classic car, there is always something that needs fixing and you have to be a bit of an enthusiast to keep it going.