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Communities 2.0 e-newsletter
Spring 2012
Can you help older people get online in 2012?
A series of high profile events that are aimed at increasing the number of older people using the web are being organised for 2012. Communities 2.0 will be supporting these in Wales.
Age UK is organising Myfriendsonline Week which runs from 19th – 25th March. Spring Online Week (also known as Silver Surfers’ Week) follows, from 23rd-27th April.
There is also Adult Learners’ Week, managed in Wales by NIACE Dysgu Cymru, which runs from 12th-20th May and has a specific focus on computers and the internet, with Digital Day on Friday 18th May. People of all ages can get involved in Adult Learners’ Week, but there are usually many activities for older people to access.
Communities 2.0 worked with the Carmarthenshire 50+ Forum to host a series of events in February at the National Botanic Gardens. Members of the various 50+ forums around Carmarthenshire were helped to make the most of the internet during the events.
Please get in touch with us if you are interested in organising an event in your area to help older people get online. We may be able to support you in preparing for the event and on the day itself.
Communities 2.0 wins award!
These events came hot on the heels of an award success for Communities 2.0. Our Public Engagement Team scooped a runner-up prize in the Best Communications category at the recent WCVA Third Sector Awards Cymru.
Communities 2.0 website offers more advice to learners
The Communities 2.0 website now features a range of additional learning resources for those who are starting to make the most of the internet.
The recently uploaded materials can help you find out more about e-mail, social media, websites, digital photography, looking after your PC and so much more. There are even resources for businesses, voluntary organisations and community groups to use.
On the site, you will also find a handful of video guides that give you a brief tour around some useful websites, including uSwitch, Traveline Cymru and Google Mail.
If there’s a topic or website that you’d like us to provide more information on, through our website, just let us know.
Parents urged over internet safety
The national Safer Internet Day has taken place, with events in Wales among those helping parents do more to keep children safe online.
A number of new resources were made available to parents, grandparents and carers by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), through the Thinkuknow website, including a series of short videos, presentations and information sheets.
One of the main aims of the day was to promote important messages to parents who have been urged, through the Safer Internet Day campaign, to take a greater interest in their children’s online lives so they know who they’re talking to and arranging to meet, on the web.
Top tips for parents from CEOP:
- Be involved in your child’s online life. For many of today’s young people there is no line between the online and offline worlds. Talk to them about what they’re doing, if they know you understand they are more likely to approach you if they need support. Tips on how to discuss tricky issues with your child
- Watch Thinkuknow films to learn more. The Thinkuknow programme has films and advice for children from five all the way to 16.
- Keep up-to-date with your child’s development online. Be inquisitive and interested in the new gadgets and sites that your child is using.
- Set boundaries in the online world just as you would in the real world. Think about what they might see, what they share, who they talk to and how long they spend online.
- Know what connects to the internet and how. Nowadays even the TV connects to the internet. Your child will use all sorts of devices and gadgets; make sure you’re aware of which ones can connect to the internet, such as their phone or games console.
- Consider the use of parental controls on devices that link to the internet, such as the TV, laptops, computers, games consoles and mobile phones. Find your service provider and learn how to set your controls
- Emphasise that not everyone is who they say they are. Make sure your child knows never to meet up with someone they only know online.
- Know what to do if something goes wrong. Just as in the offline world, you want to help your child when they need it. Therefore, it is important to know when and how to report any problem. What tools are there to help me keep my child safe?
Ask Dafydd
“Hi Dafydd. I have been tasked with developing an e-newsletter with hyperlinks. Where do you store documents that can be accessed through the hyperlinks?”
If you need to have documents or web pages that are accessible via hyperlinks from an e-newsletter, then the documents or pages must be hosted online.
- You can use a website to do this, such as a free Wordpress site, which allows you a certain amount of space to store uploaded documents (and you can also put your e-newsletter online here, in case people have difficulty reading it in an email).
- Add your document to Scribd.com and set it to public
- Use a facility such as Dropbox.com to host documents online. It will offer a ‘public link’ that you can distribute.
- Create your document in Google Docs and allow it to be publicly available
If you would like to ask a question of our All Wales ICT Field Officer, Dafydd Ladd, send us an e-mail, marked ‘Ask Dafydd’, with your question and contact details. Thank you.
If you ‘like’ Communities 2.0, tell us on Facebook!
Connecting people and organisations through social media is one of the things we do most frequently through Communities 2.0 – and that’s just where you can find out more about the project and interact with our staff!
On the Communities 2.0 Facebook page you can not only comment on the news stories, photos and video links that we post, but you can also post your own items on our wall for others to see. All you need to do is go to the page and press ‘like’.
Why not tweet us on Twitter? Our Twitter feed @Communities2_0 keeps the digital inclusion conversation flowing. Just go to our feed and press ‘follow’. You’ll be using hashtags and retweeting before you know it! If you don’t know how to, just ask us.
If you want to see videos of the some of the people and organisations that we’ve helped, you can do so from our YouTube channel. Just go to the page, find the video you want, click on it and press play!
This newsletter been sent to people, groups and organisations who’ve been helped by Communities 2.0, the Welsh Government’s digital inclusion programme. If you'd like to receive it, please register on the Communities 2.0 website
14/03/2012
