Over the past decade, and especially in the past five years, there have been a number of national schemes to help low income families with children to get online. The Computers for Pupils scheme started in 2006 and provided grants through local authorities. In Birmingham that money was increased by the voluntary donations to the Birmingham e-Learning Foundation made by recipients.
Over 20,000 families in Birmingham have received devices under the scheme.
Children with PDAs
Good to see the Birmingham Post report highlighting how important increasing broadband speeds is to securing business for Birmingham http://bit.ly/opltYr Digital Birmingham continues to strive to secure funding to move the project forward.
History provides many examples of great ‘Firsts’. Chuck Yeager – the first person to break the sound barrier by flying faster than the speed of sound; Neil Armstrong – the first man to walk on the moon; Sir Roger Bannister – the first man to break the 4-minute mile; Alexander Bell – first in the race to invent the telephone.
Now I’m not suggesting that taking the first tentative steps towards making Birmingham the first City in the UK to have a Citywide 4G wireless network is even close to flying to the moon, but having being heavily involved with developing the 4G proposal for Birmingham, it does fill me with immense excitement on the glimpse into the future that it holds.
The demand by consumers for data ‘on the go’ is now at an all time high and this demand will only continue to travel in one direction……UP. With more and more businesses and people using smart phones and tablet devices, networks are struggling to meet the demand and 4G technology holds the potential to solve that problem. It also offers potential to enable services to be delivered in new and innovative ways; just imagine …virtual visits from your doctor, real time CCTV on public transport, live streaming of high definition video whilst commuting to work. More – Birmingham unveils it’s 4G plans!
The Saturday before last Digital Birmingham were involved in putting on Local Gov Camp on its return to Birmingham. Actually, my Gov Camp started on the Friday night when 20 or so ne’er do wells turned up early to have a drink in The Anchor followed by a curry at Manzils in Digbeth. Already, it was invigorating to be part of conversations between such committed people.
Local Gov Camp is is run using the unconference format. Here we don’t have any key note speakers, the attendees run their own sessions if they want to and the agenda is decided on the morning, based on people pitching the sessions they want to run.
It’s been a busy three months for the DB team, see attached the first installment of our quarterly update April – June 2011.
The new Localism Bill is going to introduce some changes to Neighbourhood Planning through such things as the Community Right to Build and the encouragement of communities to own their own plans. With this will come some specific technology needs and Slider Studio will be holding a series of workshops next month to explore what these are and how they can be met.
The workshops will be a chance to:
• Discuss the emerging neighbourhood planning process
• Discover existing tools to prepare and review plans
• Imagine new tools to help you plan a neighbourhood
• Share your ideas and experiences in web and digital tools
Wikipedia logo
Wikipedia will be holding a Wiki Meetup in Birmingham this Sunday, 2-4pm at Urban Coffee on Church Street, off Colmore Row.
This social is aimed at Wikipedians as well as anyone else who might be interested in using Wikipedia data, such as businesses, museums, universities etc. However, it is open to anyone who wants to find out more about Wikipedia and gives a great chance to find out about becoming involved.
Image courtesy of Daimler AG
Yesterday Raj Mack attended the award ceremony for the European Award of Excellence “City for Children” held in Stuttgart as part of their Annual Conference Cities for Children where the innovative Keeping IT in the Family initiative was named as winner in category 2 (training for parents and educators). Led by Digital Birmingham, the initiative was created in 2008 as a way of bridging the digital divide – getting children within some of the city’s less affluent areas to help teach their older relatives about how to use computers and other modern technologies for everyday tasks.
In winning the award, Birmingham has beaten stiff competition from across Europe, particularly Munich and Nis and it’s a real boost to see Keeping IT in the Family recognised in this way. It has proven to be an excellent scheme that has passed knowledge across the generations as well as being transferable to other towns and cities in the UK and beyond.
Please click here to view images from the two day event.
On Wednesday me, Simon Gray from Birmingham City Council’s web team and Kate Cooper of The New Optimists ran a full day workshop on creating electronic books. Specifically, it was for creating files that go on a Kindle.
We had a pretty full turnout, with nearly 20 attendees, and a very full day. You can get a feel for the areas we covered by looking at the breakdown of sessions on the Eventbrite page.
First, we ran through the simplest way to publish on the Kindle, going directly from a single Word document and creating a file from that. Then we looked at gaining more control over the formatting by editing it as an html file.
The final step was to bundle a number of pages up, including images and a cover, to create a full book with a table of contents.
A free iphone ap. that has been developed, and promoted by Digital Birmingham, is helping the Council and citizens improve the city. It has been possible for some time now to contact the council either through the web, or through your TV (if you have Virgin or Sky) to inform the Council of issues that need to be reported.
Recent contacts from the public have included; reporting a dumped car, reporting graffitti, and reporting a traffic light failure. The new iphone ap. (suitable for iphones/ipads and tablets) allows you to take a photo of the issue causing offence/concern, tag its location and send the information direct to Birmingham City Council.
Since the iphone ap. has been developed, the number of people getting involved and helping to improve their local environments has increased.
If you have an iphone, and know of an issue or problem causing concern in your local area, why not tag it, photograph it and send it in. If you don’t report it, it won’t get fixed!
If you have friends or relatives who don’t have internet access – if they have Sky or Virgin digital TV, they can also report issues, request forms and other information such as the disabled ‘blue badge’ , renew library books and even search for jobs through jobcentre plus.
Check out the site at Looking local – Birmingham
Accessing Looking Local:
* via dedicated iPhone app: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/looking-local/id409806455?mt=8
* on web-enabled mobile phone at lookinglocal.gov.uk
* on Virgin, press the interactive button, select ‘News and Info’ and then select ‘Looking Local’.
* on Sky, Go to Channel 539 and press RED
* on the Wii or PC, insert lookinglocal.gov.uk into the browser.
Digital Birmingham is a Birmingham City Council initiative and part of a city wide strategic partnership of more than 40 public, private and voluntary organisations
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