Archive for the ‘Learning’ Category

Digital Birmingham attended the launch and networking session of the European Competitiveness and Innovation ICT Policy Support Programme (CIP-ICT-PSP) in Brussels back in April.
The team are busy leading on a €2M EU match funding bid focused on developing digital skills and competencies for carers, as well as being a partner on the Digital Cities in Europe – Lifelong Learning Programme.
We successfully ran two workshops this month, one involving formal and informal carers and the other involving experts within the arena, in order to carry out research to put into this bid.
The bid is due to be submitted shortly- watch this space for further developments and updates.

Launch 48

The aim of Launch48 is to bring together participants from different backgrounds and levels of experience in the web industry to think/plan/develop and launch one or multiple web apps in one weekend. It’s a frantic, energy fuelled, entrepreneurial event designed to engage all participants while offering the opportunity to learn and meet new people.

Launch 48 Birmingham will run between 12th and 14th of November 2010, at Birmingham Science Park Aston.

Launch48 Mini-Conference Birmingham runs from:

1 pm to 5 pm Friday the 12th of November, 2010

6 pm to 10 pm Friday the 12th of November, 2010
9 am to 9 pm Saturday the 13th of November, 2010
9 am to 9 pm Sunday the 14th of November, 2010

For more information, please click here.

The Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery are monthly events held to help community and voluntary groups use the social web to benefit their organisations.

Digital Birmingham are pleased to announce that the next events are due to take place on:

7 July – at the Balsall Health Forum, The Tree Nursery, 82-89 St. Pauls Road, Balsall Heath, Birmingham. B12 8LS  between 6.00pm and 7.30pm.

15 July -  at the Studio, 7 Cannon Street, off New Street, Birmingham. B2 5EP between 5.30pm and 7.00pm.

To sign up for either of these events, please click here.

The Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery are monthly events held to help community and voluntary groups use the social web to benefit their organisations.

The next event will be on Tuesday June 8 at the Studio, 7 Cannon Street, off New Street (B2 5EP).

Digital Birmingham supports these surgeries and have in the past provided advise and support with social media issues.

If you belong to a Birmingham-based community or neighbourhood group or charity please come and join us. You can drop in any time between 5.30pm and 7pm.

To sign up for the event or for further information, please click here.

The surgeries are organised by volunteer members of the Birmingham Bloggers group. Surgeons work as friendly advisors giving informal one-to-one help to show you how to make the best of social media.

You can find out what normally happens at a Social Media Surgery here.

Silver Surfers’ Day is the biggest, national campaign to promote use of digital technologies by older people. It is run by Digital Unite and was started in 2002, this is the ninth annual event.

On Silver Surfers’ Day Digital Unite support people and organisations all over the UK to open their doors and give local older people a taste of what the digital world has to offer them at a Silver Surfers’ Day Event.

Anyone can become an Event Holder – if you’re already working with older people, if you are passionate about supporting them to be digitally literate, then this is an event for you!

For more information and to find an event near you, please go to the Digital Unite webpage.

Officially launches on Thursday 13 May 2010!

It is a new Working Neighbourhood Fund/ Birmingham City Council project which aims to support the local small business community by making opportunities to supply the City Council, our suppliers and partner organisations more visibly.

When buying goods in future, Birmingham City Council Directorates will now be using this free web-based service to source goods and services that cannot be sourced from existing supplier contracts.

Businesses and suppliers can sign up and register for free for access to local contracts, support, networking events, seminars, and job opportunities, helping you to stay ahead, get noticed and more importantly win bigger and better contracts for your business.

Register at www.finditinbirmingham.com.

Well, it may be 5 years too late but at last Central Government has decided to catch up with the times and revise the primary school curriculum to include Internet Safety and prepare our children for the digital age.

It has long been the belief of IT educationalists that there is no point in restricting young people’s access to the wealth of information held on “t’internet”.  But, wouldn’t it be better preparing our future generations by providing them with the knowledge and understanding of not only the benefits, but the dangers of “t’internet” and enabling them to make informed decisions and judgements for themselves.  Because we all know, if you tell a young person not to do something … the likelihood is that they WILL go and do exactly what you’ve told them not to!

Birmingham Bulletin the City’s own e-mail alert service delivered a great news story today into my in-box which I have to tell you all.  Birmingham has got its very own digitally enabled news site.  You must visit www.Birminghamnewsroom.com as its a one stop shop for all the news from the City Council.  

No more do I have to go hunting for information across various websites to get the latest news.  It has rss feeds, video, twitter, flickr and links to Birmingham own Youtube channel.   It is great to see that the City is at the forefront of embracing new technologies and social media and this can only enhance Birmingham reputation as a leading digital city.

Yesterday Donna and I delivered a session on ‘marketing your organisation’ for third sector groups on behalf of B.Strong, the stronger communities partnership. You may remember that I blogged about it a while ago, desperately asking for sources of support that I could recommend to groups when they are left to their own devices. More – Marketing session at B.Strong