This time last week, I was sad to wave goodbye to Get Online Week. That’s right, it’s over for another year and it really has been another great week.
Organisations of all shapes and sizes across the UK held events to help learners both old and new to #try1thing different online.
I was personally pretty nervous to try one thing that I didn’t know how to do online. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it! If you recall my blog from last week, the one thing I was going to try was creating a vlog. Well, here it is. My colleagues at Good Things Foundation have said it’s a really impressive piece of work considering I’ve never filmed or edited a video by myself before. I think it’s OK, and I really enjoyed being challenged. What do you think?
A well-travelled team
The Good Things Foundation team were out and about visiting events in lots of different places. Harriet, one of our learning designers went to a couple of events, including Joining Communities/Leigh Hackspace. She says: “Becca at Joining Communities had organised a 4-day course for learners and I joined them on the 4th day. Learners had spent the first few days of the course researching the history of Leigh online, learning about their local community in the archives and then taking pictures of the town as it is now on tablets. We went to Leigh Hackspace and edited the images of Leigh past and present and then made jigsaws of their creations!”
My colleague Kevin went to the Library of Birmingham for an event organised by Catalyst Mutual CIC. He said: “The team were really passionate about helping their local communities, the library event was just one of several in different locations during the week. I met some lovely Brummies who all felt they could do with learning more online. Learning new languages was popular so we got some DuoLingo practice going.”
And one more story came from Online Centres Network Specialist Jonathan who went to Cottsway Housing in Oxford, a social housing organisation who offer their residents the opportunity to develop their basic digital skills. He said: “One learner that stood out to me was called Susan. It was the first time that she had seen Learn My Way and was really enthusiastic about how much this would help her. She thanked me numerous times for helping her register. It was a really great event. The Online Centre received one of our £500 Get Online Week grants and had a professional photographer and catering from a social enterprise that employed people with learning disabilities.”
And me? I went to one of two events at Whitehall, organised by Chad Bond of the Government Digital Service. I went to a similar event last year but they were so successful Chad organised them again this year. It was a great event with lots of people from different government departments turning up, keen to chat to us and find out what one thing they could try online. This was also a great opportunity for me to record footage for my vlog.
I really do love Get Online Week. It always reminds me of the thousands of organisations and people who are all determined to reach and support others to do more and thrive in a digital world.
We think we’ve reached over 50,000 people but we won’t know until the numbers have been counted in a couple of weeks.
As I say, it’s about people, not technology. People coming together to share their experiences and their willingness to help others.
That’s the true beauty of Get Online Week.