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Effective strategies for overcoming the barriers to the authentic integration of digital technologies in schools.

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Sean McHugh is a Digital Literacy Coach at a large international school in Singapore. The school has recently implemented a technology enhanced learning (TEL) initiative which involved developing a programme of increased access to computers and other information communiction technology (ICT) across the school. His enquiry considered barriers to ICT integration, and possible solutions.

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As with most of our work at the Government Digital Service, we release things early for review and comment. The digital inclusion team, set up last year, would like to share and get your feedback on an alpha version of a checklist for digital inclusion.

We first mentioned a set of principles (we're now calling it a checklist) when we published action 15 of the Government Digital Strategy. Over the last three months, this checklist has been developed in collaboration with partners from across government, private, voluntary and public sectors.

The intention is for the checklist to act as a guide for any organisation involved in helping people go online. In other words, if you do these things, you're doing digital inclusion. Alongside each of the six checklist items, we have included an illustrative example of what works and a potential action that could be included in the upcoming digital inclusion strategy.

Checklist Overview

1. Start with user needs - not our own
2. Improve access - stop making things difficult
3. Motivate people - find something they care about
4. Keep it safe - build trust
5. Work with others - don't do it alone
6. Focus on wider outcomes - measure performance

We want to hear from you

We are looking for feedback on the checklist from organisations and individuals who are involved in helping people, small businesses and small charities go online. We are keen to hear other examples from you that illustrate great digital inclusion in action. We also want to know what actions we should be taking. Like those we have identified from the examples here, please let us know what you would do.

Your comments

Feedback is great and we want to hear everyone's thoughts and advice as we develop the digital inclusion strategy. As well as the feedback we've asked you for on the checklist above, we have 4 other specific questions that we would really appreciate your help with:

1. There a number of different roles that government could play. From your experience of digital exclusion, how should the government help tackle this issue?

2. Getting funding to the those who can help people take the first steps to go online is really difficult and complex. How can we make it easier for support and funding to reach organisations who can offer the best support to people offline?

3. We need new ways of inspiring and helping people go online - not just laptops and slideshows.

How can we foster and promote innovation within digital inclusion?

4. Everyone we have spoken to says that we all need to work together better to tackle digital exclusion. What is stopping this? How to we support greater collaboration, partnerships and joint working?

We are really keen to hear any and all of your feedback via comments below or you can email them to the team at digital-inclusion@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk. If we could ask for your comments, feedback and ideas by the end of January that would be great*.

Your feedback and advice will help to shape a digital inclusion strategy to be published in early Spring and set out how we can all collectively tackle digital exclusion.

We can't wait to hear from you.
Join the conversation on Twitter: @GDSTeam
*Of course, if you want to get involved, work with us or simply pass on an idea we are always willing to talk. So get in touch!
Checklist 1. Start with user needs - not our own Tailor support around the unique barriers that stop people going online, and adapt to people's needs which change over time
Throwing money at the problem and offering generic support does not help people go online for the long-term. People need tailored support to help them overcome their own particular barriers; whether that's around access, cost, confidence or skills. Services need to be built for the user, not for government or business - putting their changing needs first.
Example of what works:
Lambeth Digital Buddies will support 50,000 Lambeth Council residents go online. Many residents are without access to the internet or lack the skills to confidently complete online transactions, and at the same time are heavily reliant on essential services that are migrating to online-only provision.

Digital Buddies are volunteers in the local community that will give their time to help people learn basic online skills, based around a mix of things that interest them, as well as using online government services. As many of those learning digital skills do not have regular access to the internet they can also receive text alerts advising them of important emails (for example from the Department for Work and Pensions) so they can log in knowing that there is something for them to attend to. The scheme also provides tangible benefits to buddies; for example, voluntary work experience helps improve job prospects by building experience and providing references for job applications.
Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

Empower local digital buddy networks within a national community of volunteers
2. Improve access - stop making things difficult Provide simple, low cost options for those who are socially and economically excluded to get online
Going online can be confusing, difficult and costly. It isn't just about buying a laptop or smartphone; subscription fees, connection charges, setting up online accounts and installing firewalls can all make for a challenging experience.

Some people in the UK do not yet have access to broadband where they live even if they want to go online. The most digitally excluded are often the most socially and economically excluded, and could benefit the most from going online. Making the practical steps of going online easy and affordable makes a huge difference to people who are new to the internet.
Example of what works:
The Glasgow Housing Association (GHA), Scottish Government and BT have joined together to provide affordable broadband to a tower block in central Glasgow. With only 37% of those people living in social housing being online, support through housing providers is hugely important.

At £5 per month, not only does the service provide residents with simple and affordable connectivity and hardware, but the additional ongoing training and support they receive allows them to feel confident to use it.

By working together, all partners benefit from the scheme: reducing costs for GHA through online rent payments, fault reporting and communications with tenants; residents are now able to take advantage of the financial and social benefits that the internet can offer; for BT, increased market share and a new customer base; and, the scheme supports the government's priorities by preparing for changes to universal credit.
Building on this example, potential actions could be to:

Establish a national model to provide housing association residents with connectivity, hardware and training

Define common standards across service providers, not just government, for basic online transactions e.g. paying rent online

3. Motivate people - find something they care about Bring digital into people's lives in a way that benefits them; helping them do things they care about and can only do online
Pushing people to do something that doesn't interest them doesn't work. Let's face it, doing government transactions online is not the most inspirational digital activity and is unlikely to be the motivator that gets someone to go online. In contrast, keeping in touch with your grandchildren who live abroad might be. Nobody wants to learn digital skills for the sake of it, and having an internet connection is useless unless you have a reason to want to use it.
Example of what works:
The E-mentoring initiative for the Rehabilitation of Prolific and Priority Offenders gives ex-offenders access to support, advice and guidance across a range of issues. When integrating back into society, priorities for ex-offenders include getting a job, finding secure accommodation and easily keeping in contact with their probation officers.

Through a 'Virtual Home', members can store vital personal information such as proof of ID, qualifications, CV and employment history which are not easy to maintain due to the transient and uncertain lifestyle that many are faced with.

By making ex-offenders' lives better and focusing on the things that they care about, digital becomes part of their everyday lives. This innovative project was led in Leicestershire and Rutland with the support of the Brightside Trust.
Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

Make digital skills a central component of all rehabilitation
4. Keep it safe - build trust Make it easier to stay safe online by providing simple and straightforward advice and tools
Going online can be a daunting experience for many as they open themselves up to new risks. To keep people online in the long term it's vital that they can rely on trusted sources to get the help, support and assurance they need to build their confidence in a digital world. The internet will never be 100% secure and staying safe online needs to be a basic digital literacy skill. Not enough people know how to look after themselves and others securely and not enough people trust the internet in the first place.
Example of what works:
Go ON UK are developing a single place called digitalskills.com for those helping individuals, small businesses and small charities learn to be proficient, confident and safe online.

digitalskills.com is a repository of local resources and opportunities for accessing, learning and sharing digital skills. Still in its beta phase, the website has been created with a group of highly regarded and reputable national brands and will, over time, be developed to assure the quality of the resources and advice that is made available.

As well as links to useful information and services, there are maps to direct people to where local physical resources and advice are located. Go ON UK's ambition and intent is to to create a single, trusted, and evolving source for online services that will help instill confidence and trust amongst new users and those supporting them.
Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

Build and promote digitalskills.com to be a UK wide trusted source of tools, advice and opportunities
5. Work with others - don't do it alone Work together to maximise expertise, experience and resources to better meet user needs
Services to help people go online are not joined up enough. Efforts are duplicated across providers, funding is sporadic and does not always align with users' needs. Better links and coordination are needed between the public, private and voluntary sector, so that their efforts add up to more than the sum of their parts.
Example of what works:
Liverpool's Race Online 2012 ( Go ON it's Liverpool) brought together some 5,000 digital champions to help people go online by promoting a wide range of activities across the city - for example, encouraging people to 'Give an hour' to help those off-line to go online. This was a highly successful campaign brought about by a collaborative model involving everyone from; politicians, to community groups, the police, local businesses and volunteers to help the people of Liverpool go online.

This multi-faceted partnership and high profile initiative helped 104,000 people in Liverpool who had never been online (July 2011) and reduced those digitally excluded by 58,000 over the year. The success of the Liverpool Race has led to this model being replicated in the first of Go ON UK's regional programmes in the North East.
Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

Partners in the public, private and voluntary sectors to work together to roll-out Go ON UK's regional partnership programme nationally
6. Focus on wider outcomes - measure performance Identify wider outcomes that can be delivered by helping people become independently confident online and use data to understand what works
Reducing digital exclusion is not about the number of people who simply log-on once; how we measure digital inclusion needs to become far better. Equally, being able to go online is not an end in itself, but it does offer one way to help improve wider social and economic outcomes like improved health, employment or reduced re-offending and loneliness.

Identifying and prioritising against wider outcomes, agreeing common measures, evaluating and testing what works, as well as iterating and making things better, is critical to realising the benefits of going digital and achieving maximum impact for minimum resources.
Example of what works:
There are very few longitudinal surveys which track the long term efficacy of help and support provided to those digitally excluded; meaning that what works and what doesn't is hard to understand.

Citizens Online and BT have been running a series of training sessions as part of their Get IT Together initiative. Learners receive 4 sessions of training and are then contacted after 3, 6, 12, and 24 months. Understanding ongoing user-confidence, types of devices owned and services being used, as well as the reasons for being online and offline allows Citizens Online and BT to iterate and make changes to their approaches when delivering training, support and developing new services.
Building on this example, a potential action could be to: Return to the top Sign up here for email alerts, and join the discussion on Twitter

You may also be interested in:
Introducing the new digital inclusion team Digital inclusion for the homeless Getting started on assisted digital

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A checklist for digital inclusion - if we do these things, we're doing digital inclusion

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As with most of our work at the Government Digital Service, we release things early for review and comment. The digital inclusion team, set up last year, would like to share and get your feedback on an alpha version of a checklist for digital inclusion.

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The main barriers to learning and teaching digital literacy can be summarised as follows:

- Disinformation

- Information obesity

- Filter bubbles

- Misinformation

Each barrier shares the same implication, which George Orwell (1945) would refer to as a 'reduced state of consciousness'. Such a state of affairs, he suggests, 'if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity'. Whitworth (2009) uses the term 'noöpolitics' to refer to the control of informational resources, and accordingly, its manipulation leads on to what Whitworth would call 'a noöpolitical construction of hegemony'. By presenting only particular news stories or presenting them in such a way that they mislead the reader, hegemonic power can be maintained. Reese (2009, pp. 2), for example, states that:
'Even in the U.S., where the press system is advanced and highly professionalized, elite journalists reinforced the discursive echo-chamber supporting the decision to go to war in Iraq by internalizing the War on Terror frame promoted by the Bush administration'.
It is through such hegemonic discourse, Whitworth (2009, pp. 8) states, that 'the public is persuaded to accept the diffusion of military and corporate objectives into everyday public opinion'.

Advances in web technologies show what is possible when news coverage becomes truly global and is unfiltered by noöpolitical constructions of hegemony. For example, according to Reese (2012, pp. 1):
'The popular 2011 uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and throughout the Middle East, were facilitated by Internet communication, even when the regimes tried to regulate traffic outside the country. The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television news service provided some of the best coverage of the Egyptian revolt, but its availability in the U.S. was limited by cable operators failing to provide it to their subscribers. In spite of being deemed anti-American by some U.S. critics, the value of its coverage in a critical world hot-spot gave it new professional prestige and led to heightened demand for internet streaming of its programming'.
The upshot of all of this is that as an information processing system, when put to good use, various websites and web apps on the Internet can and do bring people important global news, which would otherwise be filtered out by more mainstream media. The problem is that, more often than not, meaningful global news is not being reported adequately or sufficiently - as the example of the US "war on terror" highlights. Instead, the global news that does get reported can be likened to Whitworth's metaphor of information obesity - in most cases it is not being turned into knowledge to promote transparency between nations or to empower citizens. It is increasingly important though, that citizens are empowered by global news, which when consumed, can easily be turned into global knowledge, since the biggest problems now facing individual nations are transnational in scale: corruption, economic instability, environmental damage, immigration, etc. To appropriately address these problems, globally news literate citizens are required who demand and support high-quality journalism around the world. In doing so, a stronger movement of what Gramsci (1929) called "organic intellectuals" can come into being, people who promote the best interests of the global community and thus bring about progressive change.

Our role as teachers then is to ensure that we are providing an education which fosters organic intellectuals. In doing so, we can expect to see more young people who are critical thinkers and internationally minded individuals who are able to make positive contributions to the global society.

References:

Gramsci, A, Forgacs, D and Hobsbawm, E. 2000. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. New York University Press.

Orwell, G. 1945. Politics and The English Language. Penguin Books.

Reese, S. D., & Lewis, S. 2009. Framing the War on Terror: Internalization of policy by the U.S. press. Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism.

Reese, S. 2012. Global News literacy: The Educator. Global News literacy: The Educator (Chapter prepared for News literacy: Global perspectives for the newsroom and the classroom). University of Texas at Austin

Whitworth, A. 2009. Information Obesity. Chandos, Oxford, UK.

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Barriers to Digital Literacy & the Importance of Overcoming Them

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The main barriers to learning and teaching digital literacy can be summarised as follows: - Disinformation - Information obesity - Filter bubbles - Misinformation Each barrier shares the same implication, which George Orwell (1945) would refer to as a 'reduced state of consciousness'.

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It's official- the UK is experiencing a Digital Skills Gap and urgent action is needed to find another 745,000 workers with digital skills.

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There are a range of personal, social and economic reasons why some adults and young people may not have fully developed digital literacy skills. These are some suggested causes - Personal Personality could be one factor, as some people are more cautious by nature and might be more reluctant to try new technology, perhaps fearing...

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1.1 Define the nature and scope of digital literacy.

1.2 Explain the role of digital literacy in the lives of adults and young people.

1.3 Describe the impact of not being digitally literate on adults and young people.

2.1 Describe a range of personal, social and economic reasons why some adults and young people may not have fully developed digital literacy skills.

Please see padlet link below.

2.2 Analyse different factors that motivate adults and young people to want to gain digital literacy skills.

Two types of motivation - extrinsic and intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is motivation that is driven by an interest and it exists within that individual. It could be desire to keep in touch with family and friends using digital platforms. For example, Skype, FaceTime, Facebook. Wanting to learn new skills and broaden access to online content. For example a hobby like knitting/baking. YouTube has videos for everything. Wanting to help younger members with homework. Therefore needing to know the answers and that they are available on the internet.
Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the individuals body. For example someone may need to learn new things for a job role and without doing so may loose their job. Internet banking and shopping online are more frequent and common and someone may want something you can only buy online these days.

2.3 Summarise the barriers to digital literacy that some adults and young people may experience.

Skills barriers - digital skills, literacy skills, security skills and confidence
Access barriers - accessibility, time, location, disability, technology, infrastructure.
Cost barriers - cost of broadband, equipment, learning.
Motivation barriers - risks, necessity, financial benefits, social benefits, health/wellbeing benefits

2.4 Suggest ways to overcome the barriers in 2.3.

Organisations helping people, Barclays Digital Eagles

EE and apple have drop in's also where you can get help when required.

They provide helpful fun opportunities where members of public can attend drop ins and ask questions for free around digital mediums. Digital Communities Wales. Local authorities giving free courses about how to go online in local areas. Learners with disabilities being taught how to use specialist software, for example- text reader function.

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1.1 Define the nature and scope of digital literacy. 1.2 Explain the role of digital literacy in the lives of adults and young people. 1.3 Describe the impact of not being digitally literate on adults and young people. 2.1 Describe a range of personal, social and economic reasons why some adults and young people may not have fully developed digital literacy skills.

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Watch my amazing website created on emaze - The stunning web site builder.

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link to assignment unit 311 2.1

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Awareness of Digital Literacy Personal, social and economic reasons why some adult and young people may not have developed their digital literacy skills: Three barriers to digital literacy that some adults and young people may experience: 1. Fear - the media has created a negative image of social networking to the extent that many adult learners do not trust or want to engage.

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Google Docs HackPad Padlet Social Media Twitter FaceBook Encourage

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Literacy Numeracy ICT Skills Literacy Developing

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Assignment 2 - Mike Webster Fear: Some may feel that they may 'break' the technology if they make a mistake. Worse still, some may feel that they will appear stupid to their peers if they can't adapt and acquire new digital skills.