Category: Digital Inclusion

I'm going to spend the week writing and sharing information and articles about digital inclusion, with a focus on our sector. I'll share on my site and on LinkedIn, so let's chat there if you find what I'm sharing interesting. I encourage you to share what you or your organization is doing about Digital Inclusion.

If you're curious about Immigrant and Refugee social media habits before they arrived in Canada, be sure to have a look at the DataReportal country reports.

I'm looking for something I can't readily find. I assume it exists, but it's not jumping out at me. Do we have any sort of networks, discussions, communities of practice focused on digital inclusion here in Canada? There are efforts, networks, and ongoing discussions elsewhere. But I'm not aware of a Canadian effort to create pan-Canadian networks, discussions, communities of practice focused on digital inclusion here in Canada. It seems like we should have one.

When it comes to digital literacy resources there seems to be a tendency to try to create new materials. There are so many excellent resources out there, many created during the pandemic. Let's build on each other's work, share openly, and complement, translate, edit for clear language resources instead of creating the same thing over and over again. Here are some useful starting points.

Like many organizations, in response to the pandemic, 2Life Communities built an accessible, community-supported, user-friendly Digital Device Lending Library (DDLL) for low-income elders who have little to no experience with technology. They created a replicable model for effectively connecting linguistically diverse, low-income older adults to services, programs, and each other through technology.

This site (eskills.km4s.ca) is an archive of the original eSkills.ca website developed by RRC Polytech’s Language Training Centre. It includes access to all of the original site files and resources through these links.

In this session with the Peel Newcomer Strategy Group, I was invited to speak about how organizations can advance the collective conversation on hybrid and digital service improvements regionally and where we might see opportunities to align with recent recommendations of the National Steering Committee on Technology (NSCT) focused on the Canadian settlement sector.

A couple of interesting reports on the digital and information habits and practices of international students provide some useful insights that reinforce what we should know and learn about all Newcomers.

I’ve found that when it comes to technology and our sector we make far too many assumptions based on anecdote rather than data. Of course, our work should be guided by both. I’m a big believer in qualitative and quantitative feedback and data. But we should be using both when we’re coming to conclusions that guide our move to a hybrid service delivery model.