Category: Digital Inclusion - public interest technology

I've joined Tech Stewardship's self-directed course and this week went through one question that I think is important for us all to reflect on: what is the default trajectory of humanity's relationship with technology? We're asked to rank where we are on a scale from 1 (pessimistic) to 10 (optimistic).

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.

Assessing and building Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector staff and organizational digital capacity is an important goal to move the sector forward as we build a strategic and practical hybrid service delivery model. I've posted many resources around digital literacy and digital inclusion that have come out of the UK. Here are 2 that I recommend you try out for yourselves.

Recently I wrote about tech we're not talking about in our sector. I’m hoping to explore many of these technologies. In this article I’m looking at  AI copywriting and video creation sites. There's a lot of potential, and things to think about here.

You might hear about sharing your organization's content using ‘Creative Commons licences’. What are Creative Commons Licences and why are they important? This July 2022 webinar will tell you just that.

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.