Part of the big picture

This link should take you to the image projected onto the side of the National Theatre on 23rd November - good to know Internet Rangers is a part of the BIG picture:-

http://www.youarethebigpicture.com/#/location/timelapse/london/1440576803E41F1366A6A4

IR at the National Theatre London

At 23:44 on 23rd October a photograph of Internet Ranger Ellie and "student" Vi was projected onto the side of the National Theatre in London - it was selected as part of the campaign "You are the big picture" and it couldn't have been much bigger than on the side of the National Theatre in our capital city. We are hoping that a picture is worth a 1,000 words and that others will see that help is needed to prevent our elderly population from being excluded from the digital world. 2012 is fast approaching and we want others to take on our model and invite older folk into their school or community buildings to offer free support. This was a pretty amazing event for us and on the same day that UnLtd came to film us as a show case for their Better Net Awards!

Sending a message

Not wanting to achieve world domination but would like to get lots of other schools in UK and even the rest of the world helping potential silver surfers - so couldn't resist making this little movie:-

Movie to follow

What a week - UnLtd phoned to see if they could arrange to film us to showcase the award we received from them and inspire others at their Annual Awards Ceremony. The film will be about 3 minutes long but it will take about 3 hours to shoot lots of material that they will then edit. Ms Loughnan has arranged it for Saturday morning - the first day of the half term of holidays!!! I suppose it prevents us from missing our lessons and we are all coming in anyway as it is such a great opportunity to model what we do. All of which will hopefully inspire others to follow suit.

Media Moment

Our usual Tuesday lesson was captured by the press this week as the Bournemouth Echo wanted to do a feature about our Community Champions award. Thankfully all our older students were happy to be included and Fred is pictured with Beth teaching him some new skils:-

www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/features/education/8464477.Bournemouth_youngsters_ensure_it_s_net_gain_for_silver_surfers/

Silver Student Representative

Following on from the BIMA visit, our most senior student - Robin - was invited to attend a brain storming session in London to interrogate the question of how to engage older users and prevent them from being digitally excluded. It did mean that Robin missed his Tuesday afternoon lesson but he reported that it was very interesting and there was a lot of lively input from everybody present. He also said they all seemed to be about 50 years younger than him but were really interested in getting his views, which was encouraging and he feels empowered to tackle even more technology!

Nomination

We got an email from a business partner in London saying congratulations on being nominated on the Community Channel as a Community Champion! We logged onto the site to find we had entered the ranking around 164 - so lots of other champions about it seems. In only a few days though we have moved up and up, currently at 24th position with another week to go before the deadline. It is great to read some of the comments people have posted and encouraging that they like the whole concept of our group. The PR company covering the awards have been in touch, they said they would like to write a feature as we "encapsulate everything a community chamption should be." Hopefully, this will be another way of reaching out to others to get them to adopt our model.