BIG Secret

Can't say too much but a very exciting day on Friday 18th February - when most people were easing into half term, the digi steps original founders were travelling up to London for a photo shoot! A M A Z I N G

KT - Equal

Three of our newest team members ventured to London on project business for the first time. They attended a conference on digital exclusion with top university researchers and agencies.


Apart from dramatically lowering the average age of delegates, they were able to listen to the most current thinking on how to overcome this problem as well as share details of their own project which got a lot of support, although one elderly attendee wanted to know if they could run classes in the school holidays too - so certainly keen to get more from the concept!

No.10

Having been nominated and given Diana Awards, the organisation contacted us to see if they might help us roll out our project on a national level. They were having a meeting at No.10 on 15th February and wanted to highlight our project - of course we said yes, because we are currently building our new website which we hoped would prompt others to get involved. With the Diana Award organisation behind us as well, this will help a great deal in getting other schools and community groups to take on our project.

BT Award

We were visited by BT and given an award plus a cheque for £2,500 for our project. It was a great afternoon and the film cameras were out again plus the "Bournemouth Echo" came to interview us. All of our senior students gave us a round of applause which was lovely, they are so supportive and generous. Keran was included in the photo's and award presentation because she is our longest standing student. Each week she brings us all some fruit as a thank you for our hard work and so we presented her with a lovely V & A china mug. Although, our project is based around technology, we are finding the benefits of bringing our local community together just as important.

Filming for Spring

The community channel awards team came to sunny Bournemouth to film our project. The senior students enjoyed the limelight just as much as the teenagers and all are looking forward to seeing the film on TV in the spring. It was also another opportunity to explain digital media and all of the options available to our silver surfers.

New identity

Yesterday was epic.

We had our new identity unveiled thanks to the support we have had from top design agency Heavenly in London. Following on from our meeting with them at the end of last year, their creative time worked with the feedback we gave and came up with the perfect brand toolkit. We can't wait to use it and will be designing our first newspaper advert tomorrow so that we can attract more elderly people in our community to our weekly sessions.

Then the Community Channel turned up to film our afternoon session and all our "senior students" were so pleased to take part with us. When we were being interviewed it made us realise what a bond we have now, how important it is to give your time to something worthwhile and the difference it can make to another person. We went well over our usual time slot but nobody minded - they were glad of the extra opportunity "to do a bit more" on the computers.

Ms Loughnan reminded everybody that next week would be something special but she hasn't told us why! We have tried catching her out but she is giving nothing away - so watch this blog .....

Google support

Today we received some great T-shirts from Google! They feature Albert Einstein who was known for his bright ideas, so we feel proud to have got such encouraging support from the giants of the internet.

As e=mc2 so springs to mind another equation:-

internet rangers + senior students = no to digital exclusion

We will wear our T-shirts for our next training session, they will be a super visual prompt for our silver surfers and might help them remember the surfing skills we are developing :o)