Original Story: RedWAY BC
Digital Literacy Initiative to Help Bridge Digital Divide
Two BC Communities Win Digital Literacy Initiative Award at 2007 Summit
Two communities in BC were awarded DIGITAL LITERACY PROJECTS at the PCNA Summit and First Nations Technology Conference last week…
Congratulations to Saik’uz (Northern BC) and ‘Namgis (Alert Bay)
DigitalLiteracy can be defined as the ability to use digital technology,communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and createinformation.
To be eligible, the communities must have:
- An existing learning centre or computer lab
- A community champion to work with Strategic Solutions Consortiums’ (SSC) project coordinator to implement, promote, support and report on the project.
The pilot will:
- Offer “state of the art” digital literacy learning to your community members
- Help the community understand the technical capacity needs required to become a First Nations Technology Council FIT (Fully Integrated Technologies) Community – to be able to use technology to better deliver programs and services
- Provide the community with an opportunity to build better partnerships with government and local industry
- Help your community learning centre to become sustainable
Upon approval, the pilot project will run for one year.
SSC’s partnership with the International Charity Association Network (iCAN) allows them to bring to your community the latest in eLearning courseware at no cost. This includes access to courseware that can help your people improve their employability potential. Examples of the courseware titles they can offer are shown below.
Digital Literacy/IC3 CompTIA A+ Microsoft Windows (98, XP)
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Microsoft Office Specialist
Digital Imaging Microsoft FrontPage And more…
For the term of the pilot, there is no cost to the First Nations community. (The normal annual membership fee to participate is $2500). As part of the pilot, the community learning centre would become a registered iCAN Centre.
SSC is a group of organizations dedicated to helping community learning centres become sustainable through partnerships.
Technology can be a tool for nation rebuilding and SSC’s goal is to help ensure that all your community members have the right skills.
Stay tuned to RedWAY BC News as we’ll try to get follow up articles from the two winning Nations…we’re looking forward to seeing some fancy e-zine articles! Congratulations from the FNTC!