e-Communities

Online support

2008-03-26T14:40:00.005Z

A reminder that you can find a range of information from the e-Day workshops on the HIE website: http://www.hie.co.uk/e-communities-project.html. The latest updates include pages of links related to Alaistar's 3 workshops -

generating an income from the web
customise your website with free tools and resources
online security.

This is the last entry I'll be making as e-Communities programme development officer, as the project has now come to an end. If you would like to see more e-Communities workshops or general ICT support for community groups, please contact your local CVS or contact HIE's strengthening communities group.

All the best
Claire

Using search engines to solve problems

2008-03-25T10:35:00.005Z

Search engines can be useful tools for much more than finding a specific organisation or web site.

For example:
Do you ever get frustrated with trying to get office applications to do something out of the ordinary, such as running a mail merge or entering a table of contents? Sometimes I find the application's own 'help' function a bit confusing. A colleague has just given a great tip. Enter what you are trying to do into one of the search engines such as http://www.everyclick.com/ and you will find a host of advice and information from a wide range of sources. Often this will be presented in an easy-to-follow format written by someone else who has been in the same boat as you.

Many thanks to Jeralyn for this tip.

blogs 'n' wikis

2008-03-17T12:34:00.003Z

I asked Maggie who ran the blogging and wiki workshops at e-Day to provide us with some links to some of the blogs you managed to set up. Here's what she sent me:

Some of my favourite blogs that were produced (in about 40mins each) can be found at
http://skyewards.blogspot.com/ includes text, a graphic, links and a voting form..and all relevant to the day too!
http://chmag08.blogspot.com/ has text graphics and comments from other delegates
http://sesam-flensburg.blogspot.com/ is from the international students and has a great profile including photos they had with them
http://chocholito.blogspot.com/ good fun and interesting exchange in comments
http://eday1skye-frogspawn.blogspot.com/ really relevant community blog starter

She has also given me links to a couple of wikis:

http://eday4.wiki.zoho.com/ about psychotic poodles(really) which is open for public comment.
http://eday7.wiki.zoho.com/Sabhal-Mor-Visit.html which includes links and uploaded files.

Hope you find these useful. We have also uploaded a number of resources from the workshops onto the HIE website - http://www.hie.co.uk/e-communities-project.html. Here you can also access the e-Communities study report plus John Watt's keynote presentation: e-Communties doing IT for themselves.

Spanglefish

2008-03-10T12:56:00.002Z

Here's the link to the spanglefish site that was set up for Dave's workshop - the site is still live so feel free to play around with it: www.spanglefish.com/e-communitiesday

I believe some of you have even gone straight home to set up your own sites, please tell us how you get on and give us the links so we can come and visit!

e-distribution for news circulation

2008-03-10T12:32:00.002Z

For those of you who participated in this workshop, and who would like to continue your learning journey or perhaps try it out with some of your group, go to http://www.learningcentres.org/e-day.html to play about with the google group. Here, you can also access the information for the "distance is no barrier for a group" workshop.

search for charity

2008-03-10T09:52:00.002Z

A great tip that we picked up at e-Day! Instead of going to Google to search for websites, try making http://www.everyclick.com/ your homepage. Every time you click search a UK charity will benefit. You can register so that your chosen good cause benefits from this service. They claim to have raised over £400,000 so far.

Thanks to David for this tip!

eDay

2008-03-08T11:26:00.005Z

Welcome to Maggie's blogger students this morning - hope you will all go home after today and set up your blog for your community group!

Our first ever e-Day has come and gone, thanks to everyone who attended and made the day such a success. We had some really positive feedback so far, with loads of ideas of how we might do things differently next time. Most importantly, everyone went away with some new information and we are expecting to see lots of new wikis, blogs and other community ICT projects appearing soon.

Good news for bloggers - recent research has shown that a mall amount of blogging every week can help you feel less isolated and more connected - visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/ to watch this week's programme.

We are always interested to hear your comments and questions about the e-Communities project and particularly if you came along to e-Day - post your comments and happy blogging!

ask the experts

2008-02-27T10:05:00.003Z

At e-Day we will have a panel session where you put your questions about community ICT issues to experts on technical issues, innovative ideas and project planning. If you are unable to attend, post your comment here and it will be passed on to the panel. More comments and questions will be gathered at the event on our graffiti boards. We'll post the answers from the panel sessions on the blog.

Do you have an idea for an innovative ICT project for your communtiy group?

Do you think community web sites should be more centrally co-ordinated and supported?

Do you have problems finding funding for your ICT project?

Post your comment today!

The value of volunteers

2008-02-20T11:48:00.003Z

I had my first experience of appearing on local radio this week, to promote the event: http://www.cuillinfm.co.uk/ Cuillin FM have busy of late - you can now receive the station in almost all parts of Skye, Raasay and some of the mainland. It's a great service, run by volunteers, playing music to suit a wide range of tastes and regular interviews with local celebrities! It's a great opportunity to promote local events (they run a what's on section on most live shows) and they also offer a very affordable advertising service for local businesses. Naturally they are always on the look-out for more volunteers so if you fancy realising a life-long dream to be a DJ, get in touch with them! email admin@cuillinfm.co.uk

UKVillages.co.uk is a FREE community portal site offering the opportunity to publish information about your community. They have cleverly set the site up with basic information about what looks like every single UK village, with arial photographs and maps. Looks like they finance themselves through advertising. http://www.ukvillages.co.uk/

You can find out more about how to raise an income for your group through the web if you attend the e-Day event. One of the workshops will concentrate on income generation, and another is about finding funding for ICT projects. Visit http://www.solas-events.co.uk/ and click on the link for E-day: Exploring the potential of digital technology for community groups.

Keep your comments coming - we want to collect as many questions as we can for the ask the experts panel session!

e-Day is coming!

2008-02-12T15:53:00.000Z

We are now open for registration for the e-Communities event at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on 7th and 8th March.

One of the highlights of the day will be an opportunity to play a new interactive game that has been developed by Distance Lab - http://www.distancelab.org/projects/remoteimpact/ . The Distance Lab team will also be on hand to stimulate discussion and debate about the issues of remote living.

Some of the workshops will be delivered from the Mobile Online Learning Initiative: MOLI, a ten-workstation bus which travels the country to promote e-learning via its satellite broadband connection! For more information visit http://www.glenco.org/moli.php

Keep leaving your comments about what types of project your community group is involved in, what inspires, your future plans and your gripes and grumbles!

Frustration

2008-01-28T16:35:00.000Z

Just wanted to give you a bit of a chuckle today!

Workshops

2008-01-21T22:51:00.000Z

The study of community groups in Skye & Raasay is almost complete and we are beginning to identify a number of key issues arising from it.

Here is the list of workshops we are planning for the e-Communities event in Skye on 7th and 8th March, based on the findings of the survey:

Affordable websites for community groups
Customising your website with free online tools
Generating income via the web
Create a Wiki
Funding for ICT projects
ICT security
Digitising and Archiving
Introduction to video conferencing
Distance Lab
Creating e-newsletters
Social networking
Blogging

You will be able to select three, but please note that some workshops may not run due to lack of demand.

To register your interest in the event please email rachel@solas-biz.co.uk
or telephone 01599 534999. Web address coming soon!

e-Newsletters

2008-01-14T14:48:00.000Z

If your group produces a newsletter, the chances are that it is sent out by email as well as in hard copy. This can save on costs such as printing and postage, and can be a much more effective means of communication. The downside to this of course is that perhaps some members prefer to recieve their newsletter in hard copy.

An e-Newsletter can take all shapes and sizes. It may be a simple word document, perhaps with pictures and photos inserted. Maybe it is a bit more sophisticated, with hyperlinks inserted to take the reader to particular sections of the document. Or it could be a professionally produced pdf file or web page, such as an e-bulletin, whose link can be emailed to subscribers. Perhaps your newsletter is made available to download via your group's website.

At the e-Communities event in Skye in March we are planning to run a workshop on creating an e-newsletter. What would you like to get out of such a workshop? Do you have any good examples of e-newsletters? How does your group communicate with its members?

Celebrating Cultural Heritage

2008-01-09T14:20:00.001Z

Ever wondered what to do with that big box of old photographs you inherited from your grandparents that lies in the back of a cupboard and only comes out when you are trying to make space for more junk?

Photographs are a wonderful medium to use to celebrate and share our heritage, and can often lead to re-introducing old friends or even making new friendships. Have a look at this site for an example of a great community-led online archive www.thecromartyarchive.org.

Am Baile http://www.ambaile.org.uk/ is an example of a bi-lingual site which promotes the heritage of the Highlands and Islands, by making images, stories and other material easy to access via the web.

Urras Shomhairle (The Somhairle MacLean Trust) recently launched an online memorial to the life and work of the Gaelic bard - http://www.somhairlemacgilleain.org/

On a grander scale, the Tobair an Dualchais project is busy gathering a huge range of resources to archive Gaelic cultural heritage - see http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/dualchas/ for more information.

Here are some tips for planning an online cultural project:

:) Encourage the community to get involved from the earliest stage: have meetings, invite experts along to give advice, have a community photo amnesty
:) Your local school would probably be very keen to be involved and could possibly offer skills and access to equipment
:) Make your site as interactive as possible: make it easy for people to post their own material such as photographs, poems and place name information; include a blog to allow visitors to post their comments and ideas.
:) Try to make your project relevant to the widest possible range of people in the community - include a range of topics (eg fishing, crofting, sport, education, food)
:) Make sure you have the resources to maintain the site and keep it regularly updated - there is nothing worse than reading the "latest news" from two years ago!

Any more tips or examples of good heritage projects? Please post your comments!

Learning from good practice

2008-01-07T12:43:00.000Z

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

Problems associated with rural life are rarely totally unique and there's often no need to re-invent the wheel when it comes to solving them. There's every chance that a group in the next village / Caithness / the Borders / Cornwall /Finland / New Zealand has tackled a similar obstacle. And we have the most amazing research tool at our fingertips - the internet!

Before you write your project plan, find out as much as you can about issues in other areas, and the innovative approaches groups have taken to solve them. Often you can contact groups by email or via their website to save a long and expensive trip.

Many organisations hold databases and case studies to showcase excellent project examples, such as:

SLCVO http://www.slcvo.org.uk/local-projects/index.html

commission for rural communities http://www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk//projects/bestpractice
rural gateway http://www.ruralgateway.org.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1096

New Zealand community net aotearoa http://www.community.net.nz/casestudies/

Some of the main grant giving bodies hold information on projects they have funded, e.g.

UK LEADER+ http://www.ukleader.org.uk/ and click on services / publications

Big Lottery http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/funding-uk

Awards for All grants search http://www.awardsforallgrants.org.uk:8080/a4a-search

And here are some examples from other areas:

Cornwall community foundation http://www.cornwallfoundation.com/making_a_difference/case_studies.htm

New Zealand community net http://www.community.net.nz/casestudies

Happy Researching!

Please post your comments on websites you use to find out information, or actual projects you think are outstanding examples of community action.

Season's greetings

2007-12-21T13:16:00.001Z

Wishing all readers a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year! Why not tell us what gadgets or software Santa delivered to you in your stocking, and give us your tips on how you can use them to help your group become more efficient and effective?

I've asked for a wireless key board and mouse, because I'm getting fed up with all those tangled up wires and cables. Only trouble is I will probably need a new adapter for all the extra connections, as I'm running out of USB ports!

Why not use your holiday time to catch up with all those mundane tasks and give your PC a spring clean. Don't forget to back up, surge protect and shut down - remember that transformer plugs still use power even when certain gadgets are not in use - switch it off at the wall! And remember to keep your anti-virus software regularly updated.

keywords and labels

2007-12-19T16:45:00.000Z

I'm getting good feedback about the blog, but would like to ask readers' advice on the most effective labels and keywords. What buzz words do you find are the best to get good Google results?

eCommunities event March 2008

2007-12-19T13:20:00.000Z

We are planning an exciting event which is to be held at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, in South Skye, on 7th and 8th March 2008. The event will aim to help our communities exchange information, free up resources, and find new and better ways of working by showcasing a wide range of ICT possibilities. The event is open to representatives of community organisations, and attendance is free (we will also offer support for those travelling from further afield).

While the event programme will be based on the findings of our research in Skye & Raasay, we are also interested to know about other problems and challenges faced by rural, remote and often isolated communities, and how ICT can be used to address these. This could be related to lack of services, skills and training needs, access to equipment, security issues, and all manner of other things.

We are planning to run a couple of sessions where questions can be posed to a panel of experts in ICT, the voluntary sector and community development. Questions will be collected on a graffiti board throughout the event, but we'd like to start the ball rolling by inviting your comments and questions here on this blog, so please post your points!

Show me the money!

2007-12-18T11:43:00.000Z

The worldwide web is a powerful tool for finding out information. Looking for funding sources for your community project is something that the internet can make easier. Many of the national funding sources invite first interest via the web or by email, and application forms are available for download.

The Big Lottery is probably the body which offers the widest range of grants to community projects - http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/ and you can download an initial proposal form that can then be sent for assessment.

For more specific grant sources, try entering a simple search into a search engine. I entered "community grants scotland" and got the following number of results:

Google http://www.google.co.uk/ 228,000
Ask Jeeves http://uk.ask.com/ 714,700
MSN http://www.msn.com/ 5,070,000
Yahoo http://uk.yahoo.com/ 7,060,000

Of course sifting through all these pages would take forever, so try to narrow down your search by including keywords referring to the detail of your project - for example "children", "ICT", "food", "environment". Selecting pages from the UK only before you hit "search" will also give fewer results.

The Community Toolkit (if available in your area) is regularly updated with local and national funding news - see http://www.slcvo.org.uk/ctoolkit

See also the Rural Gateway http://www.ruralgateway.org.uk for regular funding updates.

What is your experience with accessing funding online? Do you know of any funding bodies that accept online applications? Do you think the internet makes it easier or just even more confusing? Post your comments!

Sustainable community web services

2007-12-17T11:21:00.000Z

One of the main barriers to embracing ICT to help groups' performance is a lack of funding. But there are clever ways of addressing this, and believe it or not, many free or affordable services available to community groups.

Some communities have used the internet to develop inclusive systems that pull local information together in a "one-stop shop". These web based services are often known as "community portals".

Some examples of these are
Shetland - http://www.shetlandcommunities.org/
Orkney - http://www.orkneycommunities.co.uk/

Both these sites are managed by the local council for voluntary organisations (CVS) and have the added facility of inviting groups to create their own website via the portal for a small annual fee. This brings income into the project and will allow it to continue once the set-up funding ends.

Caithness.org - http://www.caithness.org/ - is run by a private organisation but is very much a community enterprise and is sustained by inviting advertising from local businesses.

Future sustainability of services is an important consideration for community projects, especially when providing to the voluntary sector which is notoriously tight for cash. Plexus media http://www.plexusmedia.co.uk/ have developed systems such as spanglefish websites http://www.spanglefish.com/ and an image library (see www.thecromartyarchive.org) for an example of how this works), which use Google ads to generate income that will make these services sustainable.

Here is another source that offers free websites to community organisations
http://www.communitykit.co.uk/

Is your group interested in developing a site like the examples above? Is it already doing so? If so we would love to hear from you - please leave your comments!

Blogging

2007-12-13T21:34:00.000Z

A blog, or "web log", has become a popular way of keeping a journal of information. Blogging is a great way of creating a two-way line of communication - it's really a simple form of an interactive website which is edited, monitored and controlled by the blogger, but invites comments from readers.

There are many sites which offer members a free blog, such as this one http://www.blogger.com/, also http://www.blog.co.uk/ and http://www.typepad.com/. Enhanced features and multiple blogs come at a cost, but it is easy and FREE to create a page with a choice of layouts and designs, and it is a brilliant way of communicating. There are also features you can add such as introducing RSS feeds from other sites (we will come to this in a later posting), widgets and uploads such as video and podcasts.

Creating your blog is the easy part - the challenges are planning and managing the content and keeping it regularly updated. Here's a link to some helpful advice for creating your community group blog: http://www.icthubknowledgebase.org.uk/bloggingandpodcastingtips. It's easy, try it!

Social Networking

2007-12-12T16:25:00.000Z

As part of the eCommunities project we have surveyed over 100 community group members in the islands of Skye and Raasay. Initial findings show that although the level of skill within the sector is fairly high, groups are restricted from participating in ICT due to a lack of resources such as time and funding. Community groups are aware of the benefits that can be presented by engaging in ICT but are perhaps not aware of the range of free or affordable products and services that are available to them.

Many groups feel that their website is not well designed; others do not have a website at all but would like one. Very few respondents are stating that they use online resources such as discussion forums or social networking sites to aid communication between group members.

Check out these social networking sites:

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/
Bebo http://www.bebo.com/
MySpace http://www.myspace.com/
Ning - http://www.ning.com/

It's free to open an account, and it would be a simple way of communicating with members, as well as promoting your group.

ITSON, a community group based in Skye & Lochalsh, has its MySpace and Bebo pages which it uses to keep in touch with its members through blogs and discussions - http://www.myspace.com/itsonhighland and http://www.bebo.com/ITSON-ITSOM

welcome

2007-12-11T21:23:00.000Z

Welcome to this blog about the e-Communities project which has been set up by Highlands & Islands Enterprise to look at the opportunities for our rural communities to use information and communications technology (ICT) in order to make their work more efficient and effective. Over the next few months we will highlight the various issues that communities face, provide signposts to possible solutions, and invite comments to help us further our understanding of needs and challenges.

We are currently analysing a recent survey of the sample islands of Skye and Raasay which will help build a picture of ICT activity among the community sector. We invite comments from across the Highlands and Islands, and indeed across the globe. We are very interested to find out about ICT projects which aim to:

improve communication and the exchange of information
make better use of restricted resources
create new and better ways of working