Date: Wednesday 18th April 2018
Time: 18:30 – Refereshments from 6:30pm for a 7pm start
Speaker: Alex Robinson
Location: IMC Auditorium, WMG, University of Warwick. How to find meeting location
BCS Meetings are free to attend.
Abstract:
Cheylesmore Good Neighbours is an excellent example of a digital inclusion programme in the City of Coventry. Alex Robinson will describe how the project started and its activities. Volunteers give one to one tuition on IT devices on Wednesday afternoons. Activities range from teaching the basics to learning how to use a new feature or app. Students from Warwick University support this project. Its is based in Quinton Park Baptist Church, Cheylesmore, Coventry.
Alex Robinson was formally a Director of Engineering at Marconi Communications (previously GEC Telecommunications) in Coventry. Following retirement, he and his wife helped to form Cheylesmore Good Neighbours to encourage elderly, mainly single, people to come out and socialise. During chats over cups of tea it became apparent that many were aware of the Digital Revolution but it had totally bypassed them. Some wanted to learn and others positively resisted it.
Alex will describe some of the challenges of attempting to “Bridge the Digital Divide” in a real-world low-tech environment using student volunteers from the University of Warwick. Even today Alex (a one-time Physics graduate from Imperial College) can be baffled by his own grandson when some new game or app comes along – imagine what it is like for an 80 year old who has never handled a modern computing device up close!