Digital workout: Exercises for beginners

Our report, ‘Digital inclusion in the UK charity sector’ found that digital skills among service users and volunteers created challenges to charities delivering and improving their services. This article contains ideas for service users and volunteers to keep building their digital skills and confidence after learning the basics.

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Digital skills can open up a whole new world of information and opportunities – so it’s no surprise that nearly 100,000 people turned to Good Things Foundation between 2022 and 2024 for help reaping these benefits. Good Things Foundation’s National Digital Inclusion Network and platform Learn My Way can help you learn basic digital skills, such as using a device, using email, and starting to use the internet.

 

For many of those who have gained basic digital skills and confidence, it is important to keep them up over time. So, this article explores three fun ways to continue building your digital skills and confidence.

 

 

Follow your curiosity

 

What do you do when you have a sudden burst of curiosity? A question about alligators or the Vikings or the 1982 film ‘ET’? Do you let your question float away in the wind, lost to the passage of time? Or do you open up a search engine to find out the answer once and for all?

 

You may prefer to quietly ponder on the random questions life presents you with – or make it a topic of hot debate among friends. But it doesn’t hurt, once in a while, to follow the path created by your curiosity through your preferred search engine.

 

When you start researching one topic and end up learning about a string of others, this is sometimes called “going down a rabbit hole”. But it doesn’t have to be disorientating or confusing – it can be fun, fascinating, and safe. Exercise your digital skills by:

• Checking if websites are safe. Check out Norton’s 11-step guide
• Being aware of how the search engine works, for example how it uses your data, and the difference between different types of results, for example the sponsored section, the shopping section, and the AI Overview section
• Reflecting on the authority of different sources to answer your questions, for example, what are the content creator’s incentives for producing an answer to the question? What are their qualifications for providing this information?

 

 

Have a slideshow party

 

Possibly no art form is as under-appreciated as the humble slideshow. While it is often associated with a classically sombre corporate meeting, it has so much more to offer.

 

‘PowerPoint Nights’ are where a group of friends or family members get together and present a funny pre-prepared deck of slides to the group. The best topics are completely pointless and may relate to your audience members themselves.

 

Another option is ‘PowerPoint Karaoke’, which involves creating a slideshow for someone else to improvise a presentation without having seen the slides first.

 

As a side-product of all the laughs, this can be a chance to explore all the features of slideshow programmes and get creative with them. Exercise your digital skills by:

• Using search engines to research the content of your presentation, using the skills discussed above
• Using multimedia. Explore how to use images, sound, and video features to communicate your message
• Deliberately breaking the rules of presentations. Find the most over-the-top transitions, play with designing the slides badly, and insert sound in unexpected places. Finding humour by deliberately breaking rules is fun and can help you notice what might work (or otherwise be disastrous) in a professional setting

Some popular programmes for creating a slideshow are Canva, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Google Slides.

 

 

Get creative

 

Digital can help you take your hobbies and interests to the next level. Creative interests can be given a whole new life when using digital technologies.

 

Those with artistic hobbies can use art and design apps to make digital art, like David Hockney. If you’re interested in writing, you may incorporate digital word-processors like Microsoft Word to help you see everything in one place and write more quickly.

 

Those with musical interests can record themselves playing an instrument, listen back, and produce songs in a new way – while if you’re interested in film and video, you can use digital programmes to both film and edit together recordings.

 

The list goes on: whether you’re interested in fashion, games, or gardening, there are many ways to express yourself using digital.

 

Some people like to use social media and follow blogs to learn more about their hobbies, while others like to engage with online community challenges like National Novel Writing Month and Inktober. Exercise your digital skills by:

• Researching different methods online. Use your search engine skills to find out the best programmes to use
• Making the most of different features by experimenting with the digital programmes you choose
• Building awareness of the different communities online who share your interest, exercising good digital citizenship and managing your digital wellbeing