Insights
Charities, academics and the government have come together to help boost the digital skills of home workers and isolated communities.
The government has teamed up with charities and academics to launch a free online toolkit to improve digital skills during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Skills Toolkit has been launched, as many people are having to rapidly boost their understanding of technology as they work from home and support their children’s home schooling.
Understanding cyber security is another aspect of the toolkit.
The toolkit should also be useful to charities working to ensure isolated and socially excluded communities can better understand digital. More than a quarter (28 per cent) of charities said their audiences are not accessing social media, according to a survey by Charity Comms and Media Trust on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The toolkit features resources developed by digital inclusion charity The Good Things Foundation. This includes Learn My Way, which offers an introduction to building essential digital skills, including accessing health services and banking online.
Another Foundation resource included is Make It Click, which offers support in developing digital skills further, such as learning new apps and using Zoom.
Good Things Foundation Chief Executive Helen Milner said: “With 11.9 million people in the UK still without the essential digital skills for life and work, from adding an email attachment to two-step security verification, we’re delighted to be helping the nation learn and gain confidence.”
Coding and data training
Online resources on offer also cover more advanced digital training, such as creating online content, data analysis and coding. These skills should also be useful to charities looking to ramp up the digital skills of their workers and volunteers.
Others involved in creating content for the toolkit include the Institute of Coding and the University of Leeds.
“The impact of Covid-19 has shown how important digital skills are - both for work and other aspects of our lives,” said Oliver Dowden, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
“Technology is going to play a hugely important role in our economic recovery and this new platform will help ensure everyone is able to improve their digital skills and take advantage of the opportunities ahead.”
Join us on the 11th of April for our webinar with Dell we will explore how AI is already impacting people and communities, the meanings of AI safety and AI literacy, and how charitable organisations can take action on digital and AI inclusion.