"someone has buggered up the HTML on the link"
Coffee, keyboard, lol, replacement required.
Thanks.
Gov considers website to teach tech skills
A review of England's computer skills has found over 11m people who lack even basic IT abilities. The report by Baroness Estelle Morris recommends free IT training for all adults in England. The report found 11.6m English people lack basic tech skills. Morris reckons a marketing campaign to show people the benefits of going …
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How about teaching the basics first?
The lack of basic reading, writing and numeracy skills is as much a barrier to effective use of the Web as an inability to point and click. Of course, teaching these in any effective way involves more than just advertising and web sites, so don't expect anything soon.
Help Mr Website. I cant connect!?!?!
A website to help people get online? Really?
Isnt this an statue to all things stupid. If they lack the skills to get online. How will they visit the service that teaches said skills.....
Why should people use computers?
We don't force people to learn to drive or use a DVD player.
If it's not possible to be part of modern society without knowing how to use a computer then that's the failure.
If people want to learn they should be free to do so -- but if they don't then there should be infrastructure in place, and I'm sure there are jobs without an IT aspect, so that they don't have to.
Not THAT silly really
Whatever next, a book to teach people to read?
If you're going to learn how to do something, you're going to need to do it at some point. As I read it, the website isn't meant to be what makes them go online, it's what teaches them how to use IT once they're on.
I can picture it now...
"Welcome to the Get Online website, where we hope to teach everybody how to access common sources of information on the internet."
THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS COPYRIGHT HM GOV. ANY COPYING, LENDING, REPRODUCING, IN PART OR IN FULL, OF ANY INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF HM GOV IS PROHIBITED BY COPYRIGHT LAW, AND TRANSGRESSIONS SHALL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF APPLICABLE LAW. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD. PIRACY IS BAD.
Click on the "Next" button below to see how we are planning to monitor every single communication you make with your computer and telephone!
ECDL
What happened to the European Computer Driving Licence then, why not just offer that at libraries, then people can learn how to use the computers, which they can find for there use at said libraries, and also expand their new-found skills with the excellent computer literature provided at such establishments.
Or would they actually have to put some money into libraries first?
Surely if there's a drop in course sign-up
It means the people who cared about it have now done a course, and now we're left with those who really don't give a stuff and aren't going to be swayed by (or even go to) a website...
Hmm.
More wasted money...
A few years ago Govmt. PLC spent millions on an initiative called "UK Online". This was a series of centres set up at convenient drop in points all over the UK and all tied in with an agreement with Learn Direct to provide hosted low cost training courses in basic skills (english/maths etc.) and basic computer skills like those mentioned here to anyone who needed them.
Unfortunately, albeit I can only report on the Southen UK area... a certain someone (I'll mention no names, but she is ex M-Soft and was close to a certain Mr T. Blair) overspent setting it all up by frittering the cash away on pointless PR shindigs and bad contracts, so there was never any money for IT support for the awful infrastructure supplied by Time Computers, and never anyone with the technical nous to be able to get Time to actually deliver on the maintenance contract that they had.
This lead to a rapid decline in usage of the drop in centres as nothing ever worked, and ultimately it led to another complete fucking waste of public money as the centres were all closed as Labour cut the programme funding as soon as the PR fanfare was over.
Lesson 1
"Manufacturer X puts this crappy anitvirus software on all their PCs. Now for legal reasons we can't tell you what it's called, but it begins with an 'N' and ends with 'orton Antivirus' we highly recommend uninstalling this product and replacing it with one of the following..."
ok i'll shut up now.
If this phone is broken dial 192
So lets get a website up and running to teach people to. . well. . . use websites.
Can someone please deliver a large and hard slap across face!
concept flawed but implemented already?
so a website for someone who doesn't understand IT... well, it's not surprising from the current govt. However, the govt's own LearnDirect network has courses like this, can't they just make one of those free? Rather than waste buckets of taxpayers money creating a new site by new contractors with new content made without considering of current ones.....
From a govt insistent on centralising all data you'd think they'd have considered this, though it wouldn't help the police state so it's not worth investigating i guess
Probably use to be a PE teacher
I have no idea people with no experience or skill dictate how IT should go, it is outrageous, what next a UK Poet Laureate who doesn't speak the lingo.
It really is an Orwellian dystopia that Nasty Labour has created, knew I should have got into the business of MillStone necklaces.
Simple capitalist dynamics will sort this
1) Charge more for services offered offline - stuff like renewing car tax etc, maybe even offer a vat reduction for online retailers
2) Offer training for free
People will soon get the message and start using the web if it's going to save them money
Shark?
That analogy implies that the the teacher is efficient at doing what they're trying to teach. I would have said a Stone would be more accurate in terms of an analogy.
In other news...
A review of the nations literacy skills revealed that over 11.3m people cannot spell thier own names and consider punctuation as an optional extra.
Co-incidentally, approx. 11.3m britains have an IQ score below that of your average goldfish. Researchers are blaming this shocking discovery on the average saturated fat intake, measured using deep fried mars bars. The amount of interest the individual has for z-list celebrities and People magazine may also have a significant impact on IQ levels.
& the first candidate is...
The thicko at ndsenquiries@coi.gsi.gov.uk that can't create an A tag!
FFS
"Since 2004/2005 there has been a 54 per cent fall in numbers enrolling on ICT courses - some of this accounted for by people signing up for longer courses."
They really don't get it do they?
The drop in enrollments is probably more to do with the fact that the pool of adults who actually want to learn IT skills is drying up. It fits like a thingy in one of those whatsits with the story that something like 30% of the population have no intention of ever going online.
The government or possibly the civil service (same thing with a labour government) have an idealized image of a digital britain. One where everything happens online. For some reason no matter what research tells them they fondly believe that everybody wants to get online, but doesn't have the skills. So they think that if only they can give everybody the skills they will go online. Sorry, but it's bollocks. Some people simply have no interest in the interwebs.
My own father went on IT courses. He then went online. After the initial shine wore off he realised he was using the 'net less and less. In the end the only thing he was doing online was his banking. Hardly enough to justify the cost of his connection so when he moved house he didn't bother signing up for a new connection.
There is a percentage of the population who will never be convinced of the need to go online. Remember the image of the future from Tomorrow's World that one day every house would have a "computer terminal" connected to a huge national network? Well even if the government provided that for free there are still people who would never use it. Expect people to pay for it and the number of opt outs will get bigger. And I can't wait for the opt outs to start protesting about the £6 a year tax to provide broadband they don't want.
Reminds me of...
... the old piece of graffiti
"Illiterate? Write to this address for help!"
"What would I want one of them for?" . . .
. . . says my mum.
She's been doing fine all her life without needing to go on line but someone who appears to know different has other ideas.
She has no use for a computer or access to the internet, her life isn't in need of enrichment via Facebook or HM.Gov websites.
Whatever next? "As public transport isn't what it should be, buy a car to get to the shops"?
The totally wrong direction
most of the populace that owns computers have no need for them at all. The only people who need these idiots to have computers are the people selling and servicing them. Ask anyone you know why they own a computer, instructing them to omit "surf the web", "send e-mail", and "play games" and see if you get ANY reasonable answers. I am guessing not. Even those who originally thought they could store their recipes or balance their check book probably are not even doing that much. I liked it better when the only people who owned computers were people who could also build and program said computer. To the rest of the home computer users....get a cell phone. The goal here should be to educate people as to why they don't actually need a computer when a smaller, less functional device will work for them just as well if not better. Grandma needs webtv and a cell phone. *I* need multiple servers gigabit Ethernet and a UPS in 19" rack.
Fix the education!
Why don't they fix the Education system. My friend failed ICT at GCSE level. And then was arrested a few months later for breaking into computer systems.
Now doesnt that show that something went wrong?
He was very smart with technology. He wasnt a skiddie. but he failed ICT because word processing and excel are boring and classed as "advanced"
Sounds about as useful as..
a blind optomitrist...
Isn't this the same governement that has proble even understanding how the internet even works? How are they going to teach poeple things that even they do not understand? I suppose they same way our schools system works (or fails to)
First ......
.... teach them to think for themselves. As a former, yet unrepentant, school teacher the problem for most of these people may well be lack of basic reading and comprehension skills. Not to mention math skills.
21st century illiteracy
Perhaps they can offer some help to the thick wankers who seem to populate the majority of offices across the country who can't perform the most elementary "tech" tasks without cacking it up, usually toasting someone elses labour in the process. We're at least 10 years from it being forgiveable not to know the difference between 'save' and 'save as' and what copy and paste is, but some extremely well paid types seem to revel in finding this all a bit complex.
The sooner schools/employers require a demonstrable basic understanding of the computers you will be using, the better.
Paris, cos there really are people thicker than her
@zerofool2005
Interesting - I failed GCSE IT back in the early 90's - very much to do with regretting taking an option that, rather than teach IT, just taught basic word processing, databases and spreadsheets on Wordperfect for 2 blasted years!! To put this into context, I now do very well thankyou in a tech consultancy role. However, I thought education had moved on, and that people wouldn't be falling into that trap anymore?
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