Thursday, May 15, 2008

Useful links

For your information as a follow-up to the previous post by Elaine and the follow-up comment from Aine Lyne, the following are 2 useful links

www.learnlocal.ie - CLVECs Community learning site (using moodle)
www.communitylink.ie/kiosks - Hompage for the Community Based Kiosks and the link for information on all Learning Opportunities available in communities, in the City and beyond.

PS - Great to see the Blog taking off - 25 contributions to date (posts and comments) - We are really building an invaluable resource to help our planning process so thanks to everybody whi is contributing and keep it up by continueing to add your comments.

Tomorrows Techfast input from Gerard Walker promises to focus our minds on the rapid pace of change globally and how we can best respond to the new emerging challenges.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Techfast 2 - 16/5/08 - Future Skills Needs & Inclusion

Hi Elaine, Brendan & Gerard, well done on another challenging breakfast !
The 2020 skills targets are very challenging but essential for all our futures. While most of the targets will have to be met by the “top down” formal education and training agencies, there will be a huge need for community-driven more informal “bottom-up” initiatives, particularly focusing on core life-skills and competencies rather than academic attainment.
For disadvantaged communities in particular, we have to start from where people are at – we must make them aware that literacy and ICT-use are core life skills that are essential to give them options and opportunities in their lives. User centered inclusive ICT can greatly help in that both, for the “know what” and “know how”.
Perhaps the Limerick ICT Group and other community groups can focus on the 300,000 “newly participating” people that will be in the 2.4m workforce in 2020. Maybe community groups across the country should target to provide half of the 300,000 and be funded to do so !
It was clear from the discussion that there is excellent work being done on the ground, that is not getting the funding or recognition that it requires. I’m sure the same is true for many community groups across the country. Perhaps you might set up an interactive/collaborative web forum to share and collaborate in that work, and lobby for adequate financial and other support.