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A Stepping Stone to New Opportunities HUBS is an innovative project, bridging the gap between people in disadvantaged communities and the education and employment choices available to them. We use informal incrementally structured training in different settings to provide a stepping stone for people from all parts of the community. The Help Us Be Succesful programme is built upon the assumption that those who find access to new technology most difficult will benefit from training that is incrementally structured, incrementally complex,affordable, flexible, modular and creative. Through progressively structured, collaborative work HUBS offers basic skills which equip trainees to take part in more formal courses provided by other organisations and institutions. We are not competing with established ICT training: our aim is to provide a stepping stone to such courses.
The growth of the Information Society puts computing power in the hands of many different people and provides highly effective new tools for communication. Whether through word processing, desk top publishing, 3-D graphics or a web site, people of all ages are learning new and more effective ways of sharing information and communicating with others. HUBS focuses on the skills needed to build content, whether they be reading, writing, research methods, photography, music or web page design. HUBS also reflects the development of the Internet as a global communications medium of huge potential, which is currently in the hands of those who can afford to use it. Games software will be available, as will CD-Rom encyclopedias, family tree software and other popular computer applications. The emphasis is on helping people try something new and encouraging them to have fun, as part of promoting a positive approach to new technology. Our concept involves people helping to take responsibility for their actions and learning how to manage their time; typically, people will start in the "outer circle" of a project space, using the Internet, playing games or simulations, focusing on their own current interests. They will be encouraged to negotiate times for training, first on an ad hoc basis but in a progressively more structured way so that they accept regular features in their lives. From this starting-point, trainees will move "inwards", acquiring more skills and regularity of output but always bearing in mind the centrality of content creation rather than the acquisition of skills in an abstract form. This approach can help people who want to know what computers can do for them but encourages them to focus on what they are interested in. If someone is interested in football, for example, they can search web sites about football, learn how to build a web site about their team and even join in fantasy football leagues on the Internet! Much of traditional training focuses on the student going to where the teachers are. With the HUBS mobile cybercafe the teachers can now go where the people are. A suite of laptops which can be connected to the Internet through an ordinary telephone line, will be used to visit key locations in the community. Because of the flexibility provided by using laptops almost any room can be used to deliver training, whether in a community centre, library, school or other meeting space. The mobile suite will be available for two types of bookings. Through contacts in the community regular sessions will be timetabled in a number of locations, for example every Tuesday at Hangleton Community Centre, or two Thursday each month in the library at Whitehawk. The exact nature of these sessions, the times they run and what they offer will be established through working with local community groups and other representatives. The suite will also be available for other bookings, to complement the work in the regular sessions. These may be anywhere in Sussex and will be developed in association with organisations such as Sussex Rural Community Council and other networks in the community. Negotiations are under way to work with other local community organisations to provide a drop in facility in central Brighton. This will provide open access to computers and will be especially targeted at people from disadvantaged groups. By having an open facility we hope to encourage all sorts of people to get involved in using computers. The exact nature of this facility will depend on the nature of the organisation which is co-hosting it, but it will be a welcoming environment with specialist IT equipment which can cater for people with a variety of special needs. By targeting the most disadvantaged in the community we must recognise that cost is a significant barrier to access to computer resources. Some of the resources we provide will be free, others will have costs attached to help meet the costs of providing them. We will introduce a pricing policy which prioritises the people least able to afford access, such as those on benefits. We will also seek to provide affordable resources for others, in a field where the costs of specialist Internet training can be prohibitive. The HUBS Programme, the Sussex Connection mobile training suite and the HUBS Drop-in are being developed as a partnership between Sussex Community Internet Project and HumanITy. SCIP works with local community and voluntary organisations to explore the ways that new technology can be used to help renew and strengthen our communities. HumanITy was established to ensure that the potential of IT to assist the most disadvantaged people in our society does not become a disadvantage, widening the gap still further by imposing a widening information deficit on top of a widening economic deficit. HumanITy has already been involved n work concerning the regulation of the second hand computer market, the effect of the Internet on taxation and the problem of fragile backbones in developing countries. HumanITy Director Kevin Carey has a special interest in IT and disability and is a member of the World Wide Web Consortium Web accessibility Initiative. HUBS Home | Home Text Only | What is HUBS? | HUBS Drop In | Mobile Training | HUBS News | Contact us | How you can help us HUBS has received capital funding from the Government Office of the South East through its Skills Challenge Programme. HUBS is supported by
Sun
Microsystems HUBS is managed by
Sussex
Community Internet Project |
