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A conference for rural communities and organisations interested in community
ICT hosted by:
Oxfordshire Rural Community Council (ORCC)
Oxfordshire Rural Learners' Project (ORLP)
Oxfordshire County Council: Adult and Community Learning & Democratic Services
Held at East Hanney War Memorial Hall, Wednesday 9th April,
2003
The Hall
East Hanney Memorial Hall, brick building about three/four
times the size of Hanwell Village hall with a full stage and several ante
rooms.
'Why get wired-up?'
Dr Alan Clark, NIACE
Key note
speech emphasising the need for facilities for adult learning and closing the
digital divide.
'What's
happening in Oxfordshire?' – presentations
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Oxfordshire Rural
Learners Project
A
joint project (Abingdon & Witney College and the Learning & Skills Council
with funding from UKOnline, the Community Modernisation Fund, Local Initiative
Fund) linking 21 village halls to the internet with ISDN lines and wireless
networking. They use Dell laptops. Been running for over a year and
provide 3 hour taster courses in other villages.
Chalgrove, who have two village halls, participated in the project, they had
Lottery funding to re-furbish their old village hall for ICT. The project is
manned by Aged Concern. They now have a computer drop in centre used by all
ages but primarily "Silver Surfers". They only have two computers online at
the moment but want to install a cyber cafe. They charge £2 per session to
cover consumables and at present don't pay for internet access. Security is a
consideration but the computer room has no visible access.
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Community Broadband
David
Blue gave a short presentation on the Oxford Community Network. This is an
Oxfordshire County Council project merging various forms of government funding
to connect all schools and libraries to a broadband network. It uses BT
infrastructure but not one the community can utilise at the moment. They are
at an early stage target is for all schools to be connected by summer 2003,
but some primary schools already have 2mb leased lines!
He put
a map on the screen, it didn't include Hanwell and Horley at all!!!!
see here
They
have major nodes in Banbury, Bicester, Headington, Holton, Cowley,
Wallingford, Didcot, Wantage, Abingdon, Oxford - County Hall, Witney,
Carterton, Kidlington and Chipping Norton.
He had
some good statistics, apparently; BT have 83 telephone exchanges in the
county, dependant upon who at BT he asked either 7 or 12/15 are enabled. He is
trying to convince BT that trigger levels don't represent demand.
At
several times during the day he had to confess he couldn't help and "OCC was a
County Council not a telco".
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Berinsfield Community
Network
This
project provide ICT access to various community organisations, they utilise
the Oxford Community Network and have had copper laid between five community
projects and the village primary school which has a 2mb leased line to the
nearest OCN node. There aim is to provide ICT access to all adults in the
village. The internet access is "filtered"
ORCC pointed out that they could help with Community Action
Planning, including such things a the Countryside Agencies "Vital Village"
scheme.
The end result of this seminar will be a
Wired-up Villages
Handbook sometime in the summer.
All in all there is a lot going on in the county, with
numerous technology evangelists looking for any help they can get, whether they
want to build a village website or put a cyber cafe in the village hall......
The views expressed are those of Paul M Tate
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