Digital Inclusion PCs Stolen

There’s definitely some wierd ironies here. (Originally spotted via Blue Cat Onine on Twitter)

Ms Fox revealed details of the break-in on the social networking site Twitter.

“O bloody hell the #digitalinclusion office has been broken into and all computers taken (,” she wrote.

Digital Media Literacy Summit – You Tube Videos

I arrived back at work today to discover an email pointing me to some You Tube videos filmed at the Digital Media Literacy Summit I attended last year.

Here are some interviews with some of the key speakers.

Here are some interviews with attendees (I may be in here somewhere but haven’t gone through them all yet).

And here’s Jelly Ellie.

Why Ed Richards Should Blog

Emily Bell’s column in the Guardian on Monday about OFCOM set me thinking.

I went to a Media Literacy Summit recently and then a week afterwards to a BBC Innovation day (which I will blog about shortly).

What struck me as a result was this.

There is a big gap between what people (like Jelly Ellie) are doing with these new media tools and broadcasting policy makers and regulators who don’t use them. As Euan Macintosh points out the people who make the decisions about media are illiterate in these forms of media themselves.

Among the many things on its agenda OFCOM wants to increase media literacy and safeguard public service content (through its’ proposal for a Public Service Publisher).

So Ed Richards (Ofcom’s Chief Executive) should start a blog.

This would increase media literacy in that one more person (i.e. Ed himself) would become more media literate. And the fact of him doing it might make the people around him more media literate.

It would also increase the amount of public service content. A sucessful blog from Ed might contain his thoughts on broadcasting, strategy and regulation (very public service). Even if he didn’t want to do that, Ed is a cultured man so his cultural tastes would also be public service. A blog from Ed is unlikely to contain porn, guns, tobacco or abuse.

I’m not expecting this to happen. And even if it did it would be a minor miracle if Ed had the kind of “inner blogger” that would make for a good blog.

But if would be much simpler, easier and cheaper than media literacy initiatives or a PSP.

Digital Media Literacy Summit

A “digital media literacy summit“. Or as Robin Hamann calls it “a thing at Channel 4“. I sat on the back row with Robin flickrring (is that the right word?) and Kevin Anderson blogging diligently for the Guardian.

The best bits were Euan Macintosh who had good ideas, the fantastic Jelly Ellie (she should be the regulator!) and an enjoyable scrap about the definition of “digital media literacy” in the group session.

It was also great to see Hilary Perkins again and many thanks to Hilary for allowing me to hotdesk.