What do you think?
Digital Inclusion: Measuring the Impact of Information and Community Technology
In this important book, Michael Crandall and Karen E. Fisher and a dozen contributors have made "Digital Inclusion" their rallying cry. They provide a framework for thinking about the effects of community technology on digital inclusion and present concrete examples of the impact successful community technology providers have had on individual users, communities, and society as a whole.Through an examination of efforts by community technology organizations in Washington State, Digital Inclusion offers a model for educating policy makers about the actual impacts of such efforts, along with suggestions for practical implementation. The case studies and analyses presented here will be of critical interest to community technology centers, libraries, government service agencies, and any other organization (or funder) that uses technology to deliver services to the information poor.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2009
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
July 25, 2011
If computer and technology access and literacy benefit the individual, the corollary is that the community benefits too. Digital Inclusion tries to measure the benefits of community technology. The examples of community technology centers in the Crandall & Fisher book show who are using these centers, how they are using them, and what are the outcomes (benefits). Like most CTCs, those in Washington aim to provide computer access and technology literacy to lower income people. These users in turn teach and help their families and the community benefits in many ways.
Digital inclusion is still relatively new and people in the field are still trying to figure out what is the best way to measure the impact. Mostly these case studies used interviews and focus groups and put the results (outcomes) into six categories: Academic Skills and Literacy; Access to Information and Resources; Employment and Economic; Social Inclusion and Personal Growth; Independence; and other.
Each CTC studied in this book was different from the others, yet the results—the benefits listed by the users—were similar. Some people who learn skills at their CTC return to teach others. At the Tacoma clubhouse, giving back to the community was a "critical element;" an example was that youth from the clubhouse went outside of their organization to provide a technical service to another non-profit community organization. Should it be a requirement for users of CTCs to "give back," to spread their knowledge to others once they are confident in the skills they want to learn?
As I read the case studies in Digital Inclusion and the article about the new digital divide and minorites, I think how technology has become a skill as basic as reading and writing in our society. This is reflected in schools which teach reading, writing, math and technology equally.
Chapters 12-14 in DI discuss communicating the outcomes of CTCs to policy makers. I think the metrics of inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts are a good measurement. In chapter 14 they presented a fictional CTC in relation to these metrics. This made it easy for me to understand, but I wonder why they needed to create a fictional CTC to show this. Does anyone else think that this made it conveniently tidy and thus, unrealistic?
Included are three appendices.
Digital inclusion is still relatively new and people in the field are still trying to figure out what is the best way to measure the impact. Mostly these case studies used interviews and focus groups and put the results (outcomes) into six categories: Academic Skills and Literacy; Access to Information and Resources; Employment and Economic; Social Inclusion and Personal Growth; Independence; and other.
Each CTC studied in this book was different from the others, yet the results—the benefits listed by the users—were similar. Some people who learn skills at their CTC return to teach others. At the Tacoma clubhouse, giving back to the community was a "critical element;" an example was that youth from the clubhouse went outside of their organization to provide a technical service to another non-profit community organization. Should it be a requirement for users of CTCs to "give back," to spread their knowledge to others once they are confident in the skills they want to learn?
As I read the case studies in Digital Inclusion and the article about the new digital divide and minorites, I think how technology has become a skill as basic as reading and writing in our society. This is reflected in schools which teach reading, writing, math and technology equally.
Chapters 12-14 in DI discuss communicating the outcomes of CTCs to policy makers. I think the metrics of inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts are a good measurement. In chapter 14 they presented a fictional CTC in relation to these metrics. This made it easy for me to understand, but I wonder why they needed to create a fictional CTC to show this. Does anyone else think that this made it conveniently tidy and thus, unrealistic?
Included are three appendices.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review