Digital Greenwich - Delivering Education

Yesterday we were divided into 3 subgroups to look in greater depth at three key areas; Identity, Tourism and Education. Adam, Neil and I formed a group and our task is to find concepts for delivering education in the borough of Greenwich. We had a 30' meeting yesterday in which we thought of some concepts we could start from, which Mr. Martin later approved.

In general, our solution has to do with a building, actually a network of them.

DG talization
The building called DG (the initials of Digital Greenwich) will be a centre of education and information. Its target group will be all types of residents: teenagers, students, adults, older people, disabled. DG's purpose is to provide resources such as internet access, books and magazines, as well as educational courses for the focus groups stated above and subgroups of them (ex. parents < adults). The concept is to have the largest network of DG buildings possible, aiming to cover all the neighbourhoods of the borough. That means the library offered in each one of them doesn't have to be the Royal Library of Alexandria, neither the internet connection a fibre optic one. The planning should be done wisely making savings from everything so the council will be able to raise as many DG buildings as possible.

DG's form
DG will be available only for residents and will require membership. Discretely if possible, security personnel should operate in the building since it will contain expensive equipment. Each DG will be divided into three areas:
 A  Youth Centre
It will mainly be laboratories which means, computers connected to the internet, also wireless internet, plugs and desks for laptops, as well as library with books and magazines the teenagers are most interested in.
 B   Library, Work and Coffee
It will be like the Borders-Starbucks combination in Angel and it will host the main body of the library.
 C  Older people's Tech Centre
The major reason for this area to exist is that it's all there in the Google, isn't it. There will be equipment and staff to help all those Over-50 people to take advantage of the ultimate medium of our era.

A draft floor plan of a DG is this:

The youth of today, has lots to say
Our concept kind-of "invests" in the teenagers since they would probably be the group of residents most interested in the DG and they (hopefully) would like to get involved with it. A way to take advantage of it, would be in their application for being members of the DG, to  fill-in their skills, ex. Painting, Juggling, Web-Designing, Programming etc. With thoughtful management of those skills each teenager IMHO would be delighted to contribute to DG. For the skills stated above Painting could apply for designing the walls, Juggling for events for children, or Juggling events which are wonderful to watch (many people juggling), Web-designing for the website mentioned in the beginning, programming for applications used in the DG either from the staff or the residents.

Website
We additionally thought of a space in the web, which could be mainly maintained by the teenagers and the students mentioned before, under the direction of staff. News and events taking place in Greenwich will be posted in the website, as well as the activity (courses, events, resources which provide) of all the DGs. Forums could be also really useful since they have the ability to update themselves - no need for new content - All they need is just a careful maintenance.

Library
 Books  The Library should contain lots of books written about Greenwich for contributing to the goals the Identity team has to achieve. The rest of the books should be ordered according to the demand, so there won't be any money wasted. The same should be done with Magazines and Newspapers.
 Free Press  Enhancing the cultural side of the DG a free booklet could be published as LiTRO is, and DG's members should be encouraged to contribute to it. A large portion of the content could come from the teenagers and the students. Even if that is not possible, because of low percentage of the people involved or bad quality of the content provided, the dealing of this kind of free press, which is cultural or artistic should be a "must" for every DG.


Peace at Home, Peace in the World
This quote belongs to Kemal Ataturk and applying it to Greenwich translates like, if this borough wants to solve its criminality issues, bringing peace at its residents' homes is the solution. And is there any other way to bring peace than education? So, courses for parents will take place in every DG, and in the areas which criminality reaches the top, these lectures should even be mandatory, because it's the only way to solve the problem at its very beginning.

To-do
Mr. Martin asked to define our concept better, then its focus groups and also how Ravensbourne would participate in it, so these are the topics my group and I will be working on.