Partner With Schools
Theme: Building Digital Skills
Idea Status: +8 | Total Votes: 14 | Comments: 2
The government should partner with schools to provide funding and assistance to enable the use of their facilities to offer free and low–cost educational opportunities for everyone.
High–school and University classrooms could be used at night to offer computer training programs for adults. These could be free volunteer–led interest–based classes, or for a small fee professionally taught so that they could count towards some certification or diploma.
Curricula should be open and freely available such as those from MIT. The Canadian government should become closely involved in this program, enhancing and extending it, with the help of our educational institutions.
There is such a surplus of donated computer equipment available now that good quality machines could be made available free for these classes.
Comments
lib–rate — 2010–06–23 16:30:18 EDT wrote
Sounds like CAP, the Community Access Program. CAP 2 is what Canada needs now — supporting communities, especially libraries, to provide centers of access, exploration and innovation (maybe even incubation). For a while CAP made Canada the envy of the digitizing world.
Barb — 2010–06–25 07:21:23 EDT wrote
CAP 2 – great idea. The CAP program was so successful in our community despite continued funding cuts and lack of interest from Federal government over the past decade, yet it has and continues to be a valuable community development tool engaging volunteers, providing free access and support to close the digital divide. CAP is about technology, but it is really about people helping people in communities. Our CAP site has been around since 1998 and is in a small coastal elementary school that has been reviewed for closure twice in the past 16 years, because of declining enrollment. The CAP site brings community into the school and offers the school on–site technological support. The last thing our community needs is the school to close and the building to stand vacant and become an eyesore, as has happened in the past. CAP 2 needs realistic funding and partnerships with ISP, schools, government and community. Canada's CAP program could be the envy of the world again.
