Knowledge Centre blogs

Is age really the issue in later life?

By: Annika Small
On: 30th October 2012

As part of its ongoing open consultation, Nominet Trust brought together a group of experts this past week to think about how technology might be used to realise new opportunities - and address the persistent challenges such as social isolation, access to adequate care and pensioner poverty – facing people in later life. We weren’t looking at how adding digital might make existing services more cost-effective or efficient; nor were we seeking specific solutions. Instead we were hoping to define some areas that would benefit from social innovation with technology.

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Technology for later in life – our new exploration

By: Dan Sutch
On: 8th October 2012

You don’t have to look far to find repeated stories of the problems facing people in later life, from access to adequate care, health and well-being and of course financial challenges.

There are now more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 16. With increased life expectancy, those we categorise as ‘older’ can span an age group that stretches from 55 years of age to 95 and above. ‘Old age’ though can describe people in good health or poor health, active, sedentary, lonely or the leaders of their communities.

With over 40 years of difference between the lower and upper ends of this age-span, this presents significant implications for not only the quality of life older people can and should expect, but for the economy at large. more >

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The Digital Divide - an issue of ethics?

By: Simon Knight
On: 4th May 2012

For today’s blog I thought I’d take a step back and consider some of the ethical imperative for studying the digital divide.

Meaningful Access

Sometimes, we take it as a given that such divides must be addressed, that we know what the divide is, and that we know how to address the divides – we just, close them. more >

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Finding Knowledge - young people's use of search engines

By: Simon Knight
On: 16th April 2012

Some thoughts on my practical experiences of field work (and preliminary outcomes!)

I’ve now done three runs of my field work and started analysing the data. So today I thought I’d discuss some of the preliminary findings, and their implications. The findings are interesting in themselves, but I also want to highlight some of the benefits of the methods I used – recording talk, and ‘on-screen’ behaviours of groups of children completing search engine tasks.

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Symptoms and Causes: The Digital Divide...a digital problem?

By: Simon Knight
On: 12th April 2012

I have data!

But, sorry to tease, I’m not going to talk about it at all today…In this blog, I’m going to give an overview of research looking at differences in access to internet information. My broader research looks at the ways students use talk to think about what knowledge they need to solve problems, and then actively attempt to address those problems. I’ll write more specifically on that topic as I go on, but today I’ll focus on the problem of finding information:

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Is giving access the best way to address technology inequality?

By: Simon Knight
On: 27th March 2012

Yesterday I gave a brief introduction to how I think about the research process.

Today I want to give a (briefer) overview of what that means for a particular study. I talked before about measuring ‘success’ in search engine tasks – and that’s one part of my study. But my main interest is in the reasons for differences in success, on a sociocultural level. So, rather than asking “does this group have access to information”, we also need to ask “can this group use the information they have, effectively”. Part of that will involve looking at skills, part about how they’re supported – by friends, family, professionals, part about structural issues for example, if they need to travel to a job interview, can they afford to do so. more >