Training: get the ICT skills you need

The section on ICT planning showed how a basic ICT skills analysis can help identify gaps in the skills of your team.

The next stage is to prepare a plan for acquiring those skills, and keeping them up to date.

Getting the most from ICT means being confident about using your skills, as that confidence forms the basis for learning new skills.You may not know much about technical issues, but if you’re a regular user of a word processor, spreadsheet or the Internet then you have a lot of knowledge and skills to build on, and you just need the confidence to use them.

Confidence is bred by familiarity and confirmation that you know what you’re doing. Formal training courses provide an excellent bedrock for this, but informal learning is also a key part of your training plan: look for opportunities to share skills, swap tips and help solve problems as they arise.

Who provides training

Education for adults varies across the country and ICT training can be provided by a variety of organisations:

• Local community organisations
  Your local CVS or other infrastructure bodies may provide an ongoing programme of training specially for staff and volunteers from the local voluntary and community sector. Even if they don’t , they may well have a list of local providers that they have used or know that others have recommended.
• National and regional organisations
  The ICT Hub, NCVO, Directory of Social Change,AbilityNet and a wide range of other not-for-profit national and regional bodies provide a range of specialist ICT-related courses.
• UK Online Centres
  The Government’s UK online campaign in the late 90s promoted wider access to ICT and there is now a large network of UK Online Centres across the country, many based in community centres, libraries or other community-friendly settings. They offer structured ICT training courses, such as those leading to European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) or Information Technology Qualification (ITQ) and are often a good first port of call when seeking local training and support.
  
  Many UK Online centres are working with net:gain to deliver workshops in how to prepare an ICT strategy, as well as associated training.
• Further education and adult education colleges
  Most large towns and cities will have a range of ICT courses available through further and adult education providers. Some of these colleges may even be able to offer access to ICT training through the local university. They probably produce a prospectus and offer a combination of daytime, evening, part-time and full-time courses.
• Commercial providers
  ICT training is a big business and there are many providers of classroom and online learning that target the voluntary and community sector. One example is Happy Computing, which has built links with organisations such as AbilityNet.

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More details of training providers can be found on the ICT Hub Suppliers Directory