Digital Inclusion: an unusual opportunity to help develop a critique of current digital inclusion research, policy, and practice

Digital Inclusion is a contested term and I think the ESRC/EPSRC funded Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Programme¹ is onto a good thing with this Digital Inclusion Commentary Site.

Why?

1. The site is implemented in Comment Press (a variant of Wordpress) that allows users to comment on a complex document at the level of individual paragraphs. [Explanation]
2. The site is open to the world.
3. The aim of the document that is in the process of being written is to influence future research relating to digital inclusion.

By the look of the first two chapters, the work is going to be thorough and free of the glibness that sometimes infects discussion about digital inclusion. Excerpt from the introduction:

"This is an area of the Digital Inclusion that we have created to facilitate the creation of an online document that reviews and critiques current digital inclusion research, policy and practice: with a particular focus on drawing out potential implications for future digital inclusion research. This document, when completed will have a stand-alone life of its own, but it will also form the foundation of a separate publication towards the end of the TEL programme that highlights ways in which each of the TEL projects has (or has the potential to have) made a contribution to advancing our understanding or practice in relation to digital inclusion."

¹ Disclosure. I am a member of the TEL Programme's Advisory Group; at one point I made a point to Jane Seale (the principal author of the two chapters to date) about the suitability of Comment Press as a platform for this kind of thing. So I have an interest in this project being a success.