Your organisation and Coronavirus
A special message about Coronavirus and your organisation's digital skills programs
Updated: 8 July 2020
The information on this page is intended to help organisations in the Be Connected Network respond to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, including highlighting support and resources available and providing information on Good Things Foundation's approach to managing grants and programs at this time.
The information on this page may change over time, with the publishing date at the top of the page showing you when it was last updated. Do not use this page for up to date information regarding the spread or impact of COVID-19 in your community.
NOTE: Information from the Victorian Government about restrictions and links to advice is available here.
Reintroducing face-to-face support
Some organisations across the country have started reintroducing face-to-face digital skills sessions to people in their communities with the easing of restrictions in their location.
Please follow your State/Territory Government and organisations advice, policies and legislation when planning the re-introduction of face-to-face sessions.
In particular, we recommend that you:
- Follow physical distancing requirements, including maintaining 1.5m spacing between participants (including between digital mentors and learners)
- Ask learners to sign in to your sessions and provide contact details, and use hand sanitiser and device cleaning wipes on arrival
- Implement appropriate hygiene practices for devices and equipment, and when entering and leaving the learning space
- Encourage learners to arrive just before and leave quickly after your session
- Ask people to stay home if they are feeling unwell
Resources on reintroducing face-to-face sessions:
- Guidelines for reintroducing face-to-face support during COVID 19 social distancing
- Our guide to loaning devices during COVID-19 social distancing
- Participant sign-in sheets: available in Word and PDF
- Skillshares and webinars on reintroducing face-to-face support and delivering digital skills to groups
Supporting your community to learn digital skills remotely
For those not yet able to commence face-to-face support or who need to restart online delivery of their programs, we have developed resources to support you to stay connected with your community remotely.
Resources on delivering digital skills remotely
Remotely supporting people with low digital skills to learn or connect with others online can be a challenge. We know not all learners have an internet connection or device they can use. For those that do, we are supporting organisations to be innovative around how they deliver support remotely:
- New skillshares, webinars and online events via video conference to share best practice and learnings
- Digital Mentor Checklist: Running an online digital skills session
- Tipsheet about delivering digital skills support online
- Tipsheet about choosing video conference software
- Tipsheet comparing video conferencing software
- Our guide to loaning devicesduring COVID-19 social distancing
- Network stories about how some Network Partners are staying connected online with their learners
Resources on digital mentoring can be accessed here.
Update your organisation’s details
You can now easily let us know if you are delivering remote support for learners by updating your organisation's profile on the Be Connected Network Partner website. This is useful to do so that we can refer learners unable to attend a face-to-face session to a Network Partner that is providing support online.
To update your details:
- Login to the Be Connected Network Partner website
- Navigate to "Your organisations" and select "Add or edit organisations"
- Click "Edit organisation"
- Scroll down to the Services section and tick the two boxes to indicate if you are providing support for learners remotely and accepting referrals.
- Save your changes
If you have more than one location registered, please update these details for each branch.
Digital skills topics and session plans
We know that there is a lot of information online about COVID-19 at the moment and people in your community with low or no digital skills may need support to find reliable and up to date information. They may also need support to access government services online, or stay in touch with friends and family.
We have created resources on COVID-19 and digital health literacy:
- Lesson plan and worksheets for learners about finding reliable online information about COVID-19.
- Tipsheet for learners finding reliable info online about Coronavirus
More digital health literacy program resources are here, including tips on finding reliable online information about health and wellbeing.
Essential digital skills resources:
- Session Plan: Keeping in touch with friends and family
- Session Plan: Introduction to MyGov
- Session Plan: Setting up MyGov
- The Be Connected Learning Portal for remote learning
More essential digital skills session plans can be found here.
Other resources:
- Get Started app to help you to support others to get online in five steps
- eSafety Blog: Coronavirus - how to get advice, stay connected and shop online
- eSafety Blog: Stay in contact with video calls
- Translated COVID-19 resources from the Australian Government Department of health - some translated fact sheets are also available by contacting Good Things Foundation
- NBN information sessions - remotely delivered one-on-one sessions about connecting to the network at home or request an online presentation for your community group
- ACCAN’s information on Telco’s response to COVID-19 and Talking Telco resources
- The World Health Organisation has advice for those concerned about getting the virus including a section on myth busters.
- ACCAN’s information on Telco’s response to COVID-19 and Talking Telco resources
- Stay Smart Onlineadvice on COVID-19 scams