Digital Update
The great computer roll out on Lismore is complete. It’s almost a year since everyone who wanted a computer was connected and the classes in the school finish mid May when everyone is expected to have enough knowledge to pursue their own interests.
There’s no doubt that being connected has improved the quality of island living for many as it can not only improve our ability to get work through doing distance learning courses etc., but it could also help stem the tide of population loss now that working from home is possible, diminish isolation through e mail and internet access, and contribute to health and well being by stimulating new areas of interest.
For those with far flung families the plusses are very obvious: phones are great but e mail and web cams are even better as children grow up far away.
Considering how massive the project has been and how little idea anyone had about how complicated it would be, it has been a success though not without its problems.
Being the first island to be connected and one with a very high acceptance level, we landed the teething problems and the members of the computer group who had agreed to become digital champions and help others were very busy throughout the Summer of 2002 and their work continues.
Then came the essential classes. Once again we were the first island to get the teaching computers installed in the school and to respond to Argyll College ’s advertisement for mentors and tutors to do the job. They were appointed in December (all locals) and have done a great job.
The only cavil in all this is the hugely variable quality of connection speeds. While some get over 50 bps, many more are in the twenties, tens and less with two getting nothing at all. With such substandard connection speeds internet access is irrelevant and the battle with BT to upgrade them goes on.
Students busy at the classes
OUT & ABOUT
Things are usually quiet on the news front at this time of year with lambing leaving little time for extra curricula activities, but the exceptional weather in March and April meant a huge increase in visitors over Easter many of whom enjoyed Lismore’s latest tourist attraction – the reconstructed croft house
– open for the first time, and offering a glimpse of Lismore as it was at the end of the nineteenth century.
The good weather made lambing a much less arduous experience for farmers and stock alike, while tourists on foot or cycle saw lambs sun bathing and the roads lined with the most spectactular display of Lismore’s prolific wildflowers.
The children added to the beauty with their Great Spring Shore Clean which not only got rid of unslightly rubbish blown up in Winter storms but also earned them £200 from the Argyll and Bute Trust, money that will go sports’ and youth clubs.
More money was raised when Donald, Duncan and Diarmid - known as the 3 D’s Disco - ran a disco for the young ones donating their fee and raising £74 for the Junior Shinty club, and the proceeds of a beetle drive went to the Youth Club.
The Rev John Murdoch conducted the Lismore Primary School ’s traditional Easter Service after which the children entertained visitors with some fine Scottish Country Dancing which they later performed at the Highland and Islands Music and Dance Festival in Oban on 1 May. Scottish Country is popular in Lismore thanks to Anne Livingstone who teaches both adults and children.
On the last day of school several children turned up in colourful and ingenious Easter bonnets