Digital Connectivity 

With so many changes in all our lives since the end of February 2020!  We at The Ark are pretty excited about how the new circumstances have brought opportunities and one project in particular to our Circuit.

In our group of Methodist churches in Colchester the Covid19 crisis soon showed us that, for some period ahead, we would be relying to a huge extent on technology for all communications and, following on from that, realised that some are not going to be able to take part in church and social life as fully as they usually do, due to limited use of technology. 

Our Methodist Circuit and the University of Essex are both members of an alliance of organisations here in Colchester, being part of Citizens UK.  Citizens UK members believe that when people work together they have the power to change their neighbourhoods, towns, and ultimately the country, for the better. We work with people who want to transform the world, from what it is to what we believe it should be. Check out the website for what is happening in alliances around the country: https://www.citizensuk.org/

The Digital Divide/Increasing Digital Connectivity project, including Tech Champions, brought together university volunteers and people in our Methodist churches with the aim of increasing knowledge and solving problems for those in our churches who use IT very little.   One of the key areas of work was the production of high quality, easy to understand, user guides for Zoom which has become a favourite video conferencing application amongst our church members.  The guides are available on the following links:

Zoom - Getting Started

Zoom - join via your Computer

Zoom - join via your Tablet

Zoom - join via your Smartphone

Zoom - join via WhatsApp

Zoom - join via a Phone Call

Zoom Safety