NetHui 2020: TenForward Technology Lounge (Belinda Hope)

• Hi, I’m Belinda Hope from TenForward Technology Lounge. I thought I’d tell you a little bit about what it is that we do here. So we are a gaming-themed, after school care and holiday programme, and of course, a gaming birthday party destination. Kids today are digital natives. What do they wanna do after school? That’s right, they wanna go home and play games online with their friends, because this is their social connection time. So I thought that I should set up a venue where kids would actually want to go to after school and use this as a platform to help them on their digital lifestyle journey.

00:40 - So we have a wall of Xboxes and a bunch of laptops and the kids bring their own phones and their gaming devices as well. And every day we have a different gaming expert who shares their gaming skills, or their “Dungeons & Dragons” creativity and are also there as a positive gaming role model for the kids. Our focus is around positive social development. There’s still that stigma about gaming being anti-social, with toxic environments, so I wanted to help stamp that out while these kids are still learning how to navigate their online world so that their generation can be responsible for building positive environments with a strong sense of teamwork and friendship. And one thing that I hadn’t expected is that the group social gaming environment that we create here means that social hierarchies are gone.

01:34 - These are kids who may have only just met, or they may be in completely different social circles at school, but in our environment, they are equals, because they share this common interest in gaming. A new kid walks in a bit nervous and someone says, “Hey, cool “Minecraft” T-shirt. “Do you wanna come and join my world “and help me built this?” And suddenly that nervous kid is now living their best life and they’ll leave with a whole list of gamer tags that they can friend when they get home. And that would not happen in the school playground so easily. Over lockdown, we diversified, thanks to an InternetNZ Grant, and we were able to provide daily online supervised gaming by Zoom and Discord.

02:18 - Parents working from home were so grateful to have their children supervised by us and we had epic “Dungeons & Dragons” sessions, and plenty of team gaming, and lots of connection to keep kids engaged. With this format, we were able to reach more children and families than usual, because, of course, geography didn’t matter. So we had kids joining in from all over the country. At TenForward, we are helping to train this generation of kids to be amazing people online and to encourage positive behavior and respectful friendships. The other thing that we do at TenForward is when the kids are at school, we run digital literacy sessions for seniors.

02:58 - Tech support for your parents is an absolute frustration for many families, as I’m sure that you know, and no matter how many times you show them, often what it takes is somebody else to do it for them. We find it so rewarding though, because often there’s something that’s been causing such a nuisance and it’s preventing that person from wanting to use their phone, but it’s a simple fix, and you totally see it in their face how much this is gonna change their experience. We have a variety of different workshops, such as how to use Maps to plan a public transport journey, or how to use social media apps and Zoom to talk to your family, but our most popular session is called “How to Make Your Phone do What You Want”. And in this session, no question is too silly and we do things like fix up annoying notifications or make fonts more readable, or show how the Calendar works, and how to use the COVID Tracer app, and all these things that we take for granted, but our analog parents still struggle with. So bridging this digital literacy divide is so important as our society moves towards a more digital world.

04:05 - I think that TenForward is doing really important community work with educating both young people and seniors about internet skills for life. This is something that every community needs. So I’m looking for entrepreneurs in towns all over New Zealand to set up TenForwards in your neighborhood. Are you looking for a new business opportunity post-COVID? My TenForward concept supports both young people and seniors in your community to empower their lives using the internet and gaming and building important social development skills. It also helps to provide jobs for people who truly live their passion.

04:42 - Imagine being a professional “D&D” master, or an Xbox party host. If this sounds like an opportunity that you want for your community, then let’s talk. Thanks for checking out TenForward Technology Lounge. .