We had a great time at The Hello Digital Festival at Millennium Point

Myself and Sophie went to the opening night on Thursday 23rd October where we had the pleasure of meeting the Leader of the council Mike Whitby. We listened to a speech on how digital is moving so fast and Birmingham is the place to be for the latest digital technology.

Saturday myself Sophie and Kieran visited Millennium Point again(Thinktank) where digital came alive there were robotics, illumination, digital film and animations. Sophie and Kieran enjoyed the show of Titan the amazing giant robot and had their pictures taken with him. Apparently 'Titan' will be making a guest appearance in the Robin Hood Pantomime at the Hippodrome. The robot is absolutely amazing to watch.

We also were given two Sony PSP's for Sophie and Kieran. These are fantastic gadgets, no matter where you are as long as you have got bt wireless connection you can access a world of information. You can use the PSP to play games speak to your friends, use as a camera, video recorder and use the web'cam.

We also connected on to the free Birmingham Fiz which gives out so much free information about services around Birmingham plus so much more. Birmingham Fiz gives you timetables of bus's what's on at the cinema and Kieran even looked up info to see if his team Birmingham City was winning. These small hand held devices hold so much info and there is so much you can use them for it is unbelievable. Sophie and Kieran have not stopped using them since they were given to them.

We had a great time in Birmingham and we will certainly be using the Birmingham Fiz again when we are out and about in Birmingham. Sophie was also going to video record Kieran playing football today (Sunday) on her PSP, but Kieran's football game was rained off, so maybe next week Sophie will give it a try and Kieran is now looking forward to trying out some games on his PSP.

This is my third attempt at typing this blog so hopefully it will work this time not sure where I am going wrong, the blogs are not saving even though I am pressing save, it has taken me an hour to get this. My wife Julie is now standing behind me making sure I get it right this time, if I do this would be a milestone for me.

My Digital Experience has not been as bad as I had anticipated, Sophie and Kieran are enjoying themselves especially now they have been given two Sony PSP's to play with. Also Kieran's school may be involved in Kieran's digital experience so this will be exciting for Kieran.

It is great news that we now have BT Vision up and running and I am now able to watch all England matches especially now they are on a winning path. My first match that I was able to watch was England V Croatia and what a match that was!

My next learning curve hopefully would be to learn how to design my own letterheads and maybe business cards if this can be done. Also I have heard about local business advertising on the net so hopefully maybe I could get myself up and running on this, any advice would be appreciated. This would be a great advantage to me and my business if I could get this to work for me.

Hi my name is Kieran

I am now on MSN, this is a great way I can talk to my mates from school without going out side.
I can talk to many of my friends at the same time, we are having fun talking about school.
In the school holidays I can still talk to my classmates.

I am excited about trying out my new Sony PSP also you can have webcam on PSP.
I am looking forward to learning how to use the Sony PSP.

I have also being shown how to play games in maths and compete with other children
my age from around the world. I played against a boy from Canada, this was so fun.
I would like to find more websites like this

I have had my very own memory stick, everyone had them at school and i always had to print my homework, now i can put it onto a memory stick.

The first piece of homework i got to put on was for english, i took the memory stick into school and put my homework onto the teachers computer, and then i printed my piece of work . ' i was so excited' When i put the memory stick in i realised i didn't know what to do; I was shown what to do. Now i have been using the memory stick as often as i can for my homework. It is so useful.

I am now looking forward to putting other information on my memory stick apart from homework.

We have had our first lesson on loading photographs onto our laptop from a BT Digital Camera.

It is fantastic and so easy to do, no more messing about with camera films and taking the film to be developed, this is instant.

We had some photographs taken, they were saved on the memory disc in the camera, then we took the memory disc out of the camera, and inserted the disc into our laptop, the photographs that we had taken were automatically installed onto our laptop.

We now have these photogarphs permanently saved on our laptop.

Now we know what to do and how easy it is to use a digital camera, every holiday and family day out we share we will capture on camera and transfer them to our laptop, its just great.

We received our BT Vision Box and our top up card for Setanta Sport. The BT engineer was very helpful and made everything run smoothly with the BT set up, and explained everthing well.

Simon and Kieran were able to watch the England live match and great win over Croatia 4-1, it made their day!

One of the best features with BT Vision is that if you go out of the room ie: the phone rings or your dinner is ready, you can pause the play and when you return back to the room you start watching the programme from where you had originally paused it, so you don't miss any of your programme. This is a great feature we will no longer miss any of the programmes we want to watch. You can even fast forward and even rewind a programme.

With BT Vision you can also record programmes what are on another channel, while you are watching another programme on a different channel. Also you can record a series of a programme by pressing a button on the remote or to Sophies delight, record the weeks episode of Eastenders.

There are many other features including several different film channels and music channels and we have also been able to look at our local bus timetable, and use a ring back telephone service via our BT Vision remote control.

What makes BT Vision so good it is simple to use and is all operated by the BT Vision remote control.

What have we here when the delivery comes of our first prize of a BT Hub Phone 2.1

How does this work we all ask, looks like we have to set up an account, scary how do we do this?
After looking at the instructions and looking at the box for about a week, we can still say the phone is still lying in its box - hopefully someday soon we may conquer opening the box again and have a go at setting this up, it may help if we actually know what a Hub phone does and how we can benefit from using it, I hope the person who demonstrates this has alot of patience with us because they are going to need it.

A little light at the end of the tunnel, we have had delivered a Setanta Sports 1 viewing card from BT Vision. Simon's face lights up " I can watch football at last",

Sophie has suggested she would like a digital camera.

Sophie is due to go skiing with her school, which will be an adventure in itself as it will be her first trip so far away from home.

Sophie said "I was hoping for a digital camera where I can take photos of my trip and transfer them onto my computer it will be great for memories I have shared with my friends and it will give my mom and dad the chance to look at the great times I had on my first big trip away from home."

Sophie will just have to wait to see what prizes are in store for her, she is keeping her fingers crossed

Simon Says: Since our article in the Birmingham Mail I have had friends come up to me telling me of their experiences with digital equipment.

For Example a friend of Simon's when he was at school a teacher asked him to press any key on the computer, Simon's friend said that he spent ages looking for the 'any' key on the keyboard.

Also Simon's friend opened the disc drive and he thought that was where he balanced his mug.

Simon Said "It is nice to hear of other peoples experiences in the learning process of digital, perhaps other people will write into the Evening mail with their experience and join in the fun along with me and my family."

We as the Locke Family are about to embark on a journey into the digital future. It is an exciting new challenge for us all.

Simon and Kieran are both looking forward to BT vision as they will both be able to watch Sentana Sport, as they are both football and sport fanatics. Also Kieran is waiting for his PSP as he enjoys playing on his nintendo Wii and playstation 2 along with his dad. They both enjoy the challenge of new games and are very competitive against one another.

Sophie too is looking forward to trying out a web-cam and her PSP, Sophie is a little whizz on the computer so she is exciting about trying out all this new digital equipment.

Myself Julie I am looking forward to trying out the digital equipment over the next twelve months, and hopefully pick up on a few helpful hints along the way. Most of all it is about our family having fun and taking part in a digital experience.