Acknowledgements The CURIOS project is supported by the RCUK Digital Economy programme award to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub, award reference EP/G066051/1. The CURIOS team would also like to thank Dr. Kim Ross for her essential proofreading however any mistakes held within this document are due to author error. We would also like to thank our continuing research partners for their time and support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Care staff, those who attend to the day-to-day needs of people in residential facilities, represent an important segment of the health-care provision of those entrusted to their care. The potential use of technology by care staff has not been a focus of researcher attention. The work reported here provides initial steps in addressing that gap, considering both the design requirements for this population and presentation of early work on a software system for use by care staff. We describe the development of a software tool for use by care staff, called Portrait, and report two studies related to factors affecting technology use by this population. The results of this research are promising, with Portrait being very positively received by care managers and care staff. Use of this software in a care home for over a month indicated continued use, with care staff returning to the system throughout the test period. The contributions of this research are the identification of factors important in working with a care staff population, the introduction and evaluation of a novel software tool for care staff in residential homes, and the highlighting of potential benefits of technology in assisting care staff.

Digital youth work is an emerging field of research and practice which seeks to investigate and support youth-centred digital literacy initiatives. Whilst digital youth work projects have become prominent in Europe in recent years, it has also become increasingly difficult to examine, capture, and understand their social impact. Currently, there is limited understanding of and research on how to measure the social impact of collaborative digital literacy youth projects. This article presents empirical research which explores the ways digital youth workers perceive and evaluate the social impact of their work. Twenty semi-structured interviews were carried out in Scotland, United Kingdom, in 2017. All data were coded in NVivo 10 and analysed using thematic data analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Two problems were identified in this study: (1) limited critical engagement with the social impact evaluation process of digital youth work projects and its outcomes, and (2) lack of consistent definition of the evaluation process to measure the social impact/value of digital youth work. Results of the study are examined within a wider scholarly discourse on the evaluation of youth digital participation, digital literacy, and social impact. It is argued that to progressively work towards a deeper understanding of the social value (positive and negative) of digital youth engagement and their digital literacy needs, further research and youth worker evaluation training are required. Recommendations towards these future changes in practice are also addressed.

Current scholarly debate around digital participatory youth projects and approaches to their evaluation are examined in this article. The analysis of the literature presented here reveals (1) an over-reliance on traditional evaluation techniques for such initiatives, and (2) a scarcity of models for the assessment of the social impact of digital participatory youth projects. It is concluded that the challenges and limitations of social impact evaluation practice in digital participatory youth projects should be addressed through the adoption of alternative, participant-centred approaches. These issues are discussed in reference to a current ongoing study that seeks to identify solutions for enhancing social impact evaluations of participatory digital initiatives by young people.

The CURIOS project explores how digital archives for rural community heritage groups can be made more sustainable so that volunteer members can maintain a lasting digital presence. It is developing software tools to help remote rural communities to collaboratively maintain and present information about their cultural heritage. The objective is to investigate the use of semantic web/linked data technology to build a general, flexible and "future proof" software platform that could help such projects to develop digital archives and to be sustainable over time. As an interdisciplinary project we aim to synthesise a narrative that draws from both social science and computer science perspectives by critically reflecting upon the novel approach taken and the on-going results that are being produced.