Transmission Project

Through the efforts of the Americorps VISTA volunteer services, nearly 2,000 middle school and high school students in the East End community have benefited from using the Mission Milby CDC computer lab. The lab activities are coordinated by Nikki Payne, Americorps VISTA volunteer. It is expected that this number will double by the end of the program year, in August.

With a digital media grant obtained through one of our volunteers during our work with Katrina evacuees, Nikki studied digital media programs in Ecuador, Argentina and Chile. Nikki returned with curriculum and digital media best practices for distribution to other community technology centers in Houston.

In the past six months, OLLIE has provided digital media training to over 150 youth through 17 projects at 11 community locations. In addition, OLLIE has scheduled projects to serve an additional 180 youth over the next six months. Each round of OLLIE projects has balanced new and returning community partners. Our VISTA has served as a group coordinator for many of these sites, facilitating communication between the OLLIE staff and volunteers, the OLLIE coordinator, and community partners. Ryn has also begun to identify volunteers to support this project. He identified the post-production talents of a community partner and utilized them to finish a student project.

In addition, OLLIE’s curriculum design has evolved. Based on participant feedback, trainer input, and research into youth media best practices; the teaching methods, practice exercises, and time allotments for each segment of production have changed to better serve the youth we work with. Ryn’s insights about classroom teaching experiences and research into youth media curriculum are of great value to this process. I am looking forward to further utilizing Ryn’s expertise to design and implement our summer intensive “Adventures in Television”sessions. He is one of the leads for this project.

A very exciting part of OLLIE’s evolution is the creation and implementation of a graphic design identity package. Ryn has served as a lead contact in the process of recruiting and hiring a designer, developing a logo, and working with vendors. Currently Ryn is leading efforts to develop and refine copy that will promote the program in print, web, and video materials. Ryn also was able to develop his web design skills to create a first draft of a website for OLLIE: www.ollietv.org. Behind the scenes, he has created extensive outlines for future implementations of a site that will be useful to project staff, community partners, and program participants.

Dean has been very attentive and invested in our mission and our work. He has built a strong base of support with teachers and administrators at the Social Justice Academy. This has allowed the school to build our program into their after school program and to help to build the connections with teachers that is needed to truly customize our work with young people during after school. This is a very important contribution.

This year we had a number of major accomplishments including establishing a new media lab at the Social Justice Academy and a new media and technology curriculum called Mosaic at the Social Justice Academy that uses storytelling to connect different academic disciplines. Mosaic started as an after school program and was so well received that students were given academic credit for their participation. Eight students completed the curriculum. Dean worked extensively on the Mosaic Curriculum and did outreach at the school by making ” Mosaic” presentations in classes during regular school hours. Dean also was in charge of our e-newsletter and built the circulation from 1,000 to nearly 4,000.

Our project accomplishments were exceptional– Taylor helped NTRC to create a solid multi-media program for youth at its Northwest Tower site, and to expand our reach into a local high school, Michelle Clark. We implemented a Hip Hop Club at Northwest Tower, where Taylor has helped to develop a digital audio and literacy curriculum, and an Apprenticeship in collaboration with After School Matters at Michelle Clark High, where Taylor designed a curriculum around digital video production.

Ms. Baker has been responsible for establishing policies and procedures necessary for the operations of our program that include equipment borrowing, curriculum manuals, and “how-to’s” for our volunteer corps.

As part of her workplan, Ms. Baker completed three self-paced tutorials on our most popular subjects in word processing, spreadsheets, and the Internet. She has also created her own column in our quarterly newsletter called “Tech Corner”, and has completed 5 articles on the most common issues that computer users encounter.

Ms. Baker has established a system of tracking and record-keeping that are important to program evaluation. For example, Ms. Baker has created an attendance log for each course offered by our community technology center, a system of generating class certificates from our database, and new course registration forms that with help make our record-keeping more efficient.

Ms. Baker has also created a popular new program entitled “Afternoons with Angie”, which allows participants with certain questions or issues about their computers or other technology to receive personalized, one-on-one attention.

As a result of our AmeriCorps*VISTA’s contribution to our program and community, we have brought Ms. Baker on board as an official part-time staff person to continue her work at our technology center. We recognize the value that Ms. Baker has put into her service as a VISTA, and look forward to her continued contributions.

Our VISTA, Caitlin Feeley, made significant contributions to our work. She created a youth-friendly ScienceQuest website including original graphics and content, and strived to keep the site accessible through engaging, youth-appropriate writing and valid HTML. She coached two ScienceQuest teams this year, helping students create their own projects on topics ranging from space to chemical reactions to the laws of motion. She produced and edited a digital video that we used to introduce our program to new coaches and coordinators at the 2004 CTCNet conference in Seattle. In addition to these major projects, Caitlin also provided day-to-day support for ScienceQuest by updating and maintaining our website, providing technical and other support to coaches and coordinators, writing correspondence, manuals, reports, and other materials, managing our listserv, and other administrative duties. If you would like to learn more about her accomplishments, we encourage you to visit her website at: http://www2.edc.org/sciencequest/vista/

Angela’s accomplishments included the development of a 100- page curriculum unit that included a Teacher’s Guide and a Student’s Guide for middle school students (8th grade level) on hydrogen fuel cells and engineering design technologies. The development of the curriculum unit was the stepping stone to establishing stronger relationships with institutions such as the Boston Renaissance Charter School, the Boston Public Schools, and the Roxbury Community College.

The development of this curriculum unit was just the start of several initiatives designed to share the knowledge of this technology with students, teachers and young adults. Angela had the opportunity to teach the unit to an after school class with students enrolled at the New Beginners after school program at Roxbury Community College (RCC). The after school program reinforces environmental technology education at the community level, where students from 13 to 16 years old learn about clean energy technology.

Lauren has been an integral part of ensuring a year- round, sustainable youth media program. She has been developing policies, researching, compiling content for the Youth Media Block and leading several of the outreaches and youth- media classes. The VISTA has also been vital in assisting the Education Coordinator with her duties such as classes, curriculum development, and community outreach.

Brittney teaches the Community Health Worker (CHW) Class. (The CHWs are paid interns, often former clients, who are usually hired as staff at HPP after they finish their internship.) She has created a dynamic and engaging curriculum for the CHW class.

Brittney also gives private weekly staff tutoring as well as ongoing staff tech support.

During open lab drop-in hours every afternoon, Brittney offers housing and job search support for clients.

Brittney is also in charge of maintaining our websites, and our organization wide forms system. She was put in charge of the phones, created a phone user guide and manages new staff phone needs.

Brittney is active in writing policy and long-term planning, including helping in the hiring process of the new Technology Manger.

Another large project that Brittney has taken on gracefully is overseeing the ailing database, which has not been able to handle our staffs’ needs. She is working as the intermediary between staff, consultants and database programmers and is working to prepare HPP for a new database system.

Our Computers in the Home Project has sustained itself and continues to continue as planned due to the service of our VISTA. Becky has helped coordinate our program’s operations with volunteers and participants. She has helped developed some manuals and curriculum that are helping our staff and volunteers to better operate the program in to the future. Becky has had good success in ensuring that the classes are successfully run and has helped coordinate over 60 classes over the course of the year. Her work has gotten us closer to reaching our goal of providing 300 computers to families. Her service has greatly helped us grow our capacity as we successfully opened a second computer lab in May and allowed us to serve more than 600 participants in the program.