Transmission Project

The technology program working in conjunction of the Arkansas Delta Dreams program provides individual and special group sessions. Our successes for the past quarter have been the effective training of 15 seniors in basic and intermediate software and hardware. They covered the components of the computer, various basic software applications, surfing the Internet and sending and receiving e-mail. This has prompted many of the participants, whose ages range from 65 to 85, to purchase computer for their homes and/or obtain Internet services so they can “keep up and stay in the know.” One of the participants called our offices when they received their first e-mail communications from their great-great grand child, who is ten years of age. We call this bridging the generation and technology gaps.

The first focus for the site was to capture the history of World War II veterans because they are subject of a great deal of local interest and are quickly passing away. TINCAN is a contributing member of the Library of Congress Veterans’ History project. Nora’s accomplishments on the veteran’s aspect of the project include:

• Collecting, transcribing, and uploading (with volunteer assistance) 25 WWII veterans’ and civilians’ oral histories. Several WWI veterans have been identified as well.
• Scanning hundreds of photos from WWII, often from veterans’ scrapbooks, and photographing memorabilia, including medals and souvenirs brought back from the various locations in which the veterans were stationed.
• Reorganizing the handful of veteran’s histories and photos that were online, which included creating consistent archiving processes for the materials, correcting annotations, and in some cases, re-contacting the veteran or civilian to check data.
• Developing a cadre of 30 volunteers, primarily from Gonzaga University, to carry out interviews and scan photos.
• Putting on events to bring attention to veterans’ history. Perhaps the most memorable was a gathering on Veteran’s Day at a neighborhood coffee house, where veterans of all wars were invited to come, bring materials to be scanned, and make appointments for oral histories. The café owner loaned the back room to set up computers and scanners, and a local grocery store provided a large cake decorated like an American flag.

The next focus of the project was to engage local historical organizations in uploading historical materials to the Memories site. Nora’s accomplishments to date are:

• Identifying local museums and historical associations in the Inland Northwest. Four organizations are now actively working with the project.
• Working with the Valley Museum, a small community museum, that is planning to upload documents and photographs to the site. Working with a local school, they will develop an exhibit on the founders of the Valley community, and upload the materials to the site as well as having an exhibit.
• Working with the Hillyard Museum, which does not yet have a physical location, to explore putting materials online as a means of raising interest in the development of their neighborhood museum.
• Working with the local Railroad Society to consider putting their extensive collection of materials online. We will also look for a means of collecting railroad-related oral histories, since the railroads were pivotal in Spokane’s settlement and development.
• Scanning and documenting materials for the Masonic Temple, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
• Helping to develop a rationale for organizations to put their materials online. For example, since every item in the Memories archive contains the URL of the contributing organization (if available), viewers of online materials may select the contributor’s web site for further information, and perhaps donations.
• Beginning to develop formal training materials for volunteers to put materials online. Formal training procedures for uploading and using the archiving tool will greatly streamline the process, and take the burden off staff trying to develop a full and interesting site. The project also has goals that include working with K-12 schools and TINCAN’s other projects to make use of the Memories site. Accomplishments to date include:
• Assisting teachers who took prior oral history workshops in uploading student interviews and other veteran’s memorabilia.
• Developing a project with a local K-8 school to work with the Valley museum on an exhibit.
• Planning a summer teacher workshop for summer 2005.
• Developing a proposal with the Garland neighborhood to engage at risk teens in TINCAN’s Virtual Online Teen Center in a project that will use oral histories to create the basis for business district murals and a video project.

During Kimberly’s year with the EDGE the attendance number rose to over 3800. Kim was very successful in building good rapport with the EDGE clients and encouraged increased participation in both instructor-led and self-paced tutorial sessions, especially with our older population and our teens.

Kim worked on a volunteer recruitment plan and helped in the development of a new Volunteer application form. Volunteer hours increased to an average of 25 hours per month in her last six months, up from just 6 hours per month during her first 6 months.

In the spring of 2005, The EDGE saw the return of work-study students from one of the local universities. Kim worked well with these students and guided them in duties to help sustain the EDGE after her term ended.

Kim’s rapport with Hispanic participants helped The EDGE increase its number of Hipanic clients. As the University of Missouri Extension office announced that they would be discontinuing their bilingual technology workshops at the EDGE in September 2005, the library system began addressing the issue of bilingual volunteers through its newly created Diversity committee. Bilingual library staff are now working on a plan to offer established EDGE courses in Spanish some time in the future.

Over 50 class handouts and two interactive tutorials are now posted on the EDGE website. Kim assisted EDGE staff in making these handouts available in a variety of formats.

Kim has researched and presented several suggestions for both community and national partnerships and grant opportunities to the project director.

Kim helped obtain the required materials to support the Library’s application for a “Make a Difference” Scholarship grant. The application focused on The EDGE program. This grant was awarded by the University of Missouri to the Springfield Greene County Library as the library in Missouri applying the best use of technology to help its community.

Tom played an essential role in completing the Youth Anti-Tobacco Advocacy Project (http://www.griid.org/antitobacco/) He collected and correlated all the data for this study and created the online report. He also worked with the student volunteers in creating the study and accompanied them when they presented the study to the Grand Rapids City commission. Tom also helped in the creation of several grant-funded video productions that GRIID produced, assisting in both the editing and the filming process.

Tom does about half of the actual news watching that GRIID undertakes, and is responsible for documenting and tabulating all of the news watching data collected. He also has taken an active part in writing GRIID studies examining local media coverage on various issues. Over the last six months, Tom played a significant role in creating the content in GRIID’s Election Watch 2004 feature.

Tom worked on the grant funded Video Voter Project. This project tied into GRIID’s election monitoring and education efforts. Tom’s work monitoring and documenting news coverage were important components of the Video Voter Project.

Tom has been involved in several projects designed to reach out and empower community groups. Tom has been one of the producers of Catalyst Radio, a weekly radio program on the CMC’s radio station WYCE FM. Catalyst Radio provides news analysis and interviews featuring local community groups and organizations. Tom writes half of the news analysis pieces as well as being one of the shows on-air voices. He also is responsible for setting up and conducting the interviews on occasion as well as updating the Catalyst Radio website every week.

Another community outreach effort that Tom has been involved with is GRIID’s work on FCC license renewals procedure education. This is an effort to build an awareness in the community on the FCC license renewal process which was designed to hold the local TV media accountable to community needs. As part of this project, Tom has given presentations, created mailing literature, and helped create online resources.

GRIID maintains a large collection of documentaries pertaining to issues of media literacy and media and democracy. Tom has helped organize and promote public showings of these documentary films. Tom also helped facilitate public discussions following the films.

Molly has worked consistently to improve marketing through various efforts: identifying untapped resources (i.e., high school interns from an arts magnet school who can create fliers for the lab), making ongoing marketing more consistent (by working with the museum’s PR and Marketing person), and helping ensure that information about the program on our website is up-to-date. During the first quarter, she coordinated an Open House for the community classes program (which is targeted towards artists and professionals and designed to bring in revenue) that drew approximately 60 attendees (a definite increase over the last under-attended Open House) and was supported through sponsorship by Bacardi.

Molly cultivated contacts with artists and graphic designers, a company that produces multimedia and graphics presentations for use in courtrooms and legal cases, Miami-Dade Community College, and Miami Ad School, which we can use when finding internship opportunities for youth program participants this summer and at the end of the school year. She has also compiled valuable online resources about career possibilities in the arts and new media, and will be contributing to a section of our forthcoming online curriculum guide, The Documentary Project: A How-to Manual (funded by the America Connects Consortium Field Innovation Grants program). Recently, Molly also initiated and coordinated a visit to the program from a professional graphic design and storyboard artist, who talked to youth program participants about career opportunities available to them and his experiences working for MTV, The Discovery Channel, Sony, and other companies.

The AmeriCorps VISTA project has helped grow the capacity of the program in many ways, including by beginning to improve our systems of documentation, evaluation, and tracking. Molly has been working on developing an Access database which would improve on the previously existing one by allowing staff to track class registration, Open Studio (drop-in) members, and demographic and contact information in the same place and produce better reports. She has also augmented research of funding sources and developed ideas for ways that the Lab can be more self-sustaining, including by restructuring class registration fees.

In addition to maintaining regular support to existing volunteers at the center, Mary met with existing partners to discuss potential additional programs:
• Project Farewell, University Presbyterian Church - G.E.D. program
• Inside/Outside Children’s Museum Art Program, Youth Web Design
• Arranged tax assistance dates with Tax Aides (formerly VITA) and Deloitte and Touche in February and early March; began advertising those dates in the community
• Family Literacy program, offered in partnership with REWA, two nights a week 4-6 participants per evening.
• Employment assistance offered by Neighborhood House employment specialists two afternoons a week.
• Intermediate ESL program, offered in partnership with the Seattle Literacy Council, two nights a week. Many participants are working with the goal of entering the G.E.D. class we are hoping to offer in early April.
• Talked with Student Nursing program to about creating a health related resource on RVLT website.
• Discussed RV Peace Pole project with Keesha Morris – explored funding opportunities for the project
• Researched available job resources for teens in preparation for a preliminary conversation on creating a youth employment services program at RV. Scheduled initial meeting for early March with Jobs Plus, RVLT, Boys and Girls Club, Youth Tutoring program, and Neighborhood House.

Held 2 tax nights with volunteers from Deloitte and Touche and 2 tax Saturdays with a volunteer from Tax Aide. All efforts were very successful! – 35 income tax returns were prepared for Rainier Vista residents. One additional tax day will be held on March 1.

Job Referral program and ESL courses continued in February. Both programs saw “slow and steady” upwards acceptance and attendance levels from the community. The ESL course expanded beyond its initial limit of 7 students, so a second teacher from the Seattle Literacy Council comes in during the same time to teach the additional students.

Due to limited resources, the sustainability plan for the CTC is to partner with agencies providing services needed by residents through agreements to provide facilities in exchange for those services. This is also meant to address resident concern about loss of funding for the employment program which included job search, job retention and wage progression activities.

In addition to all of this, Mary is creating the volunteer manual, which will include information on:
• the basic care and maintenance of the computers
• center rules
• troubleshooting
• typical skills and help requested of volunteers

America Connects Consortium Data Collection Curriculum project:
Mary has utilized her web and research expertise to identify and assess free online databases and tracking software for use in CTCs. Also through her need to assess data requirements under a new service delivery plan, she has acted as a wonderful model for coordinator concerns about data collection requirements for sustainability.

Fundraising: researched Fremont Public Association AmeriCorps VISTA grant and submitted the segments of the grant which she was able to complete to RVLT for approval and decision making needed to complete the grant. Because of an overload of work due to the change in leadership, RVLT decided this was not a priority. Mary is continuing to research additional grants for software and lab funding.

With respect to the VISTA project, it is Breakaway Technologies goal to assist individuals with 6th grade reading and math skills to increase their skills to ninth grade levels via our contextualized literacy program. To that end, we have developed a first draft of a scenario-based curriculum in collaboration with Carnegie Melon University, Bay ITC, and Cabrillo College.

Tabetha assisted in developing and is now working out the final bugs in the curriculum for our contextualized literacy program. She has submitted the curriculum to the American Association of Community Colleges and is currently awaiting feedback.

Tabetha has also assisted in developing partnerships with institutions in the surrounding area.

Jason has been instrumental in coordinating the special events that CMC has sponsored or hosted. He has willingly shouldered the duty of making appearances at public functions as the CMC representative, recently meeting the esteemed Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, the morning after her State of the State Address.

Other special events include the nationally recognized educational broadcast of the JASON XIV Project. This weeklong workshop was at held at local gathering place Celebration Cinema where Jason led the CMC’s presence, reaching out to the youth of our community. This high-profile event that was attended by many of Kent County’s eight graders and was broadcast 24/7 on GRTV’s second channel LiveWire.

Most recently, Jason coordinated a visit from Detective Sullivan (Oprah Winfrey, the Today Show, and others have featured his new book and software), who teaches Cyber-Safety to school children and their parents. In addition to his interview during drive-time on WYCE 88.1FM, our sponsorship of his visit has resulted in exposure in the Grand Rapids Family Magazine.

Jason has helped the CMC become the production house for the statewide broadband mapping initiative “LinkMichigan.” He designed the LinkMichigan brochure and has recently taken over the large task of redesigning the “FREE Internet Access” brochure that includes a map, location, and hours for every public Internet Access site in Barry, Ionia, and Kent Counties. When finished, this brochure will be featured as part of a large marketing campaign funded by the state to promote already existing Internet Access sites and Community Technology Centers in the area.

Although Kourtney has not followed her workplan very closely but filled in many additional tasks that are of interest and helpful to her center. Most of the tasks listed above were not origianlly outlined in the workplan, but went along with the general theme of her job. When members of the community are looking for technology access and education, they can easily refer to her guide. It can be updated and reprinted as necessary.

David has been providing support to LTC and other Consortium sites on an ongoing basis and has provided guidance to interns looking to build concrete hands - on skills.

In addition to providing technical support, David has also provided assistance and coordinated the purchase of equipment for Consortium partners engaged in media-education activities