Transmission Project

Morgan created a digital media committee composed of diverse community members, planned 3 large digital storytelling nights cumulatively drawing over 300 attendees, and created a digital toolkit which includes training on how to create digital stories.

Morgan helped the San Diego Community Technology Coalition move from a very static website, to a drupal/civic space website which allows for staff to enter data in the site and for community members to search a GIS based maps to find CTCs near them. He also helped to establish many community collaborations, in particular where SDCTC is now placed to help San Diego build it’s capacity for free wi-fi access in our underserved communities.

Morgan also helped set-up a new computer lab at our Youth Housing Project which serves 23 formerly homeless youth.

For SDCTC, Morgan brought together some of the more cutting edge technology advocates to our Annual Symposium and to several workshops put on throughout the year. He helped open the eyes of other Community Technology Centers to how they could use technology to advocate for their clients.

Ben successfully created a content moderation module for Drupal using PHP for comments, users, and submitted content. Ben also created an Amazon Lists type module, that allowed users to create lists of things like on Amazon, and get them in an RSS feed.

Ben also did a huge amount of outreach and networking for the “DigitalBicycle” project. He spoke on the New Media Distribution panel at the B&H Photo conference in NYC and at the Beyond Broadcast Conference.

Ben also created logos and graphics for “DigitalBicycle” using inkscape.

Cara created the syllabus for and developed the Open School class for teens who are out of school and working toward their GEDs as well as a video training class for youth.

She also did outreach for UTEC’s summer video programs, and connected with local museums, performing spaces, and local teens who expressed a desire to partipate in Cara’s video class.

Cara also helped plan events such as movie and discussion nights in the community.

In her capacity as Assistant Editor of “The Community Technology Review” (www.comtechreview.org), Danielle ably undertook a wide range of responsibilities including taking over the reins from the previous Associated Editor and completing all organizing and author communication already in the works, coordinating sections and writing a substantial number of articles for the fall issue. She oversaw the development and production of the online version, dealt with university printing services in arranging for hard copy printings, and did author/contributor follow-up. Following this, she was helpfully involved in working with the Advisory Committee in undertaking future planning, and when the decision was made for the publication to go on hiatus and be replaced in the interim with the Project newsletter/report, she accepted oversight responsibility and published the first issue (see www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/newsletters) in its entirety. She has followed this up with taking primary responsbility for planning future issues for the remainder of the project year, including coordination with the Priority Area Coordinator materials, as that dovetails and integrates with her work with them in developing curricular material for the project that can be integrated with the College’s Community Media and Technology Program (www.cpcs.umb.edu/cmt). In addition to these things, she has proved to be a key and invaluable member of the project leadership team at office headquarters.

Danielle serves as liason between the Community Media and Technology Program curriculum building efforts and the VISTA project’s content focused learning groups. She has been extremely effective in working with faculty in curriculum design, making real connections between the field work of the VISTA’s and the CMT curriculum. She has also worked to assist me in the Tactical Media project, a project-based learning initiative of the program, in coordinating planning and research, presentations and communications flow for the project. She has also taken the leadership in creating and presenting a number of new media workshops, digital storytelling, for example. Along with her VISTA partner, she coordinated a digital media mini conference for students, faculty and staff. Danielle has undertaken extensive curriculum research for a study on community media our program is doing in conjunction with the Benton Foundation, as well research for the development of future courses in the College of Public and Community service. Danielle has performed at a very high level of thoughtfulness and strategic insight. Danielle has made an enormous contribution to the CMT program’s development.

Danielle has quickly become an important part of the Project headquarters team. She has shown admirable persistence in her efforts to draw some useful ‘curriculum’ from busy VISTAs and under-utilized ‘priority area coordinators.’ I actually think that she has accomplished more in this area than she gives herself credit for– mostly through her exchanges with VISTAs in the field but also through her (and Shannon’s) efforts to get VISTAs involved in workshops and events related to the CMT program. She has in some sense become an unofficial VISTA leader through here extensive contact with VISTAs across the country. She has also done a good deal of evangelizing for the Project– a number of new organizations will be applying as a result of these efforts. She’s a gifted/natural-born communicator and that’s just so helpful in so many ways.

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.

The work our VISTA is doing with our database and outreach is a major function to CTOC’s mission. As a consortium, keeping in contact with our members, keeping them updated to local policies, and positioning them to network together and exchange ideas and practices is reliant on constant and continuous communication with the membership base.

Our project has completed 5 workshops which covered the topics of IT fundraising for non-profits, education and advocacy surrounding local and state cable franchise issues in Los Angeles, disability and access issues, social enterprising for non-profits, and digital storytelling. In each of our workshops, our VISTA was implemental in outreaching to attendees and presenters, updating our website information and list-serv, and follow-up on evaluations of attendees.

CTOC has made major changes to the website, moving it to a new server and expanding the previous capabilities to include membership capabilities, a discussion forum, and more resources for local organizations to aid CTOC in its networking and outreach capacities. The VISTA has helped to keep the site updated with upcoming CTOC workshops and events, as well as making the site more user friendly by changing the layout of the page and adding visual pictures. Our VISTA has also aided in managing the list-serv and adding new members.

CTOC held a local logo contest for youth. This project was suggested and created by our VISTA who wrote a proposal, created the contest criteria, and outreached to local organization who worked with youth in digital media.

CTC Net VISTA Brian Pastori continued to be a technical assistance resource to the project and to the overall work of the agency that integrates community technology across the board in all of our programs. As we completed our move, we set up the VITA e-filing site and resumed the computer recycle and refurbishing after school program. Brian held an Organizer’s Database workshop and was available for one-on-one technical assistance to the participating groups. We were also able to pilot a videoconferencing project in collaboration with a counterpart CTC in Quiche, Guatemala. Brian coordinated student interns on a variety of CEDC projects and faciliated a team of summer youth to conduct an assessment of youth needs. Brian’s ability to adapt to a variety of projects has allowed us to continue his position after the end of his VISTA assignment. A local private foundation with a particular interest in encouraging their grantee groups to engage youth in programming increased our funding by 50% this year to help underwrite the costs of this newly funded position.

Daniel and Sandra (the other VISTA member) helped Pangea reach over 700 affordable housing facilities. They provided 100% of the technical traning and support for this project. Additionally, with their direct interaction with our clients, they help us to design new features for using technology to serve low income residents. Sandra and Daniel also virtually lead all aspects of our training and technical support program.