Transmission Project

Megan was an important part of the training aspect of the station, both for on-air DJ’s and the journalism group. She participated fully in the classes and helped in preparation. She built relationships with the youth, helping them do the best possible jobs in their shows and working with them as they produced journalism for our blog. She was specifically in charge on a class on interviewing techniques. She also helped set up field trips and accompanied students on those trips. She helped make sure that assessments and evaluations properly conducted. She ran her own radio program, modeling the way radio should be done. This work was all conducted under the supervision of the station coordinator, Steve Provizer, who also worked with Megan to write and design underwriting materials which we are now using to connect with local East Boston businesses. She was often called upon to help publicize the work of the station and Zumix in general, by preparing publicity material and helping to organize mailings. Megan was a full participant in staff meetings and helped determine organizational policies.

As previously stated, we are extending Megan’s work on underwriting. The database work she did in the course of helping with publicity have served Zumix well. Also, she prepared documents with procedures, passwords, etc., that have helped make the transition to our new VISTA very smooth.

With regard to student recruitment, Davina developed a brochure and created a calendar/plan for student recruitment. The plan identifies events where we might canvas for students, identifies contacts, who attends, and whether the event was a useful recruitment event. In addition, it includes action steps for non-event related recruitment opportunities. Davina also added recruitment contacts to our database and created materials for the student recruitment display board.

The Grad Cenetral program did not get started until mid April so we did not ask Davina to work on this.

Davina scheduled 29 student and mentor workshops (more than our goal) and identified volunteers to lead all workshops. This is a tremendous help to staff as they do not have time to lead the workshops and in prior years we were able to offer fewer workshops because of this.

Davina became our tech wizard. She maintained the computers in the learning labs. She also did a lot of work on our website, including creating PHP forms which allowed us to create forms that aid in our ability to collect data for evaluating purposes. She also created applications that made it easy for volunteers to sign up to volunteer and report tech issues.

Other forms allow us to see what our students have done in the lab each day – something that has been missing from our program – and will be helpful in planning and securing future funding. Davina also taught herself captcha which added security to our web based forms. Davina mostly worked independently on these tasks but sought staff input when necessary. She worked most closely with Dolly Joseph, our Program Director.

The website remained incomplete. Some of the problem was the delay in training Mike properly. Mike acted as site manager at our main facility. This freed our staff to massively exspand our capacity from 100 students to 700 students per year. He planned and accompanied students on field trips. Mike also developed a website for us. He began a music develop project by converting one of our older computers into a beat machine.

Originally, web development was Mike’s primary task, but it is his work as a site manager that made the difference. It began with an outreach program to community schools. The schools stated they needed the program during school not after, and we have been growing fast ever since.

During the first six months of 2008-2009, Janet was instrumental in producing several new training and curriculum resources — some content-rich and some with the purpose of media/technology application/integration. These included an extensive draft curriculum centered on the historic local Chinese burial grounds of Mount Hope Cemetery that included production of three new digital stories.

She provided critical programming leadership in the organizing of a major Asian American youth symposium in November 2008 that included workshops on Media Justice, Web 2.0 resources, digital storytelling, Asian American history, and community activism.

She also constructed an important database of active Asian American youth and Asian American educators from the metro Boston area.

During the final six months, Janet focused on the launching of the Dorchester Youth Initiative (DYI) — a CAPAY-led program to address critical issues facing Vietnamese American youth and their families and community in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Janet designed much of the content-rich curriculum with an emphasis on youth/community media. Given the limited capacity of other Vietnamese American community-based organizations to focus on youth issues, Janet also worked to establish crucial relationships with a range of community partners, leading to the organizing and documentation of youth/parent forums in the community. She was primarily supported by the CAPAY coordinator, Tri Quach, and a team of three bilingual Vietnamese American college students from UMass Boston whom she recruited as volunteers to help with the launching and implementation of the DYI.

Janet was not able to devote as much time/effort to the fundraising aspects listed in the position description as we had initially hoped would be possible. She did assist with one major fundraising event (an Asian community dessert tasting held at the Vietnamese American Community Center in Dorchester that benefitted CAPAY and other collaborating organizations). She also researched potential funding sources and developed a useful outline for new funding proposals, but did not actually submit any completed proposals during her term of service.

In a lab used mainly by young people on a daily basis we run into many technical/equipment malfunctions that oftentimes have no explanation. Reel Works Teen Filmmaking operates on a “shoe-string” budget and would not have been as successful in the past year had it not been for Micheil’s superior troubleshooting skills. Oftentimes, the members of our skeleton staff would attempt to trouble shoot errors while simultaneously running other programs and teaching a class - making for a very hectic and crazy work day. The days we were fortunate enough to work with Micheil were always the most productive. The young people in our program owe a lot of their stress-free success to Micheil.

Doreen attends collaborative meetings at Baden Street Center, Monroe County Youth Bureau, and Webster Recreation Center on a regular basis. She participates in their dance programs (Partner with Dazzle Theatre) and sports and health programs. She was instrumental in having 15 students participate in a filmmakers project, a collaboration between youth organizations, agencies, churches, WXXI, University of Rochester, and Road To Success. Youth were given an RCA video camera to shoot a 3 minute film. She instituted a case-management component to keep the participants/youth focused on their assignments/goals. She was able to recruit a significant number of volunteers over the period under review to repair computers, do etiquette training, and work on filmakers project.

The CTCNet VISTA, Ben Pratt, has provided invaluable service to the Durham Literacy Center (DLC) this year. Ben has been able to collaborate with community partners and volunteers to specifically focus on technology and capacity building at DLC and other community technology centers in Durham. To date, he has completely overhauled DLC’s technical infrastructure, including our local area network, administrative computers, plus all computers at our CTC lab housed at our office. DLC also runs two other community labs at partner sites. Ben has made the labs more functional and accessible to our students and the general public. Additionally, Ben has spearheaded the development of an ad hoc technology committee where he recruited local leaders in technology and IT professionals to participate. This ad hoc committee has allowed DLC to establish standards for technology and implement best-practices for the use of technology with our adult learners. We foresee this committee as being adopted by our board of directors as a permanent committee and will develop a long overdue technology plan for our agency. We are also planning to get another VISTA next year to replace Ben. This technology committee will ensure a quick transition as well as training and consistent development of DLC’s technology infrastructure and instructional technology use.

Summary of Project Accomplishments

•Managed technical equipment donations
•Upgraded all PCs to W2K, installed Office XP or 2003
•Put web and mail services into production
•Managed PC Basics course
•Reorganized computer lab and replaced 8 aging lab computers
•Replaced or upgraded all of staff PCs
•Implemented and maintained Red hat Linux server with roaming profiles
•Wireless access is available throughout building by installing new Wireless Access Point
•Cleaned out technology closets
•Recruited technical volunteers and co-chaired technology committee that began the agency’s technology plan
•Came up with lab policies and implemented them
•Reorganized Network Neighborhood, making it easier to find files
•Got virus protection for all PCs
•Provided tech support to staff, volunteers, community/service partners and students
•Updated and maintained www.durhamliteracy.org website
•Organized and coordinated rollout of 40 new PCs from IBM which included software install and setup on servers and clients, hardware setup, and rollout
•Created documentation and materials for next VISTA
•Met with new VISTA to transfer knowledge and ideas