Forgot to mention -

DId anyone catch Moyers on America last week on PBS? It was called "The Net at Risk", very informative. Starts off with what the phone and cable companies promised to do in the 90s with the fiber optic networks. Then proceeds into the net neutrality issue and a whole slew of metaphors to describe the internet and what the phone/cable companies / congress / fcc may do.

Watch for free online!

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html

Well I was able to screen capture a video of the 1st place winner.

Comment from Rebecca White on October 23, 2006 - 12:13am

just curious, what software did you use for the screen capture?

Comment from Tony ORourke on October 23, 2006 - 5:03pm

It is called Quick Screen Capture.  It gives you a trial version with 15 captures.

Comment from danielle martin on October 27, 2006 - 4:45pm

Hey Tony,

Thanks for posting these - they're GREAT!

-Danielle

So, I have completely let this blog go by the wayside. For shame. But I'm back, baby, although I still refuse to like blogs.

So, whats been happening with your friendly neighborhood wireless guy? Well, its been so ridiculously busy lately, that I was able to completely ignore something like an online web log without a second thought. Woohoo!

Yes, we have a working wireless mesh network now. For the past month and a half we've been frantically trying to setup all of the residents who signed up initially, back in January of this year. So you can understand why they might be in a hurry to get their internet access. In the past couple months we've installed routers in about 70 or so homes, which is only half of our expected number of users, but believe me, the other 70 people have been banging down our door asking for internet. Except that when we try to call them and setup an appointment, they don't pick up the phone. They do show up at the tech center, upset that we haven't called them, though. Ah well. At least we've made a good amount of progress in a short time, and I can no longer claim that my job description is a liar. This is what I signed up for. Oh, by the way, its the best job ever.

And in the midst of all this wifi installation and subsequent tech support, which pretty much consumes all of my time, we're trying to dole out money to other housing developments in the Boston area that are interested in Wifi - part of Castle Square's grant was 15000 dollars to support other housing developments in their wifi implementation. We are holding an open house on the 8th of November to show interested groups around our site and explain the grant process to them. I'm also going to be the chair of the committee that decideds who gets the money, and how much money they should get - we're hoping to have some pretty smart people on the committee though, so I won't be the one who actually has to decide anything. What do I know?

One last thing - we're starting our computer refurbishing program with big goals. At least, I have big goals, but we'll have to see how it goes. We want to supply residents of Castle Square, and the South End, with computers, on a basis of need. Currently we only have some 30 computers that have been donated from Boston Latin Academy, but we're always looking for more so if you know anything, get at me. I'm hoping that Castle Square can actually turn this into a business and become a low cost computer reseller for the neighborhood.

Thats whats been happening. Ok, I gotta run, I have a user who can't access his email waiting for me at his apartment, and 3 other computers that are full to the brim with malware sitting behind me, sadly watching the shiny new lab computers with envy in their eyes.

Check2

Hey all,

Here are some resources that I hope you find useful!  The first site is more comprehensive, while the last three focus on volunteerism.  I have more resources related to other topics, but I'll save those for another day.  :)

ETR Associates Epicenter www.nationalserviceresources.org - This site, developed by the Corporation for National and Community Service, lists best practices for a variety of topics.  AmeriCorps members submit what worked for them, so their experiences are easy to relate to.  If you click on the AmeriCorps logo, you can search by topic area, such as Education, Human Needs, Program Management, and Volunteer Management to name a few.  I found it to be useful during my previous VISTA term when I wasn't sure where to start on a certain task.

Point of Light Foundation www.pointsoflight.org - Under the "Resources" tab, there are a variety of publications, examples, and tool kits for those managing volunteers.  The downside is that there's no easy way to search for something specific; the best way to find something is to sort the list alphabetically and hope to find what you're looking for that way if you don't have time to look through everything.  Lots of good resources, however.

Volunteer Today www.volunteertoday.com - Pretty much a one time visit to the website to subscribe, Volunteer Today is an electronic newsletter for people who manage volunteers.  Although generally not really indepth, it can be useful for those new to the task.

VolunteerMatch www.volunteermatch.org - This is an awesome website, used to find volunteer opportunities and volunteers.   It really speaks for itself, so if you're looking for volunteer opportunities in your community or are trying to recruit volunteers, check it out!

Hey guys,

Does anyone work with adult computer literacy programs? I was hoping to peek at how others covered the topic of saving files.  Our students seem to not get 'save as' and 'send to.'  I'd love to see how other programs approach this topic, so we can adapt our curriculum.  I love best practices :).

If you know of a program, somebody who runs a program or have a link to a program, then I would be very appreciative. Thanks!

 Carls

Comment from danielle martin on October 27, 2006 - 5:00pm

Hey Carl,

Sorry it took so long for me to catch up on my blog reading, but I know a bunch of CTCNet folks were working on adult tech literacy stuff - check the CTCNet Resource Center <http://www.ctcnet.org/resources/dir/>, like here.

Oh and check this out from RTPNet who had a CTC VISTA last year:

http://www.rtpnet.org/collections/handouts/overview.html

-Danielle

Erin Taylor asked me to write a little something for the upcoming VISTA digest... here is what I submitted (a sneak preview!):

You would think creating a new media literacy series would be easy enough. There are enough of them out there. Thus, when I was asked as a brand new VISTA to create a new media literacy curriculum for Project: Think Different, I figured I would just quote some Noam Chomsky and maybe throw in some media statistics and get something at least presentable together. The task seemed simple.

But, (there is always a “but”) I needed to make the curriculum accessible to teens. Boston teens. Boston teens living in the neighborhoods in which teenage death rates are the highest, in which an attraction to hip-hop music and commercial materialism are identifying aspects of the youth culture, and in which young people are most likely to be portrayed in the news media in relation to situations of crime and violence. Clearly these are the teens in the greatest need of media literacy awareness, but how in the world was a white, relatively affluent, punk, college-graduate female from Austin, Texas ever going to create something that actually works for these kids? Seeing as my first days in Boston included getting severely confused by public transportation, being shocked at how many people lacked innate kindness, and staring in disbelief at how the seemingly numerous Dunkin’ Donuts actually all had customers, the task seemed slightly daunting at best. How could I ever relate?

A lot has changed since that first week. I live amongst the people I work with. I listen to the music they listen to. I shop at the places they shop. I see the things they see. I travel the way they travel. I even use food stamps. It is amazing how much you can learn by immersion. Immersing yourself in the culture is what every foreign language instructor will advise when one is trying to acquire a second language. My project was no different.

Now that I have immersed myself in the community in which I work, being the Youth Media Coordinator for Project: Think Different has gone extremely well. Project: Think Different’s mission is to create a renaissance in music, film and video media education in order to engage people in civic dialogue and action among disenfranchised communities to ensure equity and fairness. We use the media arts as an organizing tool to reach disenfranchised young people and enable them to “think differently” and think big about their ability to create positive change in their lives, communities, and society at large.

After a whole lot of work with our Media Watch Team (a group of ten teens that work part time at Project: Think Different and came up with the outlines for the workshops in the curriculum), fairly high stress levels, and maybe a small skirmish or two with my co-developer Cara Powers, the Media Action Series is complete. It is an interactive multi-session training, co-facilitated by the youth of the Media Watch Team. The new curriculum addresses the media’s role in creating a culture of violence, racism, sexism, and commercialism while educating, empowering and organizing youth to take action on the subjects of media literacy, accountability, access and policy. The Series will look at the various forms of media with a focus on entertainment media, popular culture, and Hip Hop media specifically, that youth consume as entertainment and informants of their socio-political perspectives and social behaviors.

Our objective through the Media Action Series is to create a culture in which young people believe in their power to create change in the media and beyond, and to provide youth the education and access to resources to become well informed, socially responsible, and participatory citizens of society.

The Media Action Series launches the first week of November, 2006. We hope to examine how the media’s portrayal of youth and minority communities affects their own senses of worth and value to society, how our behavior, language, and attitude is affected by the media industry, and likewise, how other people’s perceptions of our behavior are affected by the media’s perpetuation and proliferation of stereotypes. We also hope to address the negative aspects of today’s commercial Hip Hop and popular culture with solution-oriented approaches, inspiring young people to become more conscious consumers of music, video, television, radio, and news media, enabling them to recognize the alternatives available that offer more empowering and positive experiences; thus cultivating a culture of young people who believe in their own ability to demand and create those alternatives.

By keeping the curriculum centered on a hip hop culture, I feel the Media Action Series has a unique potential to engage Boston’s youth and inspire them to take part in positive social change. All in all, I am happy with the finished product. By learning my second language, the language of a Boston teen, I have become part of something so much bigger than myself. I can only hope some of Boston’s youth can learn a fraction of everything that I have.

Comment from lauren bratslavsky on October 19, 2006 - 1:16pm

great article and what a great project!

Comment from Peter Miller on January 11, 2007 - 2:05pm

Colleen, I've been meaning post how incredibly thoughtful and intriguing I found your Digest article, too.  I've sent a version of my thoughts as a comment to the Digest – let me echo gariet and Bill's interests, too, and request to see the curriculum, but let me suggests, too, that this be put on the Digest site, too, at the very least, a link on how to get it. In addition to being interested in see the curriculum, I want to let you know how impressed I was by the vivid sense you convey about life on the streets and your quick introduction to and immersion in it, your description of Project Think Different's Mission and the initial project development, and the photo of the Media Watch Team.  Because it's so promising, do let me offer a couple of suggestions for your consideration. In contrast to the beginning of your piece, your description of the Media Action Series is outlined in somewhat rhetorical/ideological language. Some more immediate description along with a link to the series itself or at least how to request it -- surely this is the rousing conclusion one would hope to find to your work and that of the Media Watch Team and PTD.    This appears to be exactly the kind of model project that the CTC VISTA Project strives to support and to share as widely as possible and I hope you all can make the most of it for yourselves, too.  I look forward to learning more about this highly informative effort.  best, ----peter miller

Comment from Colleen Kelly on February 6, 2007 - 7:00pm

Blame it on being WAY TOO immersed in my work at PTD.

So, Peter - first off - thank you so much for your kind words concerning my Digest article. I appreciate it! Also, I am grateful for the more personal comment on my writing.

As for linking to the curriculum in the article, I can't really re-write the article, but I can put a link for you here -

www.projectthinkdifferent.org/Media-Action-Series.zip

There it all is in a zip folder that you can download. I will blog about it soon. The stress of PTD has kept me a tad busy.

 

I am blogging about my frustration over Andrea (or Andie as she loves to be called) not finishing her roll of film from Boston. She has all of these awesome pictures of Goof Troop goofiness and they're suspended in a disposable Kodak :(. They should definitely be on Flickr. So Andie, please finish the roll - take some pictures of Matt! So far he's like your snuffalufugus (sp?). I mean, how do we really know he exists? This is the scientific age, we need proof. Anyone who feels the same, comment so she feels extra guilty :) Love you Andie!

Comment from Laura Hanley on October 17, 2006 - 6:03pm

I second that!

Comment from Andrea Collopy on October 18, 2006 - 12:45pm

I guess you'll just have to come to Bingo Night so we can finish off the roll:) But even then, I'm just a poor VISTA, you know I don't have the money to develop the roll. I am going to wait until our service is over and I can afford it! jk Thanks for the reminder, I'll get on it!

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on October 23, 2006 - 10:36am

That reminds me i need to post more of my pics from the PSO, including fun with ducks in the park. I'll get on that. Can't help you with the Andie situation. I don't know here well enough. Hopefully this blog sets a fire under her butt or at least gets her ears buzzing.

Peace,

Richard

While I can't think of anything particularly noteworthy at the moment, I've got a post-it not tacked to my monitor, glaring at me menacingly with the following words, "Submit a $%@# blog entry already".  I can take a hint.  Well, sometimes anyway. 

 I guess the big news now is that we're a week from our fall graduation.  For me, that means getting the last of my interviews filmed and then whipping up a video.  Good thing I've only got half the interviews, time is running short, and I've never done this sort of thing before.  For a moment I was almost worried there.  Luckily (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), we're graduating 12-13 kids in what will be a relatively small ceremony.  While that cuts into the amount of footage that I need to sift through, it reflects our shrunken attendance which is proving to cause a problem with a good amount of it affecting my position.

 Due to the decrease in attendance, my workshops have seen a corresponding drop in attendance once school began.  I'd be hard pressed to get more than 2-3 kids in most of the workshops, and the reason we get 2-3 instead of 1 is because the lab staff coerced walk-in kids to attend.  Its not like we're doing 3-hour classes on Excel.  It's more 'cool' stuff like Photoshop composites, remixing in GarageBand, making short films in iMovie, etc.  However I think many of our kids would rather sit there and do nothing instead of actually having to expend some effort and thought in a workshop.  In fact, when the lab staff gives our kids 3 options: 1) Go to the Workshop, 2) Do homework for the duration of the workshop, or 3) go home, most would choose to go home.  

 As much as I enjoy working for C4K, the lack of motivation in many of our kids is getting to be pretty frustrating.  I know we just need to get a few of them started doing cool stuff and then others will want to do it, but just getting them started is proving to be well beyond my capacities.  In the meantime, we're looking at focusing more on shorter in-lab activities to address the commitment, competence, and 10-second attention span of our students, so hopefully we can get something going that way.

 Anyway, its been neat checking out what all the new VISTAs are up to and I'm looking forward to seeing how all of your service years progress.

Comment from Rebecca White on October 16, 2006 - 4:50pm

Maybe you could introduce kids to some of the media that other kids have made? You could show some short films some afternoons or even just leave them playing on a tv/computer screen (heck, watch them yourself and kids will look over your shoulder). Introduce kids to YouTube, even: within a week of finding out about YouTube, my roommate was making and posting videos (he's not a kid, but close). I guess what kids are interested in doing--videotaping pranks and skateboarding mishaps, making obnoxious sound effects, etc--pushes the boundaries of what adults like to see, but it gets them involved... At the September PSO we saw some films from the media that matters film festival, which has a bunch of films made by 13-21 year olds (the films are all on their website, plus they'll send a dvd if you want to host a screening).

Comment from Shaneka Smith on October 23, 2006 - 1:52pm

 I have noticed that kids are very competitive.  If you have a couple of kids who are really showing interest in a particular thing and they develop a project based on that interest, other ones may think, "I can do that" or "I can do that better."   See if you can grab their attention by showing what others have produced.  I hope all goes well for you and your group.

Shaneka Smith

Westside Youth Tech Entrepreneur Center

4213 W. Madison

Chicago, IL 60624

Phone:  773.533-3500

Fax: 773.533.3507

Ah, I got a bit of a break, but the conference fall season has begun. I presented at the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC) Convention on how to use digital storytelling as a community organizing tool. Here's the Powerpoint, the handout and worksheet.

The session went well (I love how easy it is to present using my new MacBook) and people asked all the right questions about usability & practicality of using digital storytelling in a community setting. They also seemed psyched about all the new open media tools and sites and how to use stories to do advocacy for their CDC's. I also had some great interactions with some folks from New Bedford and western MA including a former VISTA who are lacking media outlets and access to broadband internet connections, but still want to distribute audio/video about their community work. Hey Apple, want to donate some video iPods to western MA CDCs to distribute digital stories? Call me!

Below are a few photos of the event.

All my other conference presentations on digital storytelling (some great finished stories) from last year are on my old blog.

Check out the East Somerville Community Map!

Comment from lauren bratslavsky on October 19, 2006 - 3:26pm

Hey thanks for that pdf with the list of resources and so on. I've been talking to a local writing group that's a couple of streets of way. We want to do a joint project with the area youth where they (Inktank) will work on the writing and story development side and they we (media bridges) will work on the digital media side. This will help us get going.