Digital Arts Service Corps - blog

Month Six: Computer Adoption and Broadband Stimulus

Melissa Niiya — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:25:41 +0000

Dear Broadband Stimulus,

Where are you?

Love,

Everyone but the peeps who already found out about their application.

This month, we had the Computer Adoption Program class a couple Saturdays ago. The machines were pretty old, and there were a few hiccups, but I think it went okay. The students were residents from two LTSC-managed affordable housing projects. Most were adults, some of whom had never owned or used a computer before. It was a 4-hour crash course in Ubuntu, and they were all browsing the internet and creating e-mail accounts by the end. Once they all went home, their computers were wifi ready...which is great, because most of the residents live at Reno, where we recently installed the broadband over powerline network. It's holding up, even with the increased usage, so yay!

I have been having some issues with our wifi hotspot management system, though. We recently switched to the free version of Coova so that we could better track usage for grant reporting. I was a noob and didn't test it out on Internet Explorer. Older versions of IE seem not to accept redirection (this might also be a Windows-related security issue?). Going to have to try to work around this. We can't go to everyone and troubleshoot this problem...perhaps we could offer firefox cds...? Coova support is not very good, either. I wouldn't go with them again.

Next up...increasing signal in a huge apartment complex (using DIY parabolic dishes?), a plan to train a few ueber tech savvy residents in wifi maintenance, and hopefully more web design. Hope everyone is having a happy new year so far!

I hope this is a blog

Will Quinones — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:51:13 +0000

hey everyone, its been a while. I think i start every blog with "its been a while since i wrote a blog" haha. well i'm a busy man. It's not easy working full time, making such a large sum of money and trying to find places to spend it all. HEY i think the greatest thing i did this year was go to the Sundance film festival. i met a funder from Adobe and spoke to him, showed him some stuff from Reel Works. a couple of months later he invited us to apply for a fifty thousand dollar grant. i'm still crossing my fingers. we should hear the news this month. another cool thing i've been doing is helping kids make movies. I've helped produced about twenty short films this year. I think. Well some are still in the works. regardless show us some love at listenup.org. A few of our films are in a contest for cool prizes, including mine. please write a review and rate our movies. (especially mine) it would be much apreciated. here's the link. Mine is called "The Beginning" i wrote and shot it, in one day. its cool i guess.

http://www.listenup.org/community/org.php?org=7bc96f311c8e6a38ac5a296e3f...

My First Blog!

Karl Hedstrom — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 21:39:09 +0000

I'm at PSO and we're leaning how to Blog! It's very exciting. However, it's not as excitting as the prospect of candlepin bowling ... which is apparently our outing tonight. I'm not sure what exaclty Candlepin Bowling is, but if you follow that link you can learn more ... that's where I'm going right now!

In Filipino slang, "ka-BLOG" would mean someone you blog with.

danielle martin — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:30:18 +0000

Check out this campaign to use blogging to get the discussion going about technology and violence against women!

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ka-BLOG! We want to take over the blogosphere for 16 days.

ka-BLOG! is a 16-day blog fest for the Take Back the Tech Campaign. It is open to anyone and everyone - girls, boys, everyone beyond and more -- who wants to share their thoughts, write poetry and prose, post graphics / pictures, rant, rave, heckle, make snide remarks, stick their tongue out at violence against women, and how online communications can exacerbate or help eliminate VAW.

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What is the campaign about?

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It is simply a call for every person– women and men, who uses online communications (ICTs), e.g. for chatting, emailing, blogging, doing websites or developing tools, to use ICTs for activism against VAW (violence against women) for 16 days. Primarily, we are asking women and grrls to “Take Back The Tech!” But you don’t have to be female to disagree with violence faced by women and be part of the campaign to transform gender relations. Unequal power relations lie at the heart of VAW, and this is apparent from the streets to online spaces. So we are saying technology should be used for equality, not to perpetuate violence.

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How to ka-BLOG?

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1. *commit*: commit yourself to 16 days of blogging about violence against women and technology.

2. *email*: Email ideas@takebackthetech.net, with your blog address and name/handle/nick if you want to sign up as a Ka-BLOGger, if possible, before 25 November. f you don't have a blog yet, this will be a great place to start! Email us, and we'll send you links on how to start your own blog :)

3. *identify*: make it known by putting a takebackthetech icon on your blog — create your own or grab a few icons from our Campaign Tools and Materials.

4. *post*: post something about the how you think violence against women connects with information communications technology? have a story? heard something quirky? snap a picture? think this is serious? doesn't make much sense? anything at all! just post one thing a day from 25 nov to 10 dec on thinking about violence against women

5. tag it: use "takebackthetech" to tag your posts (http://www.takebackthetech.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=blogathon#tag)

6. link back: send in your bloglinks and and we'll rss your posts to the campaign website throughout the 16 day

7. expand: widen the campaign to your readers by linking your blog to the campaign site .

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What to ka-BLOG! About?

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So long as it's about violence against women (well, against) and how it connects to ICTs (and vice versa). So long as it's about gender relations. So long as it's about how women can have more control over technology. So long as it's about women and gender equality.

It does not matter to us if the blog entries come in the form of jokes, limmericks, poetry, short stories, blurbs, graphics, pictures, articles, creative narratives.

We welcome bloggers in different languages! So ka-BLOG! with us!

For more information on ka-BLOG!, go http://www.takebackthetech.net

[FYI. In Filipino slang, "ka-BLOG" would mean someone you blog with.]

For more information and questions, send an email to: jac@apcwomen.org.

technorati tags: takebackthetech

Lessons Learned: Summer Youth Tech Program at C4K

Raymond Varona — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:48:39 +0000

[From the blog of Raymond Varona, August 23, 2006.]

Raymond Varona

During the summer, most of our population was made up of kids whose primary language wasn't English and who had never used a computer before. As a result, the workshops were more like guided activities instead of real skill-building sessions since I have to literally show them, step-by-step, how to do every action (including opening files and browsing through folders). So I started off with an intro to Photoshop and gradually worked my content down to the point where my last workshop was on how to change fonts in different programs...

This brings up a significant problem for Computers 4 Kids in that we have some kids that are learning how to program and others that are learning how to use a mouse, and somehow our programs and curricula have to include both. Definitely something I'll continue to address as the year presses on.

Read more from Ray's new CTC VISTA blog.

Blogging Workshop at Media Matters: Writing Conference

danielle martin — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:43:48 +0000

Colin Rhinesmith (ACME Boston / Berkman Center / Emerson grad student / podcast genius) and I presented a quick one hour workshop today on blogging for teens and journalism teachers at today's Blogging Workshop at Media Matters: Writing Conference For High School Teachers & Teens, sponsored by the Boston Globe here on the UMB campus. The event was co-sponsored by Project Think Different, home of former CTC VISTA Cara Powers and current VISTA Colleen Kelly. The group seemed interested in how to get the word out about blogs once they're up. Colin and I posted the outline on the ACMEBoston blog, along with folks ideas of how they might use blogging in the future.

PS - Check out the cool presenter gift I got...oooo the sparkly globe.

Paul Hansen reads my blog

Ben Sheldon — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 22:31:31 +0000

Paul Hansen and I are trying to get some easy notification system working so that our VISTAs will know when someone comments on their blog without having to individually check all their entries.

Comments

Corey Funderburk — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 20:07:13 +0000

Does anyone know if there is a way to be alerted when someone comments on your blog? Or somewhere where recent activity is summarized so that you don't have to look at every one? Thanks!

Straight Bloggin'

AJ McGuire — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:27:59 +0000

Yeah, so I'm blogging. Week 3 at the job. Trying to figure out that delicate balance between direct service and capacity building. Trying to get some people even crazier than me to do the direct service bit on a volunteer/intern basis. Anyone out there have any leads for getting volunteers? Specifically, in the Boston area? Been hitting colleges and posting on Craigslist and such.

Bad Link

Tim Wescott — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 17:15:43 +0000

Ooops. My last blog had a bad link. The website is http://www.socialsourcecommons.org

I had originally typed the link as just "socialsourcecommons.org" (which works in your browser, but not in this web software).