Digital Arts Service Corps - workshop

Month 9: Curriculum & Program Development

Stephen Fonzo — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:40:53 +0000

Through March-April, a very intense month, I guided several initiatives to create new training programs for youth and adults, to build volunteer activities at the IMC, and to make general improvements to our facilities. The most involved of these is the Champaign, IL Don Moyers Boys & Girls Club (DMBGC) Teen Computer Lab project, a partnership between the Boys & Girls Club, the Independent Media Center, the University of Illinois, and the local, private computer consulting firm SupporTech. During the first month of planning, the partnering organizations agreed to a vision and mission for the new computer lab and training program to be offered by the DMBGC, which will be an ongoing program available to youth ages 6-18, throughout the year. The IMC has led the development of surveys, curriculum, and budget, informing the design and staffing being organized by the other partners. Our Program Development Intern Jason Keist wrote the surveys to assess the children's experience and interests, and I have been composing the lab budget and compiling a variety of technology and media tutorials and activities, all of which will also be stored with the IMC as documentation.

Along with IMC member Danielle Chynoweth, I presented a workshop on producing radio news for Free Speech Radio News (FSRN), a grassroots independent half-hour newscast available online and syndicated to over 100 stations worldwide. Please see the attachment for the training guide I wrote (geared towards Audacity, though any audio editor is appropriate). Anyone can pitch a story, headline, or feature to FSRN, and once you produce the content, FSRN pays you and includes your piece in one of its daily newscasts. I strongly recommend that other VISTAs encourage members, customers, and trainers in your organization(s) to learn and participate in FSRN as a resource for citizen journalism, media reform, smearing the digital divide, and earning income for a job well done.

I also participated in a roundtable discussion on social media presented at the University of Illinois by Chicago's Community Media Workshop (CMW), a group devoted to training news producers and journalists, and strengthening ties between media and populations in Chicago and the midwest. I recommend CMW as a useful resource to anyone working in these geographic areas. They inspired me to create a Twitter account for the IMC - simple, but necessary.

Spring was productive in even more ways at the IMC, and I organized three volunteer workdays - one for the Shows/Booking group to troubleshoot, repair, and re-organize the PA, mixer, stage, and cables; one for WRFU 104.5FM to produce new station IDs and clean and paint the studio; and another for just plain spring cleaning of the building. Along with volunteers in the Librarians and Tech working groups, Nicole and members of the Community Connections group, I setup a staffing desk with a computer workstation, IMC merchandise tables, and staff storage space in the entry to the main space of our building.

For the Production group, I offered three more workshops on video editing, wrote Terms of Use and Borrowing for our production room and public equipment, and upgraded one of our video workstations with funds we raised during the Film Festival. Finally, following Nicole's hard work to obtain summer youth (ages 14-24) positions at the IMC through the Champaign Consortium, I defined one of the positions, a WRFU Audio Trainer and Archivist, who will join us soon to produce regular on-air content, update our public affairs automation, train members on live and studio broadcast, and archive our existing audio materials.

And then there was all the planning for another major fundraiser, the IMC Fest... (see next month)

Screenings, Workshops, Tutorials, oh my!

Jessica McCoy — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:34:22 +0000

Hello hello fellow VISTAs!
Time for a quick summer update. Mmmmm summer...it's a good thing!
So this week we have two digital storytelling workshops going on. The first one is focused specifically for educators, and though I'm not involved in teaching it, I have been working hard to get some new software quick guides put together. It seems like there's an infinite number of software tutorials you can write to support digital storytelling. I've helped with tutorials for Final Cut Express, Photoshop Elements, file management, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, Audacity, Premiere, and Sound Studio. And there's a still a few more in the works. All of them will be posted (eventually) to the Stories for Change web portal that Danielle and I have been working on. All y'all who are doing digital storytelling with your organization, check out the site and post your students' stories! And of course any resources you have. Since the site just launched, we're working to get more people signed on and posting.

Also this week we have community screenings for two workshops I helped facilitate. The first workshop was place-based digital storytelling with middle school students, and the second was with Latina high school girls in a leadership development program. I'm hoping to get the stories posted to the net soon...need to get all the releases signed first! I'm looking forward to the screenings, since it will be the first time the participants will show off their work to family and friends.

The other good news is that my organization finally hired two people to help with administrative and postproduction tasks, which is awesome because it frees me up to do work that's more inline with my original workplan. Yay! It's great because they are both basically doing more capacity building work too, just in different areas than I am. And as a small nonprofit, we can use all the capacity-building help we can get. :)

A Simple Reminder

Andrea Collopy — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:44:56 +0000

A local organization here in San Diego, called Nonprofit Management Solutions, offers management and technology consulting, training, and information resources to nonprofit organizations. On Tuesday I attended a workshop on Customer Service Skills. Most of the concepts we covered were common sense and things I had heard before, but it always helps to be refreshed. One of my favorite things that I took away from the workshop was the idea to create a clear vision of your organizations goals, if they do not already exist. Then you are supposed to read this vision everyday for 21 days (apparently the number of days it takes for you to really learn something/commit to memory) and it will help you maintain your focus, and allows you to better serve your orgs community.

I have our "Vision" typed up and hanging on the wall above my computer monitor so I can look up and read it to remind myself of what our overall goals are. With all of the projects that I am working on sometimes I lose focus of what my purpose here is, and this helps. It's kind of cheesy, but I like it!